Just for you, I put together a video highlighting my favorite Windows 7 features. These are mostly consumer-oriented features; I’m skipping over many new IT-oriented improvements.

Take a five-minute break and play Abstract Sea, an Asteroids-like game with 1942-like power-ups. This requires you to coordinate your left hand (for directional controls) with your right hand (for aiming). My high score is 45,480 (I played three times). Post your high score in the comments.

Via Jay Is Games.

Via Jay Is Games, here’s a fun flash game. Just drag or click to remove the blue squares, and avoid the pink squares. Bonus for hitting squares of other colors. Easy, fun, and not so addicting that it’ll waste your whole afternoon.

Use this tip to play it full-screen. I only played once, but my high score was 79010. Post your score in the comments.

Hate your computer to look like everyone else? Dan has released an updated version of the Vista Boot Logo Generator (v1.1). It’s 32-bit only (no 64-bit version available). He calls it a beta.

Look, it’s a holiday. You’re not supposed to be working today. So, rebel in your own quiet way by being unproductive.

Fire Spikey around to remove the vegetation, causing the jars to fall and break, releasing the butterflies. OK, it’s not the most macho game around.

My high score is 38,124. Post your score in the comments, you rebel, you.

I discovered Flash Element TD, a tower-based defense game that runs in your browser, over at Jay Is Games. Setup towers to shoot down attackers who have to work their way through your maze. You can upgrade your towers and such. Just mindless fun.

Use this tip to play it full-screen. My high score is 14021 (updated…proof after the break). Post your score in the comments.

 

There’s a new version of Google Earth, the mapping program that’s more fun than a game. It’s a little slow at the moment.

It’s not officially supported on Vista, but I can’t really slap Google’s hand, because Microsoft has lots of software that’s not supported on Vista yet. It does run, though. It’s just a little buggy. On my newer Dell D820 laptop with the NVidia video adapter, graphics are flakey in DirectX mode. OpenGL works, but it’s wicked slow. On my older Vista laptop, there’s no flakiness. The big problem is that textured buildings don’t work in Vista (as shown working correctly in the picture above). 3D buildings show up, but without textures enabled.

Update: Textures are working now. I think the server that provides them was just overburdened for a moment.

Lifehacker offered a post about how to use your My Pictures folder as a screensaver in Windows XP. Here are the steps to do that in Vista:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2. Click Appearance and Personalization.

3. Under Personalization, click Change screen saver.

4. The Screen Saver Settings dialog appears. Click the Screen saver list, and then click Photos.

5. Optionally, click the Settings button to adjust the default settings, or click the Preview button to watch how it works.

6. Click OK to save your settings.

The screen saver provides a variety of different techniques for fading between pictures, and can even stack pictures on top of each other. It reminds me of Windows Photo Story. If you have multiple monitors, it’ll only show on one, unfortunately. For dual-monitor support, check out Ultramon.

Spend a few minutes playing Swoop To Nuts. Move the mouse right to swoop down, and left to float up. Go up high to get stars. My high score is 39,220. Use this tip to play the game full screen in Internet Explorer.

• Outlook info. Shows the number of unread messages in your inbox and upcoming appointments. Kudos to the author–he or she has really improved this from earlier versions. Right-click it and then click Options to select from different skins, including skins that don’t show tasks. If you have Outlook 2007, check out Outlook Upcoming Appointments, Outlook Tasks,
• Calculator. Not as useful as Calc (click Start, type Calc, and then press Enter), but it’s nice that it’s always there.
• Vista Calculator. Same thing, just a bit prettier. Note that you need to use the number pad on your keyboard or click the buttons with your mouse. The regular numbers won’t work (why?). If you pull it off the sidebar it adds a few features.
• Ping Gadget. It pings a host you specify and charts how long it took. Basically, this shows you in real-time whether your Internet connection is reliable–useful if you have a flakey Internet connection.

If you have a gadget you want to suggest, please do add a comment below.

With Internet Explorer 7 (either in Windows Vista or Windows XP), you can zoom the game in to be almost full-screen (after the jump).

First, open the game in Internet Explorer and maximize it to take up the whole screen (try pressing Alt-Space, X). Press F11 to make Internet Explorer full-screen. Then, hold down the Ctrl key and press + repeatedly (Ctrl-+) to zoom in the flash game until it takes up the full browser window. You might need to scroll up or down to center it horizontally.

To zoom back out and make the game smaller, hold down Ctrl and press -. To zoom back to normal, hold down Ctrl and press the number 0. Here’s a game to try it out on:

Gust: review, discussion, hints, tips and walkthrough at Jay is Games

1. Click the picture you want as your wallpaper so that the larger picture opens in your browser.

2. Right-click the picture, and then click Set as Background.

3. Click Yes when prompted.

I scaled these pictures way down to make them easier to download–my camera (a Canon 5D) takes huge pictures.

1. Visit the website you want to view the headlines from. You can open it in another tab.
2. On the Internet Explorer toolbar, towards the right, click the orange button.
   
3. Internet Explorer opens the RSS feed. Near the top of the page, click Subscribe to this feed.
   
4. When prompted, click Subscribe.

That’s all you have to do if you want to see this site’s updates mixed in with other site’s updates. If you only want to see updates from this site, follow these steps after completing the steps above:

1. Now, in your sidebar, right-click the RSS gadget, and then click Options.
   
2. In the Feed Headlines dialog, click Display this feed, and then click Vista Clues.
   
3. Click OK.

Now, whenever I add a post, you’ll see the headline in your sidebar. Click it to open it in your browser. You can also drag the whole gadget away from the sidebar to make it bigger.

Proof after the jump.

If it’s not working for you, first make sure that your pressing Windows+Tab, and not Alt+Tab.

If you’re pressing the right keys, Aero might not be enabled (3D-Flip requires Aero). Follow these steps to troubleshoot Aero.

If you like casual, quick games like I do, check out one of my favorite blogs: Jay Is Games.