I am wondering what these great little informational items, calenders, weather reports, system info things are called and where I can find them?

Here is a link to a photo of what I am talking about:

http://www.lynucs.org/index.php?scre...784ed0f4f0c4da

Superkaramba
kde-look.org

gdesklets
http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org

gkrellm is another very popular one

That particular screenshot is using gDesklets. It's very heavily dependant on GNOME. There is also SuperKaramba, similar thing but very heavily dependant on KDE. By dependant, I mean it requires you to have a bunch of libraries for that desktop installed for you to be able to use them. So whatever you use now, stick with the relative one to save installing a bunch of unnecessary crap.

The "alternative" choice is adesklets, it is very basic, only requires Python and Imlib2, both of which are very common packages to have installed.

I have done a full installation of Slackware 10.1 which means that I have full installs of Gnome and KDE, I can run either. Would I have to load up extra stuff to run gDesklets in KDE or to run SuperKaramba in Gnome?

Nope, not at all. If something is installed then thats done. Doesn't matter what window manager/desktop environment you're using