Why Vista Sideshow is Still on the Sidelines

One of Windows Vista's most intriguing new features has yet to fulfill its promise, as Microsoft Corp. wrestles with issues of hardware support and developer scarcity.

Windows SideShow was introduced with Windows Vista as a way for time-pressed users to find out the weather forecast, check for new e-mail, see the status of an eBay bid and more, all without turning on their PCs.

SideShow enables a secondary screen -- such as the 2.8-in. color LCD display mounted on the outside of AsusTek Computer Inc.'s W5Fe notebook computer -- to display information from special-purpose mini-applications called "gadgets" that reside on Vista's desktop.

Vista isn't the only way for users to use gadgets. Mac OS X features its own popular lineup of desktop "widgets." Meanwhile, users of Google and Yahoo can customize their home pages with Web-based gadgets. But using Vista with SideShow is the only way to view gadget information without turning on a PC or starting up a Web browser.

With today's consumers expecting all of their virtual information to be at their fingertips anytime, SideShow should prove extremely compelling, according to Rushang Shah, marketing director at CompanionLink Software Inc. "SideShow presents a dream [of providing] a window to our PCs," Shah said. CompanionLink has developed a trio of gadgets, including a traffic webcam, that is available on the Windows Live download site.

But as is often the case with Microsoft, the company's reliance on an ecosystem of partners such as CompanionLink that are ultimately looking to profit from SideShow has led to a familiar chicken-and-egg scenario.

Hardware hard to find

At last week's Windows Hardware and Engineering Conference (WinHEC) conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates showed off a still-in-concept notebook PC co-created by Intel Corp. that includes a much-larger color SideShow screen on the outside than AsusTek's. (Segment starts at 14:45 in the keynote video.)

But the AsusTek laptop is the only SideShow hardware that consumers appear to be able to buy today. Windows peripherals maker Ricavision International Inc. has announced four SideShow products, including a remote control, an e-book reader, an electronic notepad and an e-mail device. Some of those designs have already been licensed to vendors that should produce gear by this Christmas season, according to Max Li, CEO of the Newport Beach, Calif.-based company.

But the dearth of SideShow hardware means low usage of SideShow gadgets so far.

"We are still seeing very basic early adopter traffic," says Tamir Melamed, vice president of technology at the company behind the popular WeatherBug gadget.

While the free WeatherBug gadget for the Vista desktop has been downloaded more than 600,000 times since the end of January, the version that works with SideShow hardware has been downloaded less than 10,000 times, Melamed said.

"The likelihood that a lot of the products shown at WinHEC will arrive as consumer products this year is pretty small," acknowledged Greg Parks, development manager and architect for SideShow at Microsoft, in an interview at WinHEC.

Two reasons for the delay

There are two main reasons for the slow emergence of SideShow hardware. One is the still-in-progress uptake of Vista, released to consumers less than four months ago. Despite Microsoft's claim to have licensed 40 million copies of Vista to PC makers and retailers, Microsoft acknowledged that the number of actual Vista users so far is much lower.

And while many useful Vista gadgets have emerged, the overall total remains relatively small. Microsoft says there are 865 Vista gadgets in English today with a total of 1,615 in 15 different languages.

By contrast, there are reportedly more than 25,000 Google gadgets, and Apple Inc.'s official widget site hosts nearly 3,000 gadgets -- or about four times the number at Microsoft's site.

The other issue is that while all Vista gadgets will run from Vista's desktop, many still require additional coding to work with SideShow devices.

In search of a profit model

Adding SideShow functionality is not a lot of work. For instance, writing the entire WeatherBug gadget in JavaScript took a single programmer just "a couple of weeks," Melamed said.

Still, that is enough additional investment that many developers are hesitating, especially with no clear way to make a return in sight. All of the gadgets available for Vista today are free, and virtually none support advertisements. Brian Teutsch, Windows Vista Sidebar program manager, expects gadgets in future to be supported through advertising or pay-per-downloads.

But selling such software -- especially when mini-apps are relatively easy to create -- may be a tough gig. And because gadgets are inherently small, few ads can be shoehorned into that space. Neither CompanionLink nor WeatherBug display gadgets on the Vista SideBar or the SideShow screen.

"Everyone's talking about gadget advertising, but no one's created a solution," Melamed said.

Another limitation is that SideShow screens can only display information from the last time it synced with Vista gadgets. But that requires a booted-up PC and a connection, such as a Bluetooth or physical one. SideShow supporters note that the feature reduces the usefulness of SideShow screens mounted on laptop computers.

Some say the solution is for Microsoft to add Wi-Fi capability to SideShow -- it only supports shorter-range BlueTooth today -- and emphasize the prospect of connecting SideShow devices to always-on Vista desktop PCs for a "smart home" environment.

"If people want it, we can do it, but it's not in our plans now," Microsoft's Parks said.

Who's going to make these things?

Despite SideShow's potential as a "killer app" for Vista gadgets, Microsoft remains at risk of falling even further behind competing gadget systems. Gadgets already add a billion page views a month to Google. That company and Apple and Yahoo have already announced or released software to let nonprogrammers easily create widgets and gadgets.

In lieu of an equivalent tool, Microsoft says it is doing a lot to teach and encourage developers to create Vista gadgets. "We expect the gadget count to be well into the thousands by the year's end," Teutsch wrote in an e-mail.

Other partners such as Melamed are also optimistic that the chicken-and-egg problem will be moot by next year.

"I think we'll see millions of SideShow devices in use in 2008," he said.