Google’s been busy, busy, busy this week. The most significant release was Google Talk, which is a pretty ho-hum chat client. I haven’t used it’s Skype-like features, but I do appreciate the fact that multiple machines can be logged into the same Google Talk account, and that new messages are delivered to all logged in clients. That’s an important feature to anyone who uses more than one machine (and there are a lot of us).
Second on the list of importance, I think, is the fact that you can now invite yourself to Gmail. They’ll send an authorization code to any cell phone. So the beta is pretty much over.
I ignored the new Google Desktop, just because I couldn’t really remember anything that I really liked about the first version. Yeah, it searches your files, but I’ve got AppRocket for that, and I love it. I didn’t really want my personal results comingled with my Google results, anyway: I wasn’t sure what to expect when I clicked, and I don’t like that.
But I saw that they’d added Outlook search, which is exactly what I’ve been loving about Gmail and angry about in my current office Outlook situation. (In brief: I saw an email in the past few days about the office fridge being cleaned out, and then a bunch of stuff from the fridge appeared in my mini-fridge, and I wanted to check that fridge-cleaning mail, but I couldn’t remember who sent it or what the subject line was.)
But the sidebar is the easiest win for this new version. Let’s just go through what I like about it.
- Internet-savvy panels include displaying photos from RSS feeds (goodbye Konfabulator widget), tiny weather (goodbye Konfabulator widget), tiny stocks (it’s okay, Konfabulator), and a tiny mail reader (that integrates Outlook and Gmail… if you’re into that).
- A modified RSS reader automatically rips RSS feeds from the pages you visit, and puts together a "best of" based on what you visit most often. This could be nothing short of the missing link in RSS feeds. Everyone could use RSS, but few are ever going to go through the trouble of learning which sites have it, which don’t, and subscribing to the feeds that would minimize their information overload. This app does it for you… automatically… correctly. It’s smart. It’s almost creepy, but it’s really okay once you get used to it.
- An internet best-of panel, which just ranks the pages you visit most often. Again, something that’s just cruising in the background, ready to help… I like it.
This may not topple the intercontinental communications infrastructure as we know it (like Google Talk might, if they can work those deals with VoIP providers and get real phone numbers hooked in, like Skype), but putting more information at my fingertips (and getting me to uninstall half of my Konfabulator widgets) is notable, too.
