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.