The new Google Desktop

Fair warning, this will probably not be of much interest to anyone who isn't planted in front of their computer all day, or more likely, in front of several different computers which never have the document you need because its on one of the OTHER computers.

Google's new version of its desktop search engine has a couple of nifty features. The first one allows you to search across all of your desktops for a document, not just the one you're sitting in front of. What takes that from a who-cares feature to a whoa! feature is that you can also download the searched document to the computer you're on through google's servers. Upshot--you'll never have to worry about whether your flash drive corrupted the file or not. Downside: MAJOR privacy issues--google keeps a copy of any recently modified file for 30 days on its servers in order to provide this service. Coupled with the fact that a federal judge is leaning towards requiring google to comply with a search order from the Justice Department, this spells trouble, especially in the midst of an administration that considers free speech to be a national security violation. Politics aside though, its a neat feature.

The thing I most like though is their sidebar interface. In a nutshell, this is just a panel that docks along the side of your screen and has a bunch of modules in it that are customizable. Some modules just provide an interface for searching, some will show you news items, and my favorite is just a scratch pad for hanging on to bits of text. In previous versions, it was an ok feature--useful, but not quite effortless. It still got in the way of me performing the tasks I wanted to perform, although less obtrusively than most competitors.

Now Google's really dressed it up. The module panels can detach from the sidebar and float wherever you want them--much more convenient for my purposes as I can stick it on some part of the screen I'm not really using. You can set them to stay on top of whatever your working on, which is great for easy access, but its kind of in the way of what you're working on, right? Well, google's got you fixed up there as well. By hitting the shift key twice, you can hide or unhide all the floating panels, giving you an almost effortless way of accessing them while still keeping them out of the way. Its not quite as pretty as Konfabulator, but its pretty damn nifty all the same, and much lighter on resources. The other killer feature here is that by double-pressing the control key, a small box pops up in the middle of your screen that you can type a query into and have it search the web or your desktop, and as you type, it both suggests phrases you might be looking for, and shows you the first several results for whatever you've typed so far.

Its little details like these that make google such a powerhouse of a company. They Just Get It.