Lottery Post Site News: Lottery Post announces Lottery Results Gadget for Windows Vista
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First-of-its-kind software hailed as ‘must-have for every lottery player'
Lottery Post announced today the release of the Lottery Results Gadget for Windows Vista, which for the first time delivers virtually real-time lottery results directly to individuals' Windows desktops worldwide.
The new software operates inside the Windows Vista Sidebar as a small but highly functional lottery results monitor, capable of being customized and moved to the user's desire. When new lottery results are available, they are immediately displayed without any action or request on the user's part, and also include the jackpot amount for the next drawing.
"This is really different from lottery results delivered by all the other web sites and applications available to consumers," said Todd Northrop, CEO of Lottery Post. "For the first time lottery players can install a product right on their Windows desktop that automatically delivers the exact lottery results they want, without having to ask for them. This will quickly become must-have software for every lottery player, because it eliminates the need to seek out lottery results."
Like most Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets, the software installs in the span of a few seconds, and then opens as a small, unobtrusive mini-application in the Sidebar area. But it would be a mistake to judge the Lottery Results Gadget by its size — it comes loaded with a surprising number of features and customizations.
"We started with the basic premise that the gadget should be able to display results for any combination of lottery games," Northrop explained. "Once we nailed that, we kept adding features we wanted — such as sound, larger font sizes for people with poor vision or big monitors, multiple languages, detailed grid views, adjustable gadget sizes, SideShow support, and a ton of other great features."
World-Class Technology and Design
At the heart of the Lottery Results Gadget is the same technology and innovative design that earned Lottery Post a place in Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Showcase. (See www.asp.net/ajax/showcase) Lottery Post is the world's most heavily visited non-government lottery web site, and as such relies upon a combination of friendly, accessible design and world-class, leading-edge technology and programming to keep things running smoothly.
"For Lottery Post, great design and technology is not defined as the biggest ‘wow' factor, but instead as a product that entices people to experiment, that rewards them — never punishes them — every time they click, and that delivers functionality and information to those who might never have used it otherwise," Northrop said.
The Lottery Results Gadget also has substantial online support, something not commonly found with Sidebar Gadgets or other types of gadget software. Users are one click away from installation support, documentation, and troubleshooting. Also included are direct links from the gadget to Web-based information resources to "drill-down" on any lottery game to access vast amounts of game data and content.
Breaking with Tradition
Because of its small size and lack of advertisements, the Lottery Results Gadget is perfect for people who want to check their lottery results at work, where an unexpected popup ad or ads with dancing aliens or unsavory content are not boss-friendly.
"Lottery players are accustomed to being assaulted by a thousand advertisements when they go to web sites for lottery results," Northrop said. "When people install the gadget and see lottery results coming onto the screen with not a single ad to be found they're going to be wondering ‘what's the catch?' The good news is that there is no catch!"
Other lottery results products such as add-on toolbars are widely maligned as agents for spyware, tracking users' online behavior, increasing the amount of spam they receive, and showing annoying popup ads. The Lottery Results Gadget breaks with that tradition, and instead is supported 100% by user donations, in a software model called "donationware". If a person wishes to donate, they can contribute any amount they feel is fair for the value they receive.
Product Availability
The Lottery Results Gadget is available for immediate download at www.lotterypost.com/gadget/download. The gadget is also available for download at the Microsoft Gadget Gallery (gallery.live.com) and popular download web sites.
The Lottery Results Gadget currently comes packaged with three languages — English, Spanish, and French — and automatically switches to the language settings on the computer.
Lottery Post is committed to timely product updates and abundant and efficient communications to customers. To be notified of new versions as they become available, customers can subscribe to the gadget's RSS 2.0 feed and/or e-mail alerts. In addition, the gadget itself automatically checks for new version availability.
Links to Relevant Web Pages
The following Web pages were mentioned in this release:
About Lottery Post
Founded in 1999, Lottery Post (www.lotterypost.com) is a popular online community for lottery enthusiasts, with an active forum, daily lottery industry news, a huge lottery results database, and a unique predictions system in which lottery players can test predictions methods and track them over time against actual results. Lottery Post members have made over 125 million predictions so far.
The center of the Lottery Post community is its forums, containing many years of lottery discussion topics. Other attractions include a powerful lottery results search engine, lottery statistics, lottery systems and wheels, blogs, and lots of other features that lottery players enjoy.
Lottery Post also offers business-to-business services, such as a lottery results data feed service and lottery industry consultancy.