Google Desktop Beta

I’m on vaca­tion this week, but here I am on monday morn­ing, remot­ing into my work com­puter to install and test out the new Google Desk­top Beta.

It includes a Dashboard/Konfabulator widget func­tion­al­ity called Side­bar — which puts infor­ma­tion on your desk­top — Gmail, local weather, news, and even rec­om­mends cool links based on your own brows­ing habits.

Also, I’m excited for Quick Find, a Spotlight/Quicksilver-like launcher func­tion­al­ity. I’ve been using AppRocket on my work PC for some time now, but it always seemed slug­gish. Time to unin­stall that app.

Then there are the search improvements… the new ver­sion comes with a con­ve­nient Out­look search tool­bar that is light-​years faster than Microsoft’s own built-​in search. I’ve wanted some­thing like this for years — i just always assumed that it would have to come from Microsoft.