Android offers near infinite options when it comes to customization. Set your favorite apps on a homescreen, choose your favorite widgets to get at a glance insight into everything from the weather to your social networks. There are also a bunch of wallpaper options to impart a little of your personality to your device.

HTC Sense running atop Android offers more than a few customizations. In addition to HTC's own apps there are some excellent customizable HTC widgets in addition to the stock Android ones. Not content to simply offer custom wallpapers, HTC Scenes completely skin your HTC Detail.

Widgets are unique to Android and offer an always-on window into your apps, presenting helpful information front and center. Also unique to Android, live wallpapers add a little visual interest to your homescreens. We'll also take a look at adding app shortcuts to an Android homescreen.

Widgets are the apps of the PC world. Miss Download finds a great way to get widgets right on your desktop with Yahoo! Widgets. From picture frames to countdown clocks and desktop pets to news and weather feeds, Yahoo! Widgets' developer community has you covered.

Those of you who find yourselves constantly

sending text messages

may want to check out

chompSMS

. It's available as a free application for your Android, but has a paid version with ads removed. With the application, you get your choice of two widgets that will always show you

how many messages you have

waiting.

Some users get confused when they hear about

widgets on their Android phone

. Not to be confused with applications, widgets can be placed on your Home screen and can be set to display information about applications. You can often

customize your widgets or choose

different sizes of widgets

. We'll show you

how to place widgets

on the home screen and more in this tutorial.

Not every program that runs on your

Android phone

is a program, so to speak. There are some that are called widgets and they work a bit differently. Unlike regular programs they don't just install themselves so you have to add them manually. Here's

how to install a widget

on your Android.

Lucas returns to the Apple camp to show some OS X love. He demos off a few of his favorite Apple Widgets, shows us where we can go to search for and find our own soon-to-be faves, and unveils an awesome Terminal hack to get Widgets from the Dashboard and onto the desktop.

Gadgets

were a must-have in

Windows Vista

... and not in a good way; you had gadgets in your sidebar and unless you went to the effort of getting rid of them, you were stuck with them. Now that gadgets are optional in Windows 7, they're much more appealing. Lucas runs down a few of his faves in one of his easiest pimps yet.

Google Gadgets

are little applications you can easily embed into your iGoogle personalized home page or offer to visitors of your web site or blog. Stacy Reed runs down some of her favorite

Google Gadgets

in this episode of The Sweet Stuff: Web Watch.

What do you do when you want to know what the weather is like but you don't want to venture outside to find out? You look it up on your PC, of course! WeatherEye PC is a great desktop weather watcher that Miss Download came across in her online travels and just had to share.

Need more space on your desktop but don't want to pony up for a bigger monitor? 360desktop is a fun interface enhancement software that offers a spacious panoramic view.

Windows Vista includes a bunch of interesting or superfluous (depending on your perspective) features. One of those is the Windows Vista Sidebar. The Sidebar displays a few gadgets by default. They may not be the gadgets you want though. Today we'll show you how to remove gadgets from the Vista Sidebar or, if you subscribe to the superfluous school of thought as outlined above, how to remove it entirely.

Running an unadulterated Android 2.3, AKA Gingerbread, the Nexus S is the new flagship phone running Android. This unlocked Android phone showcases Gingerbread the way Google developers meant for it to be. No carrier add-ons, no manufacturer-specific modifications and the latest Android updates as they're released. We take an in-depth look in this How Do I? series on using Android 2.3, AKA Gingerbread, on the Nexus S.