You know what would be a really great sidebar gadget?

I was lying awake last night, thinking about Vista and sidebar and sideshow and such (as you do) and I had a really interesting idea.

When Vista launched there was a great deal of talk about SideShow and how there were going to be all sorts of hardware devices that could leverage all sorts of gadgets to “consume” content from your PC.  For me one of the great disappointments of Vista to date is the lack of delivery on the potential that SideShow offers.   There are hardly any devices or gadgets available at the moment and that is a real shame.

The idea I had last night was what about a SideBar gadget running on one Vista machine that registers as a SideShow device for another Vista machine?  This would provide an interesting way for one computer to consume content from and even control another computer.

There are a couple of scenarios that spring to mind straight away. 

The first is Media Center.  There has been lots of talk about SideShow enabled remotes, but who needs a remote?  I spend a lot of time in the lounge reading and blogging on my tablet while my wife watches TV.  It would be great to have a SideBar gadget on my tablet that I could use to control the Media Center.

The second scenario is Outlook.  If I am working at home (with my work laptop) it would be great to have a gadget that is acting as a SideShow device for Outlook on my home PC.

I put this out there as I have absolutely no time to look into this at the moment.  If anyone decides to see if this is possible and practical let me know.