Microsoft designer Adam Kinney has come up with a program known as Xbox Friends Watch. This is actually a sidebar gadget that allows users to keep track of their Xbox Live friends list.

Kinney said that the idea was born while playing Halo 3 online and he imagined that multiplayer is going to be a lot more fun when playing with friends.

"My data source for Xbox Live information is coming from Duncan Mackenzie's REST service and the UI is done completely in Silverlight 1.0. This turned out to be a really fun project and the Sidebar hosting environment was a great place for a Silverlight application", commented Kinney.

According to Adam Kinney, one of the obvious benefits of this gadget is that it allows cross-domain calls without the need for any server-side proxies. The Gadget API also provides users with access to certain System properties and a small data storage model.

Take note that this gadget will not read your friends list on its own. You have to enter their name manually if you want to track them. To learn more about this, click on the Read link below to watch a video prepared by Adam Kinney.