One year ago, I wondered why Google Desktop is still available for download. Most operating systems include desktop search features and have support for gadgets, one of Google Desktop's built-in gadgets was broken and Google was supposed to encourage people to upload their files to online services like Google Drive Google Docs.

Probably the last post from Google Desktop's blog announces that the software will be discontinued.

Desktop has been used by tens of millions of people and we've been humbled by its usage and great user feedback. However, over the past seven years we've also witnessed some big changes in how users store and access their own data, with many moving to web-based applications. There has been a significant shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as integration of Google Desktop functionality (like local search) into most modern operating systems. This is a positive development for users and we’re excited that most people now have instant access to their personal information. As such, we'll be discontinuing support for Google Desktop, including all of the associated APIs, services, plugins and gadgets.

As of September 14, Google Desktop will no longer be available for download, and existing installations will not be updated to include new features or fixes.

Google Desktop showed that it's possible to merge two completely different search features: a Web search engine and a tool for searching the documents from your computer. Showing an OneBox with results from your own computer surprised many users, who wondered whether Google uploaded all their documents to index them. Obviously, this wasn't true, but the result was impressive. It's strange to see that Google doesn't offer an OneBox with search results from Google Docs, Picasa Web Albums, Gmail and other services that store your data.


Google Desktop's original codename was "Total Recall". Niniane Wang, a former Google engineer who worked on Google Desktop Search, has some great stories from the first year of developing the software. "Our team consisted of five engineers. We were a close-knit bunch. In the first 3 months, we hashed out what we would build, wrote 13 design docs, and implemented most of the features of the product. It was one of the most productive 3 months of my career."

Another Google product that will disappear is Google Pack, a collection of software recommended by Google. "Google Pack was introduced in 2005 to make it easy to download and install a package of Google and third-party applications that helped users get the most out of their computers. Google Pack was responsible for fueling 100s of millions of software downloads. A lot has changed in the last six years. Virtually all new applications and services are now on the web."

In fact, the list of products that will be closed is impressive: Aardvark, Fast Flip, Image Labeler, Google Notebook (all the notes will be exported to Google Docs), Sidewiki, Subscribed Link. There's a lot of cruft that needs to be removed and many of the things that made the old Google tick will disappear. It's the beginning of a new era for Google and the past has to be left behind to create a better future. Most likely, in a few months you'll realize that Google is a completely different company and Google+ is a lot more than just the name of a service. It's the new iGoogle, the new Google Labs, the new Google Desktop, the new Google Pack - the platform that will include Google's most interesting apps, will aggregate all your data and make it more useful with the help of your friends. It takes some getting used to.

{ Thanks, Stefan. }

Google Desktop has been released back in 2004, when Windows didn't include a powerful desktop search engine. Since then, Google added support for gadgets and launched versions for Mac and Linux. Now that Windows Vista and Windows 7 include many of the features available in Google Desktop, Google's software is no longer important.

Here are some signs which show that the software will soon be discontinued:

1. One of the built-in gadgets is a small Twitter app that has been last updated in September 2009. Unfortunately for Google, Twitter changed the authentication API and the gadget can no longer be used.

2. Google Desktop's last significant update was in July 2009.

3. The most recent post from Google Desktop's blog is from July 2009.

4. Google Desktop removed two important features in January: search across computers and shared gadgets. "As of January 20th, 2010, the Search Across Computers and Shared Gadget settings feature will no longer be available. These specific requests to Google Desktop servers will no longer establish a connection."

5. The integration with Google search doesn't work if you enable Google Instant.

6. Google Desktop for Mac is no longer available and it's been replaced by Quick Search Box.

7. Google Desktop gadgets no longer work in iGoogle.

8. Google Desktop doesn't index web history in Google Chrome and Firefox 3.6.

9. Google focuses on migrating your data online, so a desktop search tool won't be very useful.

10. The software is slow, buggy and difficult to maintain.

Google Desktop's integration with Gmail has always been slow and unreliable: Google Desktop could fetch and index the messages from a Gmail account, but this could take days. The new Gmail gadget for Google Desktop doesn't add your messages to the index, but it's a small version of Gmail's interface that sits in the sidebar. You can read your mail, send replies, star messages, perform searches directly from the gadget.


Here are some potential uses for the gadget:
* check your inbox from a fast-loading simplified interface
* find the email address of a contact: compose a message and use Gmail's auto-complete feature to obtain the address
* the fastest way to search Gmail: click on the Search option or type "/" and then enter your query
* preview your message while still viewing the list of messages, a feature that's not available in the standard interface
* add multiple instances of the gadget for different Gmail accounts (the gadgets works with Google Apps accounts too).

The gadget can be installed from this page and it's worth mentioning that it doesn't support notifications yet.

Google Desktop announces that the latest release focuses on performance and that's a great thing, considering that many users call Google Desktop a memory hog.

Google Desktop 5.8 improves the memory usage during startup, has a faster shutdown and detects the gadgets that slow down your computer. "To reduce memory usage, increase stability and reduce memory fragmentation, we reduced the number of different processes that Google Desktop runs, and we now recycle some of our processes frequently."

The blog post doesn't mention the biggest performance improvement: Google Desktop's main feature, indexing the files from your computer, is no longer enabled by default. In Windows Vista, Google uses the index created by Microsoft's desktop search service. If you want to enable Google Desktop's index, you need to select "Enable Enhanced Content Indexing" when you install the software or in the options page.


Enable additional features by using Google Desktop's index:

* Backup and view previous versions of your documents
* Search your web history, Gmail, and more
* View thumbnail previews of your images, videos, and web history

Google Desktop's wording makes you think that the "enhanced content indexing" is an advanced feature, when it should be the main feature of the software.

If you do enable desktop search, the initial indexing is much faster and the overall performance has been improved.

A surprising Google Desktop gadget released by Google enables you to share your media across devices. "Google Media Server uses an open technology known as Universal Plug n' Play to stream media to consumer electronic devices. The UPnP specification allows for a variety of hardware (gaming consoles, set-top boxes, photo frames) to communicate and access media from your home PC."

The Windows-only gadget lets you share all the media content indexed by Google Desktop or just the files from some of your folders. Google Media Server can also share some of your Picasa albums (from your computer or from Picasa Web Albums) and the videos uploaded to YouTube.

Google's application requires to authorize the devices that are allowed to access your files, but there's an option to allow any device to access the Media Server.


Google Desktop's blog mentions PlayStation 3 as an example of UPnP-enabled device. Google Media Server's team says that "the only way to connect the XBox 360 to a UPnP server, was to have a service that is only found on Microsoft services (used for registering for DRM content) and for the server itself to be claimed to be made by Microsoft. Legal would not allow us to pretend to be Microsoft (although there are other servers out there that do)."

This is a very interesting way to use Google Desktop: streaming media files that are stored online and on your computer. A recent YouTube blog post mentioned a list of devices that enable you to access YouTube from your living room and Google Media Server is another step in this direction.

If you manage to connect the application to one of your devices, post your feedback in the comments and use the Media Server Group to ask for help.

The latest version of Google Desktop no longer enables by default the desktop search engine probably because it uses too many resources. I thought this is a good opportunity to list some ways you could improve Google Desktop's performance, especially if you want to use it as a search engine and not as a widget engine.

When you install Google Desktop 5.5 for Windows, the enhanced search option is disabled and you should leave it that way for now. If you don't need the sidebar with gadgets, disable the option from Google Desktop's setup wizard.

Google Desktop will only index the shortcuts from the Start Menu, the entries from Control Panel. To enable the indexing of your files, right click on the system tray icon, select "Options" and click on the check box next to "Enable Enhanced Content Indexing". Some other relevant options:

* Disable the search types you don't find useful. "Web history" indexes all the web pages that you load in Internet Explorer and Firefox, so it uses a lot of disk space. If you use Outlook or other email clients and you don't want to index the email messages from your computer, disable the "email" options. Google Desktop can also search Microsoft Outlook's Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Journal, and Notes, so disable these search types if you're satisfied with Outlook's search options.

* Exclude folders from indexing. Since Google Desktop tries to index files from your entire hard disk, it's important to exclude the folders that don't contain useful files for a desktop search engine. Some examples:
C:\Program Files\ (don't exclude it if you use Google Desktop to launch apps)
C:\Windows\ (don't exclude it if you use Google Desktop to launch apps)
C:\ProgramData\ (in Vista)
D:\ (if D: is used for backup)

* Exclude file extensions from indexing. There's no option for this in the interface, but you can edit this Registry key and add other extensions you want to exclude. The default excluded extensions are: tmp, temp, moztmp, log, pst, ost, oab, nk2, dat, 000, pf, xml, obj, pdb, tlb, pcc, pch, exp, res, map, sconsign, msf. You can also disable other extensions that aren't associated with useful content: bak, chk, old, gid, prv, wbk, dll.

The Registry value can be found at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop\file_extensions_to_skip

* Disable the Google integration. By default, Google performs a desktop search every time you search the web and it displays some results from your computer in an OneBox, above the web search results. If you want faster Google searches, less computer resources used to search your desktop and less embarrassing moments when someone else temporarily uses your computer, you can disable the integration.

* More screen space. To disable the taskbar and show the search box by pressing Ctrl twice, select "None" for the "Display Mode". You can also disable the gadgets button if you don't use the sidebar.

* Disable Safe Browsing. Google downloads and automatically updates a database of URLs that are used for phishing or for distributing malware and shows you a warning when you visit one of these web pages. If you use other security software or your browser has anti-phishing protection, you can disable this option.

* Save preferences. Google Desktop will only index files when your computer is idle. "Assuming you leave your computer on, Google Desktop should need only a few days to create your initial index. This initial indexing process occurs only when your computer is idle, so you may want to leave your computer on for an evening or two after you install Google Desktop," explains Google's help center.

If you already have Google Desktop, excluding folders and file extensions will not remove entries from the index, so the best way to clean your index is to delete it and rebuild it. Close Google Desktop by selecting "Exit" from the system tray menu and delete this folder:

%APPDATA%\Google\Google Desktop\ (Windows XP)
or
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Google Desktop\ (Windows Vista)

After reopening Google Desktop, choose "Re-index" from the system tray menu.

If you install the latest version of Google Desktop for Windows, you'll notice a new dialog that presents a list of features and lets you select the ones you want. Google Desktop enables by default the sidebar with gadgets, but the search feature is limited to filenames. To actually search the full content of your files, you need to enable the "enhanced search".


This is a strange choice, considering that Google Desktop was built for this "enhanced search", which is now disabled by default. Here's the description of the application when Google launched it, in October 2004:

"Google Inc. today announced a beta desktop search application that enables users to search their email, files, web history, and chats. Called Google Desktop Search, this new application makes it possible for users to find information on their computers as fast and easily as they can search the web with Google."

The desktop search application added gadgets in the subsequent versions and was renamed to Google Desktop. "Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information – even without searching. You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in," explained Marissa Mayer the shift.

Maybe performance was the main cause for disabling search, or maybe users didn't think it was very useful. You can still enable the search feature both when you install the application and in the settings, but not everyone will discover it. I recommended Google's software to someone who needed a tool for searching his documents and I was surprised to hear that the software didn't work as advertised: obviously, Google Desktop didn't index any file.

Google Desktop and iGoogle are two sides of the same story. Google Desktop started as a search engine for files from your computer, then transformed into a personal agent that shows tiny bits of information from your computer or from the web: news, weather, notes, system stats, email alerts. iGoogle expanded the classic Google homepage with news from your favorite web sites and little applications that gather interesting information from the web. While most iGoogle gadgets can be run inside Google Desktop, it's not possible to add Google Desktop gadgets to your personalized homepage because a web application cannot interact with a software, or at least not without a plug-in.

Google Desktop 5.5 (Windows-only, beta) makes it possible to add gadgets written for the desktop to your iGoogle page. You can choose Desktop gadgets from the directory, install a plug-in that connects your browser with Google Desktop and have gadgets that interact with your computer on your iGoogle page. For example, the music player lets you search for music on your computer and plays it for you. The system stats gadget shows interesting statistics about your computer usage, like battery, RAM or CPU.

The screenshot below shows an iGoogle page with four Desktop gadgets and a Google Desktop sidebar that includes the same gadgets. While it may seem redundant to have the same gadgets in two places, this allows you to disable the sidebar and still see some of the gadgets in your browser. For now, the performance is not very good and your iGoogle page will load more slowly.


Another interesting update in Google Desktop 5.5 is that the desktop search engine is deactivated by default and Google Desktop only indexes filenames. This seems a pretty big departure from the initial purpose of the application: a desktop search engine. You still have the option to enable the "enhanced search" in the setup, but this reminds me of the way Microsoft treated the indexing service in Windows XP.


Google also removed the specialized search engines from the Quick Search Box, improved the Outlook search, changed the setup and added a way to repair a broken installation.

Google Desktop is now available for Linux. The tool includes only the desktop search engine, like the first version of Google Desktop for Windows or the recently released Google Desktop for Mac.

Google Desktop indexes OpenOffice documents, PDF and PostScript files, text and HTML files, manual pages, multimedia files, your web history and emails from Gmail and Thunderbird. The only browser fully supported is Firefox, but if you don't need to search your web history, any browser should work just fine.

The installer is much bigger than the Windows version (8 MB) and it should run on most popular distributions, including Debian 4.0+, Fedora Core 6+, Ubuntu 6.10+, SUSE 10.1+. One reason for the big size of the installer is the fact that it includes translations for the following languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.

"With this release, Google Desktop joins the Picasa, Google Earth and Google Toolbar for Firefox applications among Google's offerings for Linux. In addition to creating products that run on Linux, Google supports the Linux community in a variety of ways, such as releasing open source code, running the Summer of Code and hosting tens of thousands of open source projects on Google Code," says Google in an announcement.

Linux users already have desktop search tools like Beagle, Tracker or Recoll, but the integration with Google services and the better performance might give Google Desktop an advantage. For now, Google's software supports very few file types (no archives, no chats, no Microsoft Office files), but this is only the first version. At least Google respected its promise of launching more Linux apps.

GDS Images and Document Maps is an add-on for Google Desktop that creates a map from your pictures, documents and email messages. The files are placed on the map by calculating their similarity, so it's likely that related files are close. For images, the similarity is based on the distribution of colors.

You can pan the map, zoom in or focus to a specified area of the map by defining a rectangle using the right button of the mouse.

This is especially useful to see the big picture if Google Desktop returns a lot of results and also to visually determine clusters of related files.

Google Desktop's sidebar is nice, but it takes an important part of your screen. Of course, you can disable the "always on top" option, but then you have to minimize all the applications (Windows+M) to see the sidebar.

A better option is to undock the gadgets from the sidebar and move them to the desktop. To do that, right-click on each gadget and select "Undock from sidebar" or drag them to the desktop. Then minimize the sidebar by clicking on the small button from the top of the sidebar.

You'll see a new search box in the taskbar, an option to reopen the sidebar, and a gadgets menu that lets you bring back a certain gadget or all of them.


An easier way to see all the gadgets when they're covered by other applications is to press Shift twice. Press the same combination again and they'll disappear.

Google Desktop added so many independent features that the application should include some profiles you can select when you install the application.

1. Desktop search
If you don't want the sidebar, gadgets and other distractions, just right-click on system tray icon and select "Deskbar", "Floating deskbar", or "None", depending on the position of the search box.

2. Sidebar
If you only want the sidebar, but not the desktop search functionality, go to settings and check "Disable indexing of new items".

3. Application launcher
Google Desktop indexes the shortcuts from the Start Menu, the services from Control Panel. To use Google Desktop only as a searchable Start Menu, disable all the options from "Search types". You should also select "Launch programs/files by default" in the "Quick find" section. Then press Ctrl twice and enter the first letters of the program in the quick search box.

4. Web history search
Google Desktop indexes all the web pages you visit with Internet Explorer and Firefox. By itself, this is a very useful feature, so if you only want an enhanced web history, unselect everything except "web history" in the "search types" sections from the preferences page.

Another way to disable indexing, the sidebar or both is to go to Start Menu and click on "Uninstall Google Desktop" (or press Ctrl+Ctrl and type "Uninstall Google Desktop"). This works only if you have the latest version (Google Desktop 5), which is now out of beta and available in 29 languages.

Even though MacOS has Spotlight for desktop search, Apple users wanted Google Desktop. Well, now they have it.

The Mac version only includes the desktop search features and indexes these file types:

- PDF, TXT, and HTML files
- email from Gmail, Apple Mail, and Microsoft Entourage
- iChat transcripts
- Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files
- metadata for audio and video files (such as artist and album information)
- Address Book contacts, system preference panes, and file names for most other files including applications
- file types that have a Spotlight plug-in.

Here are some similarities and differences between Google Desktop and Spotlight:

Similar:
- Google Desktop and Spotlight search your hard disk for information. You can continue to use Spotlight even after you've installed Google Desktop.
- Google Desktop honors Spotlight's "Privacy" settings to prevent certain items from being indexed.

Different:
- Google Desktop lets you search the text of webpages you've visited.
- You can search text from old versions of your documents, or even from deleted files.
- You can search your Gmail files even when you're not online.
- In your browser, search results from your computer are integrated with search results from Google.com.

TUAW installed the software and has a nice review (screenshots included):

Installing Google Desktop is as easy as you would expect it to be: download the DMG, open it, and double click the icon to install. However, the application that launches when you double click that icon is also new. It is the Google Updater, your one stop shop for all Mac Google apps. The Google Updater gives you the opportunity to download and install Google's other Mac apps (Google Earth and Picasa Uploader) while you wait. (...)

Overall, Google Desktop is a worthy addition to any Mac. Does it trump Spotlight? Well, Spotlight has a lot going for it. It is built into the OS, developers can build applications with hooks into it, and there is no need to install anything to get it working. That being said, if you use Google's full suite of products, Google Desktop is the desktop search for you. The integration with Gmail and Google.com is killer.

Google will probably bring the rest of the features and the rest of their apps (Picasa, Google Talk) to Mac, now that they have a dedicated Mac team and a CEO on Apple's board of directors.

Download link - Universal app for MacOSX 10.4+


{ Screenshot licensed as Creative Commons by lostdude. }

Yahoo launched a new version of Yahoo Widgets (previously known as Konfabulator), a free application that displays small widgets on your desktop. Launched in 2002 for Mac, and then ported to Windows, Konfabulator was bought in 2005 by Yahoo.

Google Desktop was launched in 2004 as a desktop search tool, but it started to include support for widgets in 2005. "Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information – even without searching. You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in," said Marissa Mayer.

While Konfabulator is the real innovator, Google Desktop combined widgets with search and focused on personalization. Here's a small comparison table:

	Google Desktop	Yahoo Widgets
Platforms	Windows 2000/XP/Vista	Mac OSX, Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Setup size	1.7 MB	11.6 MB
Terminology	gadgets	widgets
Default widgets	Gmail, clock, To Do list, news, feed reader, sticky notes, photos, weather.	Yahoo! search, maps, notepad, address book, mail, photos, Flickr, Calendar, Weather, Finance, digital clock, CPU monitor, widget gallery.
Total number of widgets	360	3884
Rendering	In the same process as Google Desktop.	Each widget has its own process: as a result, Yahoo Widgets is more stable, but also uses more memory.
Widgets are built in	XML and JavaScript	XML and JavaScript
What you can do with widgets	Can be detached from the sidebar Collapsible Always on top	Heads-up display: show/hide all the widgets at once Expand the widget Resize the widget, move it on your desktop Change the frame, the opacity
What's unique	Desktop search engine Recommendations Google Desktop can display many gadgets available at Google Personalized Homepage You can save the settings for some gadgets on Google's servers Using Google Talk as a communication protocol Alerts	Bigger developer community Widgets have comments, ratings Widgets look better and are more customizable
Performance	Google Desktop also indexes your computer, so it has worse performance. If you disable desktop search functionality, you'll reduce memory usage.	The latest version improves memory usage. The performance is similar to Google Desktop without desktop search.

Yahoo Widgets is for people who want to spread a lot of information chaotically on the desktop; there are plenty of sleek widgets to choose from. Google Desktop is for organized people: it lets you search you computer as well as the web, it shows a sidebar that's visible all the time and personalizes the gadgets automatically.

There's a new version of Google Desktop in town: Google Desktop 5.0. This time, the software gets more serious, adds security features, makes it easier to access the search results and adopts dark colors.

"The sidebar has a completely new look and feel. It samples the color of your wallpaper and fades in the sampled color so that it fits seamlessly onto your desktop. Some of our gadgets have been redesigned so that they are easy to tell apart, easy to read, and easy on the eyes. More differentiated gadgets allow for faster scanning of information through the sidebar. And we've created a new dialog for adding gadgets so it's easier and faster than ever to find the right gadgets for you."

Search results get a small preview box below the snippet, so you can make an idea if they're useful. Of course, the preview box is small enough to be hardly usable, and there's no highlighting for your query. The box reminds me Ask.com's binoculars.


Google Desktop has a new feature that shows warnings if you're trying to visit sites that "might be trying to steal your personal information or install malicious software on your computer". They're the same malware warnings from the search results combined with the anti-phishing technology previously included in Google Safe Browsing and as an advanced option in Firefox 2. Google Desktop automatically updates a list of suspicious or malicious sites by downloading information from Google's servers.


While there's no dramatic change in functionality, it's strange to see how a different theme makes you look at a software from a different angle. Google Desktop became more distant, more serious and looks more and more like Vista's sidebar.

A patent application recently filed by Google ("Temporal ranking scheme for desktop searching") gives some idea about how Google Desktop indexes and ranks files. The main criteria for ranking files is how likely a file will be accessed in the future. To estimate this value, Google Desktop tries to find different hints about the importance of a file.

It would be desirable for a user to be able to access applications, desktop files, and/or data on local or networked servers through a single interface. Access to each of these could be initiated by finding and identifying the correct resource, through the user's selection of a search result. Search results should be generated using methods that reflect how desktop resources are used. In most cases, the most relevant items are likely to be those that have been accessed or used recently and frequently, or have been designated as particularly important by the user, for instance through the creation of a desktop shortcut. (...)

To make the results of the searching more useful to a user, the items being searched are ranked according to their relevance, and based on this ranking, the items can be selected and/or ordered for display to a user. A temporal ranking scheme ranks the search results according to an algorithm designed to give higher scores to items that are more likely to be desired by the user in the search. In one embodiment, the relevance of a particular search result is determined according to an estimation of the frequency that the corresponding item will be used in the future.

In one embodiment, a group of items are ranked based at least in part on a last access time and a class associated with each item, where the class associated with an item indicates a frequency of use of the item. Possible classes include a location of the item (e.g., whether the item is a document in a "MyDocuments" folder), a type of the item, and a file size of the item. Once the items are ranked and a search is performed, the results from the search (e.g., the matching items) can be displayed according to their rankings, where the order of the displayed results may be based on the ranking and only the highest ranked results may be displayed. In this way, the search, such as a desktop search, returns the items matching the search query that are more likely to be the items for which a user is looking.

{ via SEO by the Sea }

Google Music Player is a Google Desktop gadget that lets you search and play the music from your computer. Google Desktop indexes your music, but the browser is not the best place to play your music. This gadget is an easy way to build a playlist by repeatedly searching for your favorite songs, to listen an album or all the songs that match your query.

Although the player is a pretty nice exercise, Google didn't read my post from May.

Last month I got a mail from someone who wanted an option to backup all your Google data or just a part of it.

Joe T. sent me an interesting idea: Google Desktop could download your data from Gmail (already does that partially and slowly), Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Notebook, etc. and make it searchable offline. This way you could use online apps to manage your documents and other data, but still have offline backups that are in sync.

"It's a free service, yes, and as such we are subject to the limitations of Google's whimsy to implement features, whether vital (POP3 download access) or fanciful (assigning pictures to Contact entries). It's no small undertaking, but I'm starting to feel that an ability to bring my data offline, even just as a backup storage base, falls into the good idea-to-vital range."

This may come in handy especially when you read news about Gmail users who lost their emails. Even if Google is not responsible for this, and a Firefox vulnerability caused everything, an easy way to download your data* would have saved the day.

* Note that you can use POP3 to download your Gmail messages. This doesn't include contacts, labels, threads. The feature also has limitations and quirks.

If you have Google Desktop and want to add some Christmas decorations to your desktop, you can choose one of these gadgets.

GX'mas Tree
A Christmas Tree that lights up more powerful if you use your computer's CPU more. Includes a small collection of Christmas songs (MIDI).

Christmas Tree
This tree looks better than the previous one and it's also customizable, but it doesn't have music or shiny lights.

Virtual Christmas Tree
You can actually decorate this tree (in the screenshot). While doing that, listen to carols and watch the snow fall.

All the trees can be detached from the sidebar and can be enlarged using the "Zoom" option.

Other holiday gadgets are available at Google Desktop site.

Google Desktop is a very powerful software. One of the most interesting gadgets that comes preinstalled is Web Clips, a list of the latest posts from your favorite feeds. The gadgets also shows alerts, so you'll never miss an important news. Here's how can you configure Google Desktop to show the feeds from Google Reader.

1. Copy this address:

http://www.google.com/reader/atom/user/-/state/com.google/reading-list

2. Open Google Desktop, make sure the sidebar is visible. Click on the small arrow next to "Web Clips" and select options.

3. Uncheck "Automatically add clips from frequently viewed sites" and remove all the clips.

4. Paste the address from step #1, and click on the Add button.

5. Login to Google.com in Internet Explorer.

You can also subscribe to the Atom feed from step #1 using Live Bookmarks in Firefox, Opera's feed reader or other desktop client.