Adam Kinney at Microsoft cooks up a handy little Gadget to fill your empty Sidebar tool in Vista with the latest data on your Xbox Live friends of choice.

Just one caveat kids - this tool doesn't actually link into your Xbox LIVE account in real-time.  You'll have to manually enter the Gamertags you'd like to keep track of.

While this is a slick little gadget looks nice in your Sidebar it only serves to remind me of the lack of support and delivery on the Games for Windows LIVE promise. We were promised a bright future of Xbox LIVE integration, dynamic friend's list tracking tools and a gaming experience - vis a vis Vista - that would remove all the pains of driver and software compatibility issues.

Almost a year into the launch and Vista gaming performance is still quite simply dreadful and the LIVE experience is lacking.  Heck, even Valve uses XP on all their internal dev and demo systems - that's telling.

We appreciate the widget Adam - but we'd love to see Microsoft start delivering on the Games for Windows promise.  Meanwhile, quite literally across town, Valve is picking up the pieces where Microsoft is failing in terms of providing PC community.

Just compare STEAM and and its 13million strong user base to Xbox LIVE and it's 7million and when you tell me PC gaming is dead again I'll sock you in the mouth

Source: Adam Kinney's Blog
Link:  Download the Gadget