posted 2007/10/07 at 22:05
A few days ago I finally downloaded Google Desktop to my computer. Honestly I don't see myself ever using its searching feature that much -- I keep a well-organized computer and work diligently at keeping all my files in their proper spaces, and whenever I do miss a file the built-in search in Windows is usually more than enough to help me -- but I wanted to try Google's desktop gadgets to see how they compare to Yahoo! Widgets, which I've been using since shortly after Yahoo! acquired and rebranded Konfabulator. I must say that I like the sidebar functionality, and I find myself using things on the sidebar whose comparable Yahoo! widgets I never touched before. However, there are small things that bother me about nearly all the gadgets that have me thinking that I might actually switch back to Yahoo! soon. (Not to mention the fact that Google Desktop sometimes seems to slow my computer down to a crawl, particularly if I load a Flash-heavy Website.)
First of all, I don't like how I have to either shoot the calendar out to the side to see my scheduled events for the day, or else give the gadget an intolerable amount of space. By comparison, the comparable Yahoo! Widget only shows events listed for the day and doesn't force you to keep a full calendar up. (I don't use computer-based scheduling that much, but I'm guessing that once I teach multiple classes I'll really need it to help me keep things straight.) I don't like how you can't remove Google's search box from the side (I prefer to launch all my Web sessions directly from my browser), particularly when Google's already got their logo at the top of the sidebar. The news bar is nice, but as with Google's own news service on their Website, I just don't see any logic in how it selects stories. (Right now I seem to be getting a lot of cricket news and items from Slashdot for seemingly no reason.) The music player is nice, but it's hard to find stuff given how tiny it is, and the lack of an ability to sort by genre really inconveniences me since I use genre sort in my usual MP3 player to sort between my new age stuff, my game music stuff, and my more rock-based stuff, so I have stuff to play depending on what kind of mood I'm in.
What I really don't get is why neither Yahoo! nor Google are offering a customizable sports scoreboard. (There's third-party stuff out there, but none of it works well.) I would figure that this would be one of the most clamored-after things the general public would be asking for, but I'm still waiting for a good scoreboard to come out. Similarly, I'm still waiting after all this time for Yahoo! to put a Launchcast station player out as a widget; if they ever did that, I'd probably stay loyal to Yahoo! Widgets for life, given how pleased I've been with Launchcast over these past couple of years. I still need to see if I can get my soma.fm stations running using an Internet radio Google Gadget, but that can wait for a bit.
Earlier today I also downloaded Trillian for the first time. Back in the day I used ICQ a fair bit, but then all of my friends switched to Yahoo! Messenger so I used that for a while, and now all of my friends are on AIM. I had been using AIM's own software, but after reading this item about the huge security flaw there, I decided that maybe switching to Trillian would be a good idea. Given that I don't like to dress my IM environment up that much (and I hardly ever IM as it is), it's working out well for me so far, although I'm kind of worried because I'm not seeing anywhere near as many people online as I usually do this time of night, making me wonder if they're online and Trillian just isn't showing me.
I think you'd get a kick out of the OSX Dashboard.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/sports/
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon