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Your Own Private Google

GD
This is an absolute must-have.

Have you ever wondered why Google can search the whole Internet in less than one second, but Windows takes forever to find one file on your own hard drive? Well, I don’t have the answer to that but I do have a solution for finding stuff on your computer:

Google Desktop

It’s Google for your local hard drive. I’ve downloaded this and taken a look. It works. I’m finding stuff I had totally forgotten about and making associations I might never have made. Doing a search on ‘CompanyX’ brings back every email, document, and vistited-web-page about that company. I find my correspondance, that random reference buried in an email newsletter, and some spreadsheet that someone emailed to me that makes reference to CompanyX. All that in .07 seconds. I’m hooked.

One of my colleagues raised the issue that Google could do something nefarious with all that indexed information. Hmmm… I think I’ll chance it.

Get it.

If you are at all interested in Google’s strategy, click here. Non-nerds take heed.

See a write up with a rundown of all the features here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2004 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Technology, Product Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Your Own Private Google”

  1. Mark Says:
    October 14th, 2004 at 10:16 pm

    It is, indeed, an awesome idea, but it uses Internet Explorer. So, for the time being, I will pass. Once it recognizes Firefox histories, and maybe OpenOffice file formats, I’ll be in.

  2. Mark Says:
    October 14th, 2004 at 10:28 pm

    Well, life’s funny. Works just fine with Firefox (although it doesn’t search Firefox history).

  3. Gary Says:
    October 15th, 2004 at 11:00 am

    If you are running a Mac, looks like Apple will have this type of search in the next release of the Mac Operating System.

    Second-Nature Searching
    Tiger’s new system-wide Spotlight search helps you find anything on your Mac, instantly. Spotlight can find email messages, calendars and contacts along with documents, movies, images — any kind of file — all at once. Spotlight results are displayed in easy-to-understand categories that help you browse, pick and click. Finding the stuff you need on your personal computer is now as fast and effortless as searching for songs in iTunes. Tiger also introduces enhanced searching in the Finder to help you locate files and documents more quickly and easily. New Smart Folders in the Finder, Smart Mailboxes in Mail, and Smart Groups for contacts let you categorize and organize all of your important information into logical groups automatically.”

  4. B Rock Says:
    October 15th, 2004 at 2:20 pm

    How come it doen’t find all the emails with a certain company name when I do a search (with outlook open of course)

  5. Gary Says:
    October 15th, 2004 at 2:54 pm

    If you just installed it, it takes a while to create an index. Perhaps it is not done yet. I was not fully indexed until several hours after installing.

  6. Gary Says:
    October 15th, 2004 at 4:10 pm

    Limitations:

    Looks like this only works on XP and Win2K. Therefore, you can’t run this on the server and access remotely. (A very saavy question posed by my mother)

    Also you will not find stuff that is stored on drives other than C:. That stinks.

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