Google has released a version of Google Desktop for Linux. While the PC version of this software includes a gadget engine, Google Desktop for Linux, like the relatively new Google Desktop for Mac is pretty much just a desktop search engine.

Google Desktop will index OpenOffice.org files, HTML, PDF, PS, MAN, and INFO documents among others. It'll also track your web history if you use Firefox, and emails from Thunderbird and Gmail.

Google had previously released Google Earth and Picasa for Linux.

This isn't the first desktop search product for Linux. But the ability to integrate with Firefox and Gmail is nice. And while we don't expect anyone to switch from PC to Linux solely because Google Desktop is now available, it's always good news for those who have made the switch when a Windows application is ported to Linux.

[via Google Desktop Blog]

The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft has agreed to make some changes to the desktop search feature included in Windows Vista.

Google had filed a complaint against Microsoft, claiming that Windows Vista's search feature was designed so that it wouldn't play nice with Google Desktop search. In a nutshell, Google was making a familiar complaint about Microsoft software: that it was anti-competitive.

At issue is the fact that users who run Google Desktop on Windows Vista might notice their computer behave slowly. This is because the two desktop search programs are both frequently scanning your computer for new and changed files to store in an index.

At this point, it's not clear exactly what changes Microsoft has agreed to make, but there will be changes. Oh yes, there will. We think.

Update: Winxperts reports that some of the changes will include:

• Microsoft will create an option for users and PC makers to choose a default desktop search program.
• The default desktop search program will be accessible form the Vist start menu and windows explorer boxes.
• Microsoft will inform computer makers that its desktop search will run in the background, giving preference to all third party applications, including third party desktop search programs.
• Microsoft will release information enabling other desktop search companies to optimize their programs to run on Windows Vista without degrading performance.
  

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.

Google has been flogging its developers with wet noodles ramping up development to make your desktop more functional with the release of Google Desktop 5. The team at Google have been busy working on ways to pipe more information through Google gadgets and sidebar elements on desktops.

The biggest noticeable changes are in the gadgets and sidebar elements. They now provide more visually appealing content that is easier to read. Google Desktop shows previews of search results in browsers instead of making users wait for another application to open. On a security note, Google Desktop will also give warnings when users are accessing links from documents, IM's, emails or browsing the web, notifying when sites might be trying to steal your personal information, or trying to install malicious software. Looks wise, the new sidebar samples the color of your desktop wallpaper and blends in so that it's not distractingly sitting out in the open which makes it easier to distinguish between gadgets for faster perusal of information.

Check out the Google Desktop site for downloads and more information on improved content.

Outlook 2007 is a pretty great upgrade to Outlook in terms of user interface, but is not without problems. Chris Pirillo describes a few here, and personally I'm still underwhelmed with Outlook's performance on my machine. Even when I turn off all of my Outlook add-ins (and I run a few of them), my dual-core machine still hesitates noticeably when Outlook is sending or receiving messages. In fact, it hesitates to the point that the mouse will stop moving for a moment or two. Very frustrating.

Unfortunately that's a problem that has been plaguing Outlook for years, and I don't yet have a fix for it. I do have a fix for another Outlook 2007 annoyance, however.

Microsoft seems to think that if you're using Outlook 2007 on Windows XP, you should also be using Windows Desktop Search to index your email and files. That's fine, but I've done some pretty extensive testing and in my opinion Windows Desktop Search is not the best desktop search option out there. In fact, I wouldn't put it in the top three. If, like me, you have a different desktop or email search preference (like Google Desktop, Copernic Desktop Search, Yahoo! Desktop, or my personal preference Nelson Email Organizer which is not desktop search, but the best email search tool I've found) you get stuck looking at a yellow bar in Outlook 2007 that sits at the top of every message window, prompting you to download Windows Desktop Search.

Luckily, the fix is easy, and just requires a quick delve into Outlook's options. On Outlook's menu simply navigate to Tools, Options, Other tab, Advanced Options under General and uncheck "Show prompts to download Windows Desktop Search". That's it!

Remember when Windows 95 came out, and we were all introduced to the Start Menu? It was Microsoft's new way of allowing users to launch programs, and it kicked all kinds of butt over the old Windows 3.1 shell. They had done a bunch of user testing, and found that the Start Menu interface allowed users to launch their programs measurably faster than with previous interfaces.

Unfortunately, it just didn't take long to reach the point where too many entries in the Start Menu make it so slow and cumbersome to navigate that it becomes relatively useless as a program launcher. Of course to combat this problem Microsoft introduced arguably one of its worst Windows feature from a usability perspective, Personalized Menus. These are the menus that hide items that haven't been recently chosen from view. The problem here is that people are inherently visual creatures, and we learn the locations of the options and software we want to choose. When their locations change based on what is or isn't hidden, it slows us down and makes things more complicated.

Until Windows Vista comes out, this (along with desktop shortcuts) is the current state of the art with respect to program launching technology from Microsoft. I'm not the only one who finds these options lacking, since there are a million and one application launchers available for Windows. I know, I've got at least 4 of them installed.

Let's see what's on here:

Mike Elgan, the guy who maintains the always entertaining Mike's List email list and related blog The Raw Feed, has an article up at Computerworld encouraging the liberal use of widgets. His idea is that since many computer users have either a laptop that they're not regularly using (only used for travel), or an older machine around that is still serviceable but not currently in use, this extra machine could be put into use as a widget display machine, for want of a better phrase.

When I starting reading his article, the first thing that came to mind was that I didn't think there are enough compelling widgets to make this a reasonable idea. But Mike addresses that by saying that although no one widget engine has all that many compelling widgets, the secret of his plan is to simply scoop the very best from as many widget engines as you need to use. Since they're being set up on a spare machine for this express purpose, you don't have to be cautious about using resources for displaying the widgets.

Mike provides a very useful list of current widget engines including (but not limited to) Konfabulator, er, I mean Yahoo Widgets, Google Desktop, Kapsules (site currently down due to server attack), Serence KlipFolio, and the venerable Active Desktop that is built into all versions of Windows since IE 4 SP1.

Mike also makes mention of other widget engines, including platform specific ones for Mac and Linux, and some non-free ones that are also certainly worth a look. And make sure to check out the last page of his article for some inspiration as to what is possible if you want to take the time to put together a truly personalized information portal.

X1 has long been considered the Rolls-Royce of desktop search applications, but unfortunately was often left out of desktop search roundups due to the fact that it was a commercial product (and an expensive one at that), competing against a number of very good free offerings. Well it turns out that X1 realized they were losing out to all of the free offerings, and finally decided to release their product for free as well.

You could actually get X1's technology for free for awhile now, under the guise of Yahoo's desktop search product. Yahoo's version is very unfortunately branded purple everywhere, and personally I had some system performance and stability issues while running it, which is not uncommon amongst desktop search indexing software. Unfortunately, the forum Yahoo provided for users to discuss issues and help one another was terribly inadequate - it lacked some basic features like message threading. I gave up on Yahoo's version at least 6 months ago.

I installed X1's latest version 3 days ago, and I have to say I'm impressed by both the speed at which it indexed my system, and how little impact it appears to have on my system's performance. I can't really comment on system stability yet, since those issues often don't show up immediately, but so far, so good.

X1 really shines when you actually have to use the interface to search for something. It opens quickly and is very responsive, searches as you type without slowing you down, and offers a number of graphical ways to adjust your query. While you can learn the syntax to search based on specific fields, for example all messages "to:jason", there's really no need since all of the most common fields are provided, and you can simply type your search term into a dedicated search box for the field you want to use. Sorting your results is a simple matter of clicking on the column heading that you would like to sort by. Compare this with the rudimentary results listing you get from Google Desktop. It certainly makes finding what you're looking for much faster, with less time spent trying to tweak your search query just so.

X1 also has a commercial version that will allow you to index folders on your network. I haven't had a chance to test this functionality, but I would like to in the near future.

Google announced today that their specially designed gadgets can be added to any webpage. Google Gadgets were locked into Google Personalized Home and Google Desktop, but now with the breakout of the gadgets, websites are sure to get some nice dynamic and rich content additions.

Currently developed Google Gadgets include Google maps, date & time, jokes, games, news reports, flight status, webcams, and sports scores. Gadgets can also be developed from scratch with the Google Gadget API. I look forward to seeing some intuitive additions of Google Gadgets onto websites.

Say you've written a program that a lot of people will use. Say you really, really don't want them to mess with certain of the program's files. You could give them a readme file that contains a warning, but any developer knows that getting the user to actually read a readme file is about as easy as getting a 14-year-old to give up MySpace. Google, however, has come up with a very novel solution with Google Desktop: Not one readme file--twelve! Blogger Can Erten has posted a couple screenshots of Google's novel approach to getting a warning across to users. Since it really has to be seen to be believed, I'll just refer you to the image at right. Clever!

Back in July I posted about the Google Desktop Gadget Designer and a contest sponsored by Google for makers of gadgets, a.k.a. widgets. Yesterday, at long last, Google announced the contest's winners. The supreme ultimate winners, who will take home $5,000, are Marius and Yannick Stucki, who created diGGGadget, which is of course for keeping track of Digg. Second place went to Turhan Aydin for Multiplayer Reversi Game, and third went to Day/Night World Clock by Beatrix Gottanka, which is my personal favorite. Aydin and Gottanka will get $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. The announcement also identifies some runners-up that are worth a look.

Windows Desktop Search has unfortunately had a bit of a spotty record as of late. Those of you early adopters that have been running the Office 2007 beta have been subjected to the previous version which had the UI stripped out of it. This wasn't a problem for searching Outlook, but otherwise it was pretty neutered. Worse, the indexer ate up a ridiculous amount of resources, and performance was pretty spotty.

Finally Windows Desktop Search 3.0 Beta 2 has been released, and the GUI is back, along with improved performance and more modest resource usage. The indexer is happily grinding away on my workstation, and although it tries to stay out of your way by only indexing aggressively when you're not actively using your computer, you can set it to go ahead and index anyway, which I've done. So far I'm pleasantly surprised that doing this hasn't caused any sort of noticeable lag - of course it remains to be seen how it performs once the index is up to a more realistic size.

This is a must download for any of you that are currently limping along with Office 2007 and the previous hobbled version of Windows Desktop Search. For the rest of you that are actually using WDS rather than one of the better free alternatives like Google Desktop, Copernic Desktop Search, Yahoo! Desktop Search (there's no shortage in this category of software), you'll probably want to have a look at this version as well.

In this issue of Googleholic we cover:

• Flint cant get enough of Google
• Google City Giudes
• Hidden Google Services
• Google's Summer Health Tips
• Making Google Buttons
• Google Earth for Katrina

and more...

Last week, to not very much fanfare, Google released Google Desktop Gadget Designer, a full-fledged Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Google Desktop sidebar widgets. Er, gadgets. Gadget Designer features a drag-and-drop interface design tool, integrated debugging, project management, and most of the other basic features you expect in and IDE. Google also released of Google Desktop 4 (final) and announced the first Google Desktop Gadget Contest, which is underway. The prize is $5,000 for the best gadget, $2,000 for second place, and $1,000 for third. Gadget geeks, start your IDEs.

Google Calendar got a few nice new features this week. Most interesting, I think, is new functionality that lets you display your entire Google Calendar directly on your web site simply by pasting a bit of HTML into your source code. The embedded calendar lets your visitors flip between months, drill down to specific events, and, of course, add events to their own calendars. You can also create buttons for individual events. On top of that, Google Calendar now has (though I'm not sure when they added this) SMS support, so you can check events and create new events by sending a text message to GVENT (48368). SMS functionality is currently only available in the U.S. Lastly, Google has released a Calendar widget for Google Desktop, which I'm sure we can all agree was inevitable, but is certainly welcome.

[Via Digg]