Thanks to chrisgeleven for the heads up...
Google has released an update to it"s popular desktop search software. Google Desktop 2 adds a sidebar, expanding from the product"s previous focus as a search tool to a full fledged desktop enhancement. By default, the sidebar comes bundled with individual panels for e-mail, news, web clips (RSS/XML feeds), photos, quick view (recent documents), stocks, and scratch pad for taking notes. As of now, five additional panels are available as a separate download. Google has provided us with a fun distorting clock, Time Warp, a to-do list, and System Monitor. A developer SDK is available for those interested in writing their own sidebar plugins.