“PowerGadgets” is an interesting looking data visualization product that works with PowerShell. Graphs, charts, dials, maps and gauges, what’s not to like? 🙂
According to their web site “As a Windows PowerShell Snapin, PowerGadgets lets you easily explore, visualize and monitor enterprise data from virtually any data source, including traditional databases and text files, with little or no coding involved.”
They’re currently running a promotion that they’re calling their PowerGadgets MVP Program. Tell them a little about yourself and they may give you a free copy of PowerGadgets. I’ve been wanting to look into this product but didn’t have a budget for it. I recalled a “negotiating skills” course I took a long time ago whose motto was “if you don’t ask, they can’t say yes”, so I filled out their form over the weekend. Got my free license in this morning’s email. Cool. So “thanks” to the nice folks at PowerGadgers. Now to get busy and learn how to use it.
Not to be confused with the above is Andrew Peter’s “PowerShell Gadget” which he describes as “a small gadget that hosts the PowerShell console window in your Sidebar. Commands can be entered straight into the collapsed gadget or, by clicking on the PowerShell icon, the complete PowerShell console is available“. This sounds so interesting that I’m going to have to fire up my Vista test machine just to give it a spin.
Another couple products that I just found are both from “PowerLocker”. Powerlocker (“Encrypt and protect your PowerShell scripts“) and PowerPad (“Quickly edit multi-line scripts, functions, or script-blocks“) both have “community” (read: free) versions, although the free PowerLocker version is limited to 10 line scripts. The paid version of Powerlocker obviously has no line limit. I’ll try both of them, although I’m kind of a die-hard vi user. And I don’t need to encrypt anything at this point, but it sounds interesting to test.