Teodor Filimon, a fellow Google Desktop gadget developer and API Guru has recently released a really great new gadget.

The "Web TV and Radio" gadget does exactly that. It allows you to easily watch your favorite web TV and radio stations. It features a very slim interface which gives you as much space as possible for your viewing pleasure. All controls are just visible when you hover over the viewing area and automatically hide when you watch your show. You can even use it as a media player for your local movie and audio files and watch them on your desktop (while working ;). As a great additional service there is a channels database which gets updated from time to time so you can check out new and exciting channels which other users like. You can, of course, add your own channels too!

If this got you interested head over to the gadgets webpage and give it a try!

This week Google launched Lively which is a 3D environment where users can create their own rooms, chat with others and then embed these rooms into their website.

One feature of Lively is the support for Google Desktop gadgets. It is possible to add them to surfaces but with one small catch: It's not possible to interact with them.

So far there are only a very few gadgets which might be usable for Lively but I wish there were more. This is why I am looking for your ideas. If you are using Lively and have an idea for a gadget which could be useful for your and other 3D rooms let me know. The most obvious gadgets are of course clocks since they just depend on the time and nothing more. But what else would you like to see in Lively?

If you have a crazy idea let me know using the comments or via mail to benjamin _AT_ desktop-gadgets _DOT_ net.

While saving into the options is very easy you sometimes work with more data. This often requires a real database which supports features like sorting, grouping, randomized access or limiting the request to a number of datasets. Here is a tip on how to use sqlite3 in your gadget.

The first thing you need is the the sqlite3 ActiveX object from http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/litex. Just download the zip archive in the files section of the webpage. The DLL is located in the \litex\bin\ folder of the zip archive. Copy the sqlite3.dll into your gadgets root folder.

Then open your gadget.gmanifest in your favorite editor. After the <about> tag add the following install tag for the sqlite3 object:

<install>
  <object name="sqlite3"
     clsid="3E22694D-7B92-42A1-89A7-668E2F7AA107"
     src="sqlite3.dll"/>
</install>

Now you can create a new instance of the sqlite3 object in your code and work with sqlite3 - either with a database on the disk or in memory:

var sqlite = new sqlite3();
debug.trace("SQLite3 version: "+sqlite.version( true ) );
sqlite.open( ":memory:" );
sqlite.execute("CREATE TABLE Test(a);");
sqlite.execute("INSERT INTO test VALUES (4);");
sqlite.close();

Check the PDF on the litex webpage for all supported functions. You can now use your sqlite3 database from your gadget. Unfortunately this is currently only supported on Windows.