USING THE GALLERY
All of this sounds a little downbeat, and
apologies in advance. For those who want to explore what's available, the IE
Gallery is the place to visit. Here we'll look at the categories on offer and
some of the items that are placed within each of them. The add-ons that you'll
see depend very much on the browser you're using. Some of these may not be
available for you, but it's worth taking a look.
Let's begin by looking at the add-ons that Microsoft's
Internet Explorer Gallery has to offer you.
VIDEOS
There are some cool video add-ons for
Internet Explorer that will allow you to quickly get access to search engines,
movie databases and live television. There are some random results under the
Video tab, but here are our picks.
MSN TV Videos
If you want to watch the latest video clips
and view full television series, then you can use the MSN Video Player, which
is tailored for the UK market. You don't get as much choice as you would with
YouTube, but there's certainly a lot of flicks to enjoy and search for, giving
you some extra entertainment options, and if you enjoy discovering new videos,
then it's worth the download.
If
you want to watch the latest video clips and view full television series, then
you can use the MSN Video Player, which is tailored for the UK market.
UK TV LIVE
Enabling users to watch streaming
television online, the UK TV UVE add-on gives access to 3,000 television
stations and, as you can probably guess from that number, not all of them are
in the UK. You can have the TV Centre customized web search as your default in
IE and you can elect to have the home page set to this too. Of course, you can
alter these settings. You can also have instant alerts and display the latest
community news. The quality is rather high, there's no cost involved and
there's also an option to listen to the radio as well.
Guardian - Multimedia
The Guardian has some high-quality apps,
and its photography is often outstanding. This add-on gives you a choice of
looking at the best of these with the latest video clips and photo galleries
from the guardian.co.uk website. You can also listen to audio. The tabs are
clear, allowing you to hop from one section to the next and see what is on
offer.
MUSIC
With very few add-ons to choose from,
you're really at the mercy of professional companies, but that's not a terrible
thing when they include the like of the BBC and NME.
BBC Music Search
With an in-depth guide to favorite artists,
this Visual Search lets you type in a term, gather specific music results and
then read more about them and see images and more. The service is fast and
pulls from a host of articles and information that has been created and stored
by the BBC, and music fans will find it useful and sometimes invaluable.
BBC Music Most Played Artists
An example of a web slice, the BBC Music
Most Played Artists add-on takes the week's most played artists on BBC Radio
and provides information on them, including the channel they're played on and
it offers interactive elements too. It helps to keep you up to date on the most
popular and current artists that are trending. For many, it's a great service
and being able to home in on that particular part of the website is great.
For
many, it's a great service and being able to home in on that particular part of
the website is great.
NME Search
The New Musical Express has long been an
authoritative voice in the world of music, so having this depth of knowledge at
hand and being able to pull directly from the NME.com website whenever you want
is useful. You can get the latest news, see which concert tickets are
available, read blogs and catch some headlines while also enjoying videos,
gossip and reviews.
SOCIAL
From Twitter to a fair few MySpace
offerings, you can be connect with this range of add-ons.
Twitter
Having the power to search and view Twitter
feeds from your browser makes you more connected and ensures you really don't
have to miss a tweet, especially when there's something major happening.
Twitter is an important service now, and being able to scour it for the latest
content keeps you in the loop.
MySpace Alerts Web Slice
For those who still like this social media
network, there's MySpace Alerts, a Webslice that gives you info on your alerts
from new messages, friend requests and comments to fresh additions that you
need to know about and manage.
SEARCH
A rather bumper selection of add-ons from
the likes of Google, Ask Jeeves, Amazon, eBay and that old favorite Bing.
Search with Google United Kingdom
An accelerator that taps into the immense
power of Google search. It does very much what it promises and delivers
information that is specially tailored for the UK searcher Most people will
benefit from this add-on, given the popularity of this giant search engine, and
being able to highlight text and then search a term or whatever you need to do
makes searching far easier.
Search
with Google United Kingdom
Xbox Games Search
Since IE is from Microsoft, it was
inevitable that there would be a service dedicated to the Xbox, and here it is.
You can use it to search Xbox games and get speedy access to gaming content.
For those who live and breathe their console, having IE with this add-on will
keep you close to your hobby.
Rightmove - Find Properties
When you're in the market for a house, the
Rightmove accelerator is the one for you ensures that, no matter what site
you're on, you can quickly search for that dream home or see how much the house
down the street is going for and either weep or leap for joy. It works by
letting you highlight text on a page and then perform a search using the data you
have selected.
NEWS
A good use of add-ons is to keep abreast of
the news as you work, giving a window to the world.
The Sun Football
Although it's not entirely effective. The
Sun's football add-on gives you the latest news and it will also ensure you're
ready for the new football season when it comes around again in August, Use the
slider to view the reams of articles that will appear It is rather simple,
though, and it didn't always work when we tried it.
Sky News
World and UK news coming at you from the
professional team at Sky with a mix of articles and video, the Sky News add-on
delivers its content in a slick manner, giving you a main story and then
accompanying it with a slider of other news so you see and read the news at a
glance.
Sky
News
Guardian Comment
Often Comment is as useful as the news in
offering an insight and a fresh way of thinking about the world. See the latest
comments with the Guardian add-on that brings you a main article and the
headlines of others.
