Very cool idea, nicely executed :-o

Vista (and Windows 7) lets you run small utility programs either on your desktop or docked to the side of your screen. These are called gadgets. Mac OSX has almost the same thing called widgets. There are also a few freebie apps out there which may allow WinXP users to run Vista gadgets, although I'm not planning to support anything older than IE7 (gadgets use parts of IE internally).

So you basically drop this thing on the side of your screen (I prefer to keep all my gadgets visible full-time... calendars, clocks, a notepad, a weather tool, etc.) and give it your phpDip user ID, and it will periodically grab all of your current games and cycle through them, showing you the game name, season and phase (Sp-Dip, Au-Dip, Retreats, Build), time remaining, whether you have any new messages, and the SC count and orders disposition of all seven countries.

If you click the game name, it will open a new browser window and navigate it to phpDip.

I'm playing with a few ideas like adaptive update timings so it hits the site less often if all your games have 2 days to go, but more often if you have one game that is 10 minutes from timing out (just an example, I don't have the exact mechanics worked out yet).

And I really might jam Plura in there.

NPRZ, I hope the gadget overview wasn't for my sake. I've developed gadgets myself and I run a few that monitor my memory, processor cores, network activity, and more.

I hope you DON'T do Plura as I would have to NOT run your gadget. If, however, you asked for donations when it was all done and I like the end result, I will donate to the cause directly.

Looks good, I've replied in the thread

Yeah the overview was directed at you. No big deal, I just didn't quite follow what you were saying about a calendar, so I thought perhaps you weren't familiar with the gadget system.

I'm already building Plura into another project (stand-alone utility, not a website) and those folks are really on top of their game. I have a lot of friends in the oil and gas industry and I've known for awhile this grid computing thing was going to be huge. United Devices took a shot at it, but it wasn't as transparent and easy, and critically, there was no "win" for the end-user, unlike Plura's model. If you don't want it, well, probably other people will, and to be honest, each individual contribution is so infinitesimally small that any one opt-in or opt-out will simply be lost in the background noise. But I haven't even decided whether to try it yet (the restrictions on gadgets will make it very technically challenging). Mostly I was just kicking the anthill. :)

Looks good, but I'm wondering how in that game you have 48 supply centers!

It looks like it's missing any indication of game-year, too, but that would probably be resolved in the data request.

How would the gadget look with a player in multiple games?

I had some values hard-coded for testing some layout changes (e.g. force the CD indicator, etc.) ... honestly I don't find the specific game year to be all that important. Season and phase are all I ever pay attention to.

It cycles through all of your games, pausing on each one for a few seconds at a time.

Nice. I used to use lots of these.

I'm disappointed. I almost read it as "striptease" and clicked eagerly, only to be disappointed with some FLASHY GRAPHIC THING.

...Not the kind of flashy graphic I was looking for, I mean.

I am most disappointed.

;-) Just kidding. But seriously, that's a hilarious URL name.

I wondered if anybody would notice or mention the URL. :)

I glanced at it the first time for all of t10 seconds and the 7 columns layout looked like a claendar. Now that I've relooked, I see what it all is. It's interesting to say the least. The real problem with having it run Plura is it would be running all the time and Plura has a bad habit of ignoring the thread priority and using more than just excess cycles. That's fine for a webpage that you close out of, but bad for a gadget that will be on the screen continuosly.

Plura actually has multiple execution models and my account with them is primarily focused on a different type of deployment -- although I haven't ruled out the web-style setup either. What do you base your statements upon? I haven't spent a ton of time profiling it or anything along those lines, but I done a little perfmon time and didn't see anything like that, nor did I read anything about that in the half day or so of research I did before I contacted them.

The monitor is a lot more interesting when you can see it working. Of course, photobucket’s video compression leaves a bit to be desired, but what the heck. (You’ll probably want to hit the “full size” button at the bottom right of the video.)

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a269/McGuireV10/?action=view&current=dipmon.flv

Doesn't load for me :(
Oh well, I'll wait for the alpha instead...