One of the biggest holes in the ecosystem surrounding Windows Vista has been the paucity of Gadgets--those cool, Mac-like applets the live on your desktop. (Most people keep them arrayed vertically on the right side.) True, Microsoft does offer about a dozen of its own basic gadgets, which bring you the time, weather, and latest headlines. And there's a rapidly evolving community of third-party Gadgets. (Though Microsoft's Gadget Web page is somewhat misleading in that it doesn't distinguish between Windows Live gadgets (lots and lots, but little demand) and ones for Vista (not nearly as many, and these are the ones people want).

Where Microsoft has come up a bit short, Google has unintentionally stepped into the breach. Google has a healthy collection of time-wasters, ranging from the joke and recipe of the day, to Wikipedia search and People magazine headlines. However, the Google Gadgets are specifically intended to work with your own "personalized" version of the Google home page, or with the company's own Google Desktop Web-based apps.

Fortunately, a small desktop-software company called Mesa Dynamics which has stepped into the breach with a free utility, which effectively bridges the gadget gap between Google and Microsoft. Amnesty Generator for Vista converts Google's Web-oriented Gadgets into Gadgets which can run in Vista's sidebar.

(click image for larger view) The Amnesty Generator requires you to grab the Gadget's code from Google's Gadget page, plug it in, add an image for your icon, click a button and the Vista Gadget is automatically generated. view the image gallery		(click image for larger view) Here's our final Vista Date and Time gadget, generated by Amnesty, shown in the upper right corner of our Windows Vista Desktop. view the image gallery

In operation, Amnesty Generator requires the user to take Google's HTML and paste it into the app. A click of a button and the Vista Gadget is ready to go. Interestingly, Mesa Dynamics also offers a version of its app running under OS X, for generating Mac Sidebar applets.

We tested out the Amnesty Generator on a simple Calendar Gadget from Google. The Amnesty tool requires you to grab the source code of the Google Gadget and paste it in. Once that's done, you just add an image for your desired desktop icon, and give the Gadget a name. Click, and Amnesty outputs your Vista Gadget, and automatically inserts it into the your Windows Vista gallery. You can then deploy it to your desktop just like any other Vista Gadget.

Be advised that my testing indicated that not all the Google Gadgets can be cleanly converted. Amnesty did generate some Gadget code that didn't work once it was pasted onto the Vista desktop. However, given the large inventory of Google Gadgets, you're sure to end up with enough working additions to Vista to keep you busy for a while.