Google has released an update to it"s popular desktop search software. Google Desktop 2 beta 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 seperate download. Google has provided us with a fun distrorting clock, Time Warp, a todo list, and System Monitor. Airbear Software also has two plugins available. gdTunes controls iTunes from the sidebar, and Adsense Status displays information from your Google Adsense account. A developer SDK is available for those interested in writing their own sidebar plug-ins.