Now this trend is interesting. A 32GB flash drive being built into a lap-top...makes it lighter and more rugged. 100 GB solid-state drives are on the way. Looks like they will find their way into cameras rather quickly and we can get rid of tape at last. Good news for reporters carrying all their trash out in the field. When are we going to see these kind of prices for audio equipment though.....we're paying far too much for audio equipment. 

Say hello to Google Gadgets

Posted by John Abd-El-Malek, Software Engineer

Today we released the latest version of Google Desktop in 7 languages (the rest are coming soon). The biggest news is that we're introducing Google Gadgets - visually appealing mini-applications like clocks, weather globes, media players, etc., that support rich markup language (XML, Flash) and enable a wide array of visual effects and animation. We've also made it really easy for developers to create their own gadgets - almost as easily as you’d create a web page. One of my favorites is the weather globe.


You can also add some of your Google Homepage modules to your Sidebar or use a new gadget to check out what's popular on Google Videos. To add any of these great new gadgets, just click on the + button on the top of the Sidebar and you'll see all the available gadgets. You can add them with just one click.

What else is new? Well, do you like setting up all your applications when you get a new computer? I don’t either. Last week my hard drive died, but setting up my computer was a lot easier because my Sidebar remembered all its original settings as soon as I installed it. Your stock symbols, weather locations, To Do items, etc. can now be synchronized across multiple machines – or even just one machine, if it happens to quit, like mine did.

There are lots of other improvements under the Desktop hood as well; you can check them out in more detail on our features page. We hope you enjoy using the new Google Desktop as much as we do.