The “Now Playing” Windows Vista Gadget

Posted by Michael Aulia on Sunday, February 17th 2008   

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17
Feb


This is a "Now playing" gadget for your Windows Vista. It will display information on what’s currently playing at your favourite Windows’ Media Player.

You can also do a basic control on the gadget, such as Pause/Play, Next and Previous.

Please  feel free to give this gadget a try.

 

This gadget is made by Steven Strawbridge Law James, so all credit goes to him.

If you don’t have a Windows Vista but want to have a "gadget" to show your currently playing song in Windows XP, for example, you can always grab the CD Art Display. If you have a Vista though, this will be the easiest and simplest way to make it happen!

Download the gadget from my blog server here Download the gadget from the author’s site (just double click on the .gadget file to install after you unzip it)

 

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Category: Windows  Tags: ,    

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16 Comments So Far

vickie Said,
February 18th, 2008 @3:53 am  
Rate:
2.9

erm.. I think if we use this gadget and display the song information we must connect to the Internet in order to track all the information from Internet right?

vickie’s last blog post..My 2008 Valentine’s Gift

Michael Aulia Said,
February 18th, 2008 @8:46 am  
Rate:
2.5

Hi Vickie,
I usually assign the title, album, the artist, and the album image to every mp3 files that I have.

As far as I know, this gadget doesn’t connect to the internet. It will grab the information from your mp3 file.

I tried it with an mp3 file that doesn’t have any info on it and the gadget displays: “Track 20, No artist” and some random image taken from my folder

*EDIT* Vickie: and I hope your grandma gets better too!

StrawberryJ9 Said,
February 18th, 2008 @1:35 pm  
Rate:
2.5

I did some minor adjustments nothing major. Winamp has some slight issues with closing from application due to the fact its controlled, communicated with by plugin not direct api commands. If closed through winamp it should pause for a slight bit then reopen winamp just to close it again. This happens to keep your playlist settings for next load. Before it would clear your playlist for next open making it a pain. You’d have to click on ur media library and load it again to start. If u want to avoid this all together just hit the menu button and close player from the gadget. Still working on that so feel free to tell me your issues or email me with ideas.

Vickie. Yes it does find album information/art from online but only if you don’t already have the art locally such as embedded in your mp3 or in the folder.jpg setup of organization. If your not online it will just show a no cover picture.

StrawberryJ9 Said,
February 18th, 2008 @1:37 pm  
Rate:
2.5

click name and host it on your mirror if you wish. i’ll keep u updated on more releases.

Michael Aulia Said,
February 18th, 2008 @6:45 pm  
Rate:
2.5

Thanks, I’ve already updated the file on my server to your latest version.

1 Million in 365 Day Said,
February 18th, 2008 @6:57 pm  
Rate:
2.5

And if all that would not work you could simply switch back to Windows XP. From what I’ve seen of Vista, I am never going to upgrade. But then again Microsoft will force me to do so in time won’t they?

1 Million in 365 Day’s last blog post..5 Reasons Not to Reciprocate Entrecard Drops

StrawberryJ9 Said,
February 19th, 2008 @5:05 pm  
Rate:
2.5

another upgrade has been done. cleaned up the script, gadget a bit and fixed some slight bugs. only one more single thing to get around and the final release will be done on live gallary. please feel free to give me your input, experiences at sstrawbridge@hotmail.com. running totally perfect on my end.

added a disable internet searches feature for people with slow internet and album art already so it doesn’t look up anything to do with your tracks.

Law James Said,
February 20th, 2008 @4:59 am  
Rate:
2.5

Michael, this gadget was not created by Steven Strawbridge, it is merely a modification of my Now Playing gadget which has been out for around a year now. This is not Steven’s work and he has not asked my permission to edit it nevermind distribute it and pretend it’s all his own work even to the extent of posting donation links.

Could you please edit your post accordingly, especially the bit about “This gadget is made by Steven Strawbridge, so all credit goes to him.”

The latest version here should fix any winamp issues, please let me know if you still have problems: http://gadgetdev.blogspot.com/2008/01/now-playing-update-39.html

Law James’s last blog post..Server Ping 1.3 Update

Michael Aulia Said,
February 20th, 2008 @9:55 am  
Rate:
2.5

My deepest apology for this, Law. I wasn’t aware of this.

I’ve modified my post and I’ve decided not to host his file here anymore and forward my readers to your site instead!

PS: I’ve put the strikethrough on the texts instead of removing them, so that my readers can follow through to the comments as to what’s going on

eagle424 Said,
June 21st, 2008 @8:38 am  
Rate:
2.5

Gadget “Now Playing” contains malware (exploit). Is it intention or you didn’t know about that? I hope 2nd option is true. 1st one should be really dirty trick.

Michael Aulia Said,
June 21st, 2008 @10:16 am  
Rate:
2.5

ouch. I’m sorry Eagle, I don’t know about that as I’m not the developers myself. What antivirus are you using? I remembered using this widget before and my antivirus didn’t say a thing (I was either using Avast, AVG, or Kaspersky :()

eagle424 Said,
June 21st, 2008 @2:47 pm  
Rate:
2.5

The newest avast!’s resident shield is able to detect mentioned virus. Virus (malware) is called JS:ADODB-BL [Expl]. However, you are not developer (how you have written), so probably cannot do anything with it. From this reason I try to contact James Law. The gadget is pretty cool (lyrics stuff the most), but malware which could provide acces to “Now Playing”-users’ computers is too high price.

Law Said,
June 21st, 2008 @7:37 pm  
Rate:
2.5

Eagle, i can assure you there is no virus/malware in the gadget. One type of AV thinks that using a legitimate ActiveX control that is included with Windows makes it into a virus. It’s normally my use of using ActiveXObject(”Adodb.Stream”) to download the plugins off the internet that makes it think there’s a virus. Feel free to uninstall the gadget, but it’s been on the Live gallery for over a year now, if it has a virus it would get pulled instantly.

Laws last blog post..Windows Slideshow for Windows Mobile

Law Said,
June 21st, 2008 @10:30 pm  
Rate:
2.5

Eagle, I am a developer, i am the developer of the Now Playing gadget. Like i said it’s detecting the use of the Adodb.Stream ActiveX control and assuming it’s malware. The reason for this is technically if you had a really unsecure browser and my gadget was infact a website then it could download programs onto your computer without you knowing. The issue is that the AV is assuming my gadget is a website and therefore must be trying to do something it’s not allowed to.

You can try to contact me (my email address is in the gadget settings pages), but I’ll be the same person on this blog as i am via email.

Anyway, to summarise, the gadget will not download malicious files onto your computer, the AV is just confused.

Laws last blog post..Windows Slideshow for Windows Mobile

Michael Aulia Said,
June 22nd, 2008 @11:02 pm  
Rate:
2.5

Thanks for dropping by and clearing it up, Law

eagle424 Said,
June 23rd, 2008 @12:03 am  
Rate:
2.5

Thanks Law, I really appreciate your reaction and explanation. I am already using “Now Playing” :) Sorry about “issue”. I only wanted to be sure, that it is safe. Keep doing such nice gadgets as this one. Have a nice day.

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