Long-time readers of this blog may have come to feel a bubbly camaraderie with my obsession over SideShow. Or they may simply have thrown their hands up in despair, bored with the delayed-into-irrelevance technology. Released two years ago, nothing's really been released to date at all, save the Philips remote I reviewed two months ago. Still, as long as there's progress being made, I'll keep blogging about it! And the technology did take a giant leap forward over the past month, though no one's been bold enough to release any new gear, of course. Heaven forbid! Here's the latest:

SideShow Device Drivers for Windows CE 5.0.
Using a Windows handheld? You're in luck! Earlier this month, Microsoft released the software you'll need to let your device interact with various Windows Vista gadgets to receive, send or display information on a home network. Windows CE 5 is the kernel on which the Windows Mobile 6 operating system is based, of course.

Universal SideShow driver updated to version 1.5.
Absolutely no one was using the 1.0 driver, so the existence of a new iteration seems kind of irrelevant to me. But no matter! In late May, the Windows SideShow team blog trumpeted the latest driver release, which includes documentation for developers and support for new transports. It now supports USB, Bluetooth, TCP/IP, and TCP/IP with SSL. Didn't it already support that stuff?

Read on for more news, including shots of the latest SideShow software gagets.

Beta: SideShow gadget for Windows Media Center.
At last, a gadget that lets you control Media Center from your SideShow enabled device! What's that? You don't have such a device? Oh, that's right, no one does. Well someday, the four included gadgets in this beta will allow you to:

• Browse the TV Guide and schedule recordings. Browse Recorded TV by thumbnail.
  
• Browse your music library and control music playback.
  
• Browse Picture and Video libraries.
  
• View "now playing" information and control Media Center with playback controls.

More gadgets from Ikanos Consulting.
The guys who tried to add SideShow support to the iPod have released a three new gadgets, for AccuWeather, Live Messenger, and System Health. You can download the neat items directly from the Windows Live Gallery. And if you get these things up and running, be sure to post a reply with your experience.