If you"re a fan of the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar, but wish your upcoming appointments and tasks could be shown even when Outlook was minimized, I"ve got great news for you, you can do this today with the Outlook Sidebar Gadgets.
One of the new features introduced in Windows Vista is the Windows Sidebar, an application that allows gadgets—small applications that provide quick access to useful information or commands—to be displayed on your desktop or in the Sidebar.
The Sidebar presented a great opportunity for Outlook to surface the same information that we show in the To-Do Bar. To this end, we developed two Outlook gadgets: Outlook Appointments and Outlook Tasks. These gadgets can be used independently or together to provide at-a-glance information without the need to bring up Outlook.