Google today released a beta (does anything google ever go production??) of their Desktop Search tool – this one is seriously beefed up from the first iteration, and I have to say I think I like it 🙂

It operates as a Sidebar – scans and indexes your GMail only one account unfortunately :-(, files, photo’s (it runs a slideshow – that can include a flickr search!!!) has a “Scratchpad – for jutting down notes / url’s / whatever, it works as a RSS reader – it calls the “Web Clips” – not Web Feeds like IE7 🙂 News headlines appear – and it learns what sort of news you’re interested in and gradually shows more of that as time goes on…. a stock-ticker, “what’s hot” the list is endless…. but the one that’s really nice is “Quick View” webpages you’ve typed in recently – and you can keep stuff by “starring” it – very, very nice!!

All in all it’s very cool – I’ll be intrigued to play with it more tomorrow when it’s completed indexing my stuff….. all it needs it a media player and a browser adding in and you new desktop has arrived!!