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Google Sidebar Review

     - Monday, August 22, 2005

Today Google released the Google Sidebar, packaged with Google Desktop Beta 2. I'm honestly not sure yet if it'll be a permanent feature of my desktop, but since it's Google, I'm willing to give it a try. I'm seeing a few features I like, and a few that I really don't, and a few more that I honestly couldn't care less about. For example, the Email section doesn't appear to integrate to Mozilla Thunderbird. Okay, fine, I can live with that. The Weather panel is pretty nice, and certainly better than Weatherbug. Not sure about this, but it looks like the Sidebar might have disabled Weatherbug during the install. Maybe not so bad.

The Scratch Pad and Quick View panels look interesting. I'm always popping open notepad to take a quick note, so maybe I won't have to do that now. I've been using Slickrun, but it doesn't appear to have loaded after the reboot, so maybe the sidebar has disabled that too.

The biggest Wow feature has to be the Photo's panel which seems to have automatically discovered where I keep my pictures, and is now displaying them in a random slideshow. It's a bit distracting, and some of the photo's I have maybe aren't so "Desktop Ready". Wish there was an exclude directory option.

I can say that the Sidebar has very nicely moved into a small space on the far right of the screen. The width is adjustable, and my remaining desktop space has been automatically scaled.

As with most things Google, I'm sure this is just an initial launch, but it does show promise. I'm looking forward to the day when I'm running the Google OS. Ah, dreams.... For now at least.

posted by Kevin Watts |  Permalink |