What is Google Desktop?

Your friend is impressively timely with their recommendations: Google Desktop 2 was released just this morning from Google, and it's a significant improvement over the original Google Desktop, which was basically just an indexing and search system.

Between Apple's Spotlight, Microsoft's search features in Windows Vista (still in beta), and Google Desktop, it's clear that searching our own computers along with the Internet is the next Big Important Area where companies are going to compete for our eyeballs. And that's a very good thing, in my opinion, because the current way that most of us organize and work with our files is pretty mediocre at best.

Google Desktop 2, still in beta, is a very interesting product that lets you access files, email, photos, weather reports, RSS feeds, stock reports, and other personalized information, all in one slick interface. As Google says, "By combining desktop search with an intelligent sidebar that learns the user's habits and interests, users receive all the information of interest to them in one convenient location."

Image Courtesy of Google

Major new features include:

-- Sidebar - Provides convenient desktop access to a variety of personalized information including email, news, weather, photos, stocks and RSS and Atom news feeds. Sidebar appears as a small vertical window on the side of a user's screen that includes a series of "live" content panels.

The sidebar is personalized automatically based on the user's interests as expressed by the websites they visit, requiring little to no manual configuration.

-- Quick Find - Enables users to search their hard drive to find files and launch applications as fast as they can type. Using Quick Find, users can type a few letters or words and the top results pop up instantly. For example, a user can launch iTunes just by typing "itu" into the search box and selecting the application from the list of results.

-- Outlook Toolbar - Enables Microsoft Outlook users to search all of their Outlook email directly from an embedded search box and results list, without having to leave the application.

Additional enhancements include extended search capabilities for additional file types and content including MSN Messenger chats, network drives, Outlook data (contacts, appointments, tasks, notes and journal) and Gmail, enabling users to search their Gmail messages even when they're not online. Google Desktop 2 now enables hard drive encryption for stronger security and faster search via advanced filtering options.

Here's the link you need to: download Google Desktop 2

Unfortunately, today, it's only for Windows XP. Hopefully that'll change soon, because I'd sure like to have this running on some of my computers here at Ask Dave Taylor!