Google has launched a Mac version of its Desktop search app.

Windows users have been able to use this for a while now as a kind of poor man’s Spotlight. Now it comes to Mac and brings with it several tricks that Spotlight can’t do. Hardcore Googlistas will love it.

As you would expect, it is able to search your drives for applications, files, emails and folders. But unlike Spotlight, it is also able to search your Gmail messages and web browsing history at the same time.

Desktop for Mac installs itself as a system-wide Preference Pane, where you can set the app’s options, including whether or not to include Gmail and your web-browsing history in the search results:

Another pane allows you to set the hotkey for Google Desktop (⌘ + ⌘ by default) and to determine how results are displayed.

Hitting the hotkey calls up a nicely-crafted search box. A search for “journo” lists emails from Mail.app and Gmail in one hit which is very handy, complete with a little snippet for each one, something I often wish Spotlight could provide:

In an extra nice touch for MailTags users like me, Google has made sure that the app is compatible with existing mdimporters. That means it recognises MailTags keywords, projects and notes and displays them in the results.

You can download Google Desktop for Mac from Google’s Mac software page .

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iCalViewer is an app that brings your calendar out of iCal and puts it on the Desktop, where it scrolls from right to left as the days pass.

A new version (2.0.6) fixes a memory leak and offers the option to place events at the top of the window.

iCalViewer is shareware (USD 11) although a limited free version is available. You can get it from the developer’s web site .

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In recent days I have been playing around a lot with various iCal addons and utilities.

I can’t tell you why for fear of being drowned in a vat of maple syrup by a bunch of lacrosse stick-wielding Mounties.

Anyway, I discovered iCalViewer, a very creative and interesting add-on for iCal that displays your iCal information in a window or on your desktop:

Click on the picture for a larger view

The idea is clever. The yellow line on the left is “now” and the events and ToDos listed to the right of that represent what’s coming up. As time passes the displays “streams” the information.

The preference pane allows you to set the time period it should display (168 hours by default), which calendars to include, whether to display it over the top of your screen saver or not and various options for displaying the ToDos and the events.

In “Window” mode, double clicking on a ToDo or event opens iCal and selects the item.

It has some interesting applications.

For example, the app maintains a “special event” box for items that fall outside the normal time range. The developer suggests a use for this:

You have an iCal calendar for a project and you really want to be reminded of the final date as well as milestones along the way, so you specify the lookahead for the end date to be 6 months and the milestones to be 3 weeks.

iCalViewer is shareware (USD 11), although you can use it for free with limited functionality.

A 21 day fully-featured demo is available from the developer’s web site.

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