Google SideBar and Desktop Search
Trying out some new tools to play with, one of them is the Google Sidebar. Its a bar that resides, get this, on the SIDE (I know.. its crazy) of your computer screen, that contains all sorts of different pieces of information, such as News, Weather, Scratch Pad, To Do List, and even a Photos section that can display a slideshow of your pictures at whatever interval you want.
In just a few minutes of using it, I find it pretty handy. The news especially. The sources come from all over the place, and update pretty frequently. In reading just a couple of articles listed, I found that it had already refreshed it with new articles, which I clicked on, and in reading the new article, even more refreshed. Constant stream of up-to-the minute news stories.
The photos seemed pretty cool, had a spot that showed thumbnails of pictures in your folder, but I don’t really want to look my pictures all the time, and don’t like the fact that the computer is having to do that work every 15 seconds (the interval can change to whatever you want it to), but that brings up another good feature of it. You can add or remove sections on it fairly easy. Just had to go into the options of that panel, and click “Remove”. Thats it! Its gone.
One of the extra thing that is bundled with the sidebar is the Desktop Search. It is an entire tool in of itself, and comes bundled when you install the SideBar. This indexes your entire computer and searches much like the Google Search Engine does. Don’t be worried, none of the information is actually sent to Google (which I made sure of). They do send some info, and there is a warning, but it is not info that can be personally identifyable to you, and it tells you exactly the kind of info they send when enabling it for the first time. But if you have ever searched through windows search, you know how much a pain it is, and I can only saw “wow!” when I see the results displayed through the Google Desktop Search. It is a MUST have.
So far I am pretty impressed with the whole package. The SideBar gives me something to do, with the constant updating of news feeds, and can probably come in handy for the upcoming Olympics, and the DeskTop Search is OUTSTANDING, so I am recommending you to try it out :) Click on the pic below to enlarge a sample of the bar on my screen… (**note - some panels that show on default have been removed)
