The extension builds on the highly portable code used for the Windows 7 desktop gadget. Minimal refactoring was done to accommodate for Chrome architecture, most notably the fact that it runs background code and the GUI widget in separate pages and processes. As both share the same codebase, they’ll both benefit from the same updates and fixes.

If you are upgrading the gadget do not forget to first uninstall the previous version before installing the new one.

picoBeat itself has been optimized to handle large notes more gracefully by using lazy-loading, this should make handling a large amount of big notes much faster.

• A completely redesigned UI, that is both larger, cleaner and easier to read.
• A new “Tasks” tab that gives direct access to your main to-do list.
• Cleaner, more portable code under the hood.

If you have Windows 7 you can download the new gadget right now.

To edit or delete a favorite, just click once on it.

You’ll now notice a “Send” panel on each module (tasks, calendar, contacts and notes) that displays groups you are a member of and their members. Sending something is as easy as dragging and dropping it over the person’s name! The message will show up directly in their picoBeat’s inbox and can be added to their own data with a single click. You can also send a regular email to anyone by dragging and dropping your items on “email”. (in this case they’ll be sent as attachment in a standard format: iCalendar, vCard, etc.)

There are a number of improvements planned for this feature, most notably a shortcut list of favorite contacts and emails for improved usability.

As a SMS is cheap, payment works by pre-purchasing credits for your user account. Unlike many other SMS services those credits can be purchased in small increments (from 5 €) and will be usable for 2 years, so you don’t have to worry about purchasing more than you can use. To get you started, every account gets 0.10 free credits, enough to send 1 or 2 SMS to most destinations!

You might notice that some part of the messaging module seems useless or “over architectured”: this is because it was built to also work as a fully-featured email client, ready to handle multiple external mailboxes, and these features are disabled right now. Since managing email requires important investments in servers and storage (we are serious about having proper backup, speed and availability), these functionalities will be activated once a proper way of financing the service is found.

If you have any question or issues related to this messaging module a dedicated forum section has been opened.

As a sidenote it is now possible to create short notes from the natural language input bar (and hence also from the one inside the Windows gadget) by using the prefix “note:” (i.e.: “note:this is a new note”).