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Google Desktop comes to Mac OS X


Scott McNulty at our sister site The Unofficial Apple Weblog got the scoop on the release of Google Desktop for Mac OS X. The beta software brings over many of the key features from its Windows counterpart, but Google professes this is no ordinary port. Not surprisingly, widgets didn't come along for the ride, but the app looks and feels very native to the Mac platform, and search is lightning fast. In fact, in the thorough review of his first experiences with this initial version, Scott wrote that Google Desktop was sometimes even faster than Apple's own Spotlight at finding some files, though to its credit, Spotlight is capable of searching more information in more files (for example: Spotlight can find text you've written in a layer of a Photoshop file). Also of interest is Google Updater, a new management app for all of Google's Mac products (Google Earth, Google Notifier, etc.) that can alert you when new versions are available, as well as take care of the download and drag-and-drop install process.

Swing on by TUAW and check out Scott's review, or jump ahead and give Google Desktop for the Mac a whirl of your own.

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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