Windows Vista and Windows 7 provides what they call Windows (Sidebar) Gadgets (the Sidebar moniker is removed in Windows 7). These gadgets do the same thing as similar products from Yahoo (formerly known as Konfabulator) and Apple (the Dashboard), providing small amounts of functionality and information within easy reach.

The Windows Live Gallery is a perfect example of how not to make a download center. If you take a look at the Sidebar gadgets category, most are of rather poor quality, and a fair number of the good ones use plagiarized skins and/or code.

There's no community presence on a site like that, and without a community to help deter poor behavior I think the free-for-all atmosphere makes it hard for the good submissions to float to the top. deviantART is a great example of a site that does the right stuff; their Sidebar gadgets section is cleaner and easier to use.

Anyway, I bring this up because there are some gadgets on The Hobby Lounge which you won't find on deviantART and unfortunately exist in a plagiarized state on the Windows Live Gallery. I was in the process of updating some of my older gadgets from this site and it took me a surprisingly long time to find the website again, even though I knew exactly what I was looking for. My google-fu is usually pretty decent so I figure I'll make a note of it here for myself and maybe help them get noticed a bit more.

[Edit: The Hobby Lounge is now unfortunately defunct.]