Google Desktop Becomes Useful (to me)

I’ve found, in the past month, that Google Desktop has actually become very useful to have around. While I’ve tried it in the past, it just never caught on but with the addition of some recent gadgets it has become something I use every day on my work machine.

What are these new gadgets? All are related to the Google services of my Google Apps account. Here’s a quick run down of each:

The Gmail Gadget: Add one of these for each Gmail account. I keep ‘em all minimized since they have a nice “slide effect” when clicked. (previously mentioned) No need for other notifiers now, these do the job nicely and result in a pretty well featured mail interface as well. In some cases I don’t even need to bring up a browser to visit my mail site.

Now, I do have to say I wish I could actually label each instance of the gadget… Take a look:

Not a show-stopper by any means. I learned which was which, but yeah…

The Docs Gadget: I keep a lot of my work information in Google Docs and this gadget is a quick way to get to existing documents – and create new ones. The drag ‘n drop upload feature is a nice touch as well.

Note that if you don’t want a list of docs on display all the time, you can collapse this one as well. Then it becomes a one-click shortcut to your stuff via a slide-out similar to the Gmail gadget.

The Calendar Gadget: This is the most recent and quite possibly the one I look at the most. There are few different views of the calendar, but all also show upcoming events. I find it very handy to have those right on the desktop where I can easily see them.

I tend to use the “monthly view” the most, but the Agenda view gets some use as well.

Like the other two, the calendar gadget also has a collapsed mode. Frankly, I haven’t found that very useful. I really want to see my cal stuff all the time.

What’s next?

I wonder what’s coming up next in this theme of integrating Google Apps with Google Desktop? Maybe a tasks gadget integrated with the Gmail tasks thingy (previously mentioned)? A Sites gadget? That would be kind of handy. Heck, a nice links gadget would be good for storing shortcuts to intranet stuff in general (surely there’s one and I just haven’t found it?)

Regardless, these new gadgets have made Google Desktop much more useful to me in my daily activities and I look forward to seeing what comes out next.

Side Notes: In spite of the dire warnings on the download page, Google Desktop will run on an x64 Vista machine. I did disable the search and integration stuff, but the sidebar bits work great.

Oh, and I don’t run this on my netbook. Not nearly enough screen room for a sidebar!

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