The number of useful services that the internet has to offer these days is far too difficult to keep track of. YubNub is a nifty little tool which claims to be the command line for the web. It’s a site from where any number of services can be accessed. For example, the command gim india will perform a Google Image search for the term India, or login www.nytimes.com uses Bugmenot to provide a username and password. Other popular shortcuts that can be used are wp for Wikipedia searches, a for answers.com queries, am for amazon.com searches, and many many more. The best part is that anybody can create a command.
But, I see a huge potential for abuse if it becomes popular. People could easily start using it as a personal bookmark alias system for the sites they visit regularly. Maybe a better idea would be to let users create accounts and then create their personal commands, allowing addition of existing commands if they so wish. Then YubNub would be truly useful. Still, a great idea born out of a programming contest.
Search
13
Jul 05
YubNub
29
Jun 05
Google Earth
Google recently acquired Keyhole, the satellite imaging company. They have now released a product which integrates satellite imagery and Google search. It’s called Google Earth, and in traditional Google style, there’s a free version. I had tried out Keyhole earlier and it was a lot of fun. Google Earth aims to be more than just fun, but that’s just for users in the United states. For users in other countries, it’s more of a toy that is a lot of fun to play with. Features like the one which flies you along the route you want to take along real roads are really cool. Users in the US, especially those living in big cities, can enjoy the integration of Google Earth with Local search, to actually ’see’ search results. The combination of actual photos with relevant search results are a huge improvement over graphical maps.
Just to illustrate the difference in the resolution of the images available, I chose Chicago in the US and Mysore in India.
The image above shows houses and cars on the streets too.
I took this screenshot as the name is shown in the way it is pronounced in my native language, Kannada, and not as it is usually done in English. That was cool. If you’re familiar with the area, you can actually identify some landmarks.
1
Jun 05
BitTorrent search engines
Some BitTorrent search engines –
BitTorrent Search – The official search engine from the maker(s) of BitTorrent.
bitoogle – A front end for Google to find only BitTorrent files.
Other search engines –
btbot, Torrent Typhoon
25
Apr 05
Apple’s ideas for the future
From kottke.org :
An Apple employee made some very interesting comments on Slashdot regarding what OS X, and in particular, Spotlight, the OS level search application will be able to do in the future. I’ll just quote from the article.
You’re doing a multi-party teleconference. A recording is made of that teleconference (each angle), and separate audio tracks are recorded for each participant. In real time, your computer transcribes each voice track and stores it as ancillary content on the recording, content that Spotlight indexes for you. At any time, you can type “meeting in San Jose” into Spotlight, and it’ll take you right to the angle and track on which your co-worker Laurent talked about next week’s meeting in San Jose.
Another amazing example…
Let’s say you take ..[a].. picture of your dog and drop it in a Pages document, then export the document as a PDF and mail it to your sister Jan. The computer records, as metadata, the fact that that picture of your dog is related to Jan. It knows that.. [you].. associated the picture with that Pages document, that the Pages document was associated with the PDF file, and that the PDF file was associated with an e-mail to Jan.
There are some more things mentioned in the article, but, it’s just mind blowing where they are going with this. Steve Jobs has been accusing Microsoft of shamelessly copying from Apple. If this is the kind of stuff Microsoft wants to copy, then, I don’t think anybody will complain (except Apple of course).
If this kind of technology is implemented in Windows, it better have an efficient and easy data backup system. If a user spends years builing up metadata and relationships between his/her data, and one fine day Windows crashes and requires a fresh install, well, screwed. Having just reinstalled Windows today, that’s what I’m thinking of right now.
My exposure to OS X has been minimal at best. If only their computers weren’t so expensive……
22
Apr 05
Google Search History
I’ve been trying out Google’s new Search History feature and find it pretty unusable at the moment. Traditionally Google has been excellent when it comes to user friendliness and attention to detail. But, this new feature breaks that trend. Search History saves both the users search request, and all the outgoing clicks from the results page. My gripe is that the design is towards, on login to the Google account, saving all searches and visited pages. Given the number of searches performed by the average user and the number of pages visited from each results page, the search history feature quickly becomes useless. With four out of five searches and almost 75 percent of referrals to websites happening through Google, I’m sure the search history of users will be overflowing pretty soon. It’s more useful when that odd important search or well crafted query needs to be saved for later retrieval.
A pause option is provided to stop the addition of pages to the history, but, if that is used, it requires a repeat search after enabling it to add the search to the history. So, it would have been better had the design facilitated easier adding of searches after it has been performed. What I have found after using Filangy for a while is that, I seldom need to search through my history. What will be more useful is the ability to selectively add searches than the ability to selectively remove them.
This service is at present similar to what Filangy offers and, as I noted earlier, it was bound to happen. Google isn’t the first to offer such a service though, A9 and AskJeeves already do.
15
Apr 05
yahoo! vs. google
yahoo! vs. google provides a nice comparison of the relative ranking of a search term by Google and Yahoo!.
8
Mar 05
Finally, something from Google is out of beta!
Looks like the brutal competition in the desktop search space has forced Google to bring it’s application out of beta in a break of tradition. New features include the obvious suspects, support for PDF, and a wider variety of mail clients and browsers. There’s also support for multimedia files (audio, video and images) which can be searched for using their meta data. For all the remaining two hundred odd file types that GDS does not support when compared to Yahoo! desktop search and X1, they’ve provided an SDK, so that it’s users will come up with plugins. Very smart, considering that they’ve already covered the file types used by a majority of the market. If there really is any demand for other file types, plugins to add support are bound to come out from it’s user base. There are already some plugins available, and the Any text indexer could be quite useful.
I’ve installed GDS in it’s latest avatar as it now supports Maxthon. I’ll be using it mainly to search through my history. The excellent capability of GDS to search through web history is what is going to make life tough for services like Filangy. That’s because if you can install a toolbar as required by Filangy, instead, you might as well install GDS and enjoy the better experience.
Another reason I’m going to use GDS is because of the floating deskbar. It’s a little search bar which doesn’t hog space on the taskbar, and can be conveniently placed anywhere on the desktop. Also, the integration of desktop search results with web results, which wasn’t working earlier with Maxthon is something that should be very useful.
The next feature I’m looking forward to is the integration of Gmail with GDS. Gmail with an offline mode, searchable through GDS would be heaven for e-mailing.
Tags – google, search, desktopsearch
7
Mar 05
Copernic’s Desktop Search v1.5 Beta
Copernic recently released a beta version of their Desktop Search v1.5. The list of new features is pretty long. One new feature that really stands out for me is the button that allows jumping from one keyword occurrence to the next in the preview pane. This can be an extremely useful feature when searching through large documents. It’s great that Copernic is actively listening to its users and is implementing features that are being requested/demanded by them. One bug I noticed in this beta version is that the icons for PDF and HTML files are incorrectly displayed in the file list pane. But, mainly for the reasons I mentioned in my desktop search comparison, i.e the speed of the searches and excellent preview, I’ll be sticking to Yahoo! desktop search for the time being. I search through a lot of PDF’s and powerpoint presentations at work and the preview of PPT’s has still not improved in CDS, and it’s quite slow with large PDF’s. Copernic is coming out with feature packed updates more often than their competitors, and I just might be forced to switch when the next version comes out.
Tags – copernic, search, desktopsearch
6
Mar 05
Google weather
Google has added weather forecasts to their growing list of services. The weird thing is, it’s only available for US locations. Google Maps being US only is understandable. But, weather information from all around the world is already available on The Weather Channel. I wonder why they chose Wunderground, which is a US only service, as their source. Maybe it’s because they’re pitching it as a way to get weather info through the phone too (SMS), which isn’t available elsewhere. Still, a web only forecast shouldn’t have been a problem for other locations. As far as I know, The Weather Channel doesn’t charge anything for the data, as many browsers make use of extensions and sidebars which pull in data from there.
20
Feb 05
Filangy – Personalized search
In the already overcrowded search engine space, Filangy is a new player which offers ‘personalized search’. What this means is that, apart from the plain old web search, Filangy also allows users to search through only the pages they have viewed. This is done with the help of a browser toolbar. Such a feature appealed to me immediately and I had to try it out as soon as I read about it. But, as of now it’s only available by invitation. Maybe they are hoping that a Gmail type viral marketing effort through invitations will bring in more users in the long run. Anyway, I gave them my e-mail address, and got an invitation after some time. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and, I have to say it’s pretty handy.
The toolbars are available for both IE and Firefox. As Maxthon isn’t supported, I’ve been trying it out on Firefox. Once the toolbar (extension in the case of Firefox) has been installed, it has to be authorised, so that the username is mapped to the toolbar. As I browse, the toolbar looks at the URL and sends it to Filangy. If at some point of time I want to go back and look at something again, then all I have to do is enter my search term in the toolbar and that’s it. When the search is through the toolbar, Filangy does a normal web search by default. A direct ‘WebCache’ search requires some extra mouse clicks. Not a big deal. The results tell me exactly which pages I had browsed through had the term I’m searching for. One irritant is that the time taken for the pages I’ve visited to be reflected in my searches is totally unpredictable. The pages would have already been indexed, and assigning the content of those pages to my account shouldn’t take too long. But, Filangy is a Nutch based search engine and it must still be undergoing a lot of development and tweaking. If the pages I visit are available to be searched in a few minutes at the most, every time, it would be great. WebMarks is another useful feature that allows users to bookmark any page when they are browsing. All those bookmarks can be accessed from anywhere later.
Privacy is obviously a big concern with such a service and Filangy seems to have taken all precautions in this regard. There is alway a risk involved in shared computers though. The pages browsed by all users could be indexed and searched through later. But, this can be prevented by using the option to pause indexing for a specified period of time. Also, only the total number of indexed pages can be seen and there is no way to look at a list of all the indexed URL’s.
Although this a useful service at present which caters to a niche, I feel Filangy in its present avatar will find it difficult to find many users. That’s because Google desktop search is all that is needed to provide the same functionality, i.e, searching through visited pages. And, del.icio.us does a much better job than ‘WebMarks’ as a online bookmark manager. The only thing going for them right now is that users can access a history of pages that they have visited from any computer. Google could easily do something similar with their toolbar, and if it is integrated with Gmail and their desktop search, well, that’ll be bye, bye Filangy. But, to be fair to them, it is still in very early stages of development and more features are bound to be added soon.
11
Jan 05
Desktop search comparison
Note: This post was written in early 2005. Before reading this comparison, please keep in mind that not everything mentioned in the post may be valid today. New versions of almost all the applications compared here are available, and some may not even exist.
With Yahoo! releasing their desktop search tool, I thought it was time to take another good look at all the major desktop search tools. Here is my comparison:
Introduction -
Effective and easy access to information on a computer is a basic need. For long, this hasn’t been an important issue due to the limited amount of information that could be stored on personal computers. But, with the ballooning size of hard disks and widespread use of digital devices that are generating tons of content, the demand for efficient methods to retrieve and search for this data is slowly growing and becoming more popular. This demand has grown big enough to attract the attention of the big players in the industry. As a result, what we now have is a glut of desktop search applications in the Windows environment, with many more expected, which are spoiling consumers for choice and making the entire experience of using a personal computer less frustrating. In this comparison I’ll examine the different desktop search applications and recommend the one that provides the best overall experience.
To begin with, what does ‘desktop search’ mean? It’s a little like having a search engine exclusively for your desktop. Just like searching the internet for information, desktop search allows searching of hard drives, at similar speeds. Yes, that’s the interesting part. The first time a desktop search application is installed, it indexes the contents of your hard drive. Indexing is the process of reading through all supported file formats and storing that information in a way that can be quickly accessed when queried. This leads to extremely fast results, like in an online search engine. Indexing of the entire hard drive is a one time process, and as files are added, deleted or modified on the hard drive, these indexes are also updated. The advantage of this is that, one no longer needs to precisely remember the location of the thousands of files on a hard drive. Only a general idea about the file is sufficient. But, the index takes up some hard drive space. The space required depends on the amount of data present on the drive. But, this is usually not more than a few hundred megabytes in most cases and the resulting convenience is well worth the lost space. Compared to the soporific searches consumers had to endure at the hands of Windows’ default search, this technology is a godsend. Actually, Windows XP has an indexing service which aims to do something similar, but, is badly implemented and is better left unused.
This comparison includes desktop search applications from Google, Copernic, Microsoft, Yahoo, blinkx and Filehand. This comparison is based on user interface, features, file format support, search results, resource utilization when running etc. Since Yahoo desktop search uses X1 technology, they are similar in many aspects and differ only in some features.
Installation and indexing –
While Google, Copernic and Filehand search were pretty small downloads, Yahoo and blinkx were larger than 6 MB. MSN desktop search is a small download by itself, by PDF file support requires an additional download from Adobe which is around 10 MB. The applications from Copernic and blinkx support Windows 98 onwards, but GDS, YDS, MSN desktop search and Filehand search only support Windows 2000 and XP. While the Google, Yahoo, MSN, Copernic and blinkx applications were free downloads, Filehand search is free but requires the user to register the product with a free registration key provided by them.
The installation of all the applications was pretty straightforward and there were no surprises.
After installation, each of them started their initial indexing. MSN desktop search, Filehand search and blinkx do not, by default index the entire hard drive. Changes have to be made in the application settings to ensure that the entire hard drive is indexed.
The time required for the initial indexing becomes important if the hard drive contains a very large amount of data. YDS took the least amount of time to index my hard drive and was extremely fast. This is impressive considering that YDS supports many more file formats than the other applications. More on file formats later. Copernic, Google, MSN and blinkx desktop searches took about the same time, but a little longer than YDS. Filehand search, though, took the longest; almost four times as long as YDS. The exact time taken by each application is not relevant as it depends on various factors such as the amount of data, the rotational speed of the hard disk, the speed of the processor etc. One gripe I have about MSN desktop search is that even though it indicated that indexing was complete, all I had to do was leave my computer idle for a few seconds, and it would pounce in and start indexing again. I don’t know if these were efforts at incremental indexing or initial indexing itself.
If you are a user who keeps the computer on only when you are working, then you might want to leave it on for some time to let the desktop search application finish its indexing, as they index only when the computer isn’t used for some time. This is to ensure that the system resources hungry process of indexing does not interfere with your normal work. Filehand search and YDS are exceptions to this. They index in fixed intervals, which can be defined by the user, or between a user specified period of time during the day. blinkx gives the user total control over the indexing, which is not the case with the other applications.
If the user tries to perform a search when the indexing is incomplete or in progress, then, the results are not comprehensive and do not include all the content on the hard drive.
User Interface -
Google desktop search -
Google desktop search (GDS) is the only application to use a browser as the interface with the user. All the other applications have their own dedicated applications. The interface is very similar to the Google web search interface. Using a browser as the interface has both pros and cons. The advantage is that Google can easily integrate search results from the web and the desktop. The disadvantage is that Google cannot leverage the inherent power of desktop applications, such as a preview of search results, instant results as the query is being typed etc.
The above image shows how GDS integrates search results from the web and desktop.
Copernic desktop search -
Copernic desktop search (CDS) has by far the best interface of the lot. It has a familiar e-mail client look to it and is very convenient and easy to use. The user can select what kind of file he wants to search for in the toolbar at the top. Searches can be refined to narrow down the results. The results can be instantly previewed in the ‘Preview’ pane. This is extremely convenient and saves the trouble of actually opening each result in its native application. Details of the selected result are also displayed.
blinkx
blinkx has a well designed user interface, but sorely lacks a preview pane. As a saving grace, it does show a snippet of the document in a pop up box when the mouse hovers over it in the results list box, but, only the first few lines of the document and not the portion where the search term is.
blinkx has a well designed user interface, but sorely lacks a preview pane. As a saving grace, it does show a snippet of the document in a pop up box when the mouse hovers over it in the results list box, but, only the first few lines of the document and not the portion where the search term is.blinkx provides a separate button for each of the different file types that it supports, so, searching among a particular file type takes one lesser step.
Filehand search -
The Filehand search UI is very simple, without any bells and whistles. All the important controls fall easily to hand. Advanced search options are available on clicking a button. Though there is no preview pane, Filehand search uses the web search engine trick of displaying a portion of the document where the search term is present.
MSN desktop search -
In typical Microsoft fashion, MSN desktop search is all eye candy and looks great. It consists of different toolbars for the desktop, IE and Outlook. In the desktop toolbar, a small window pops up providing instant feedback as a query is typed. Searches from Outlook and IE open in an application window, but, there is no preview pane. Only a small snippet of relevant text is displayed below the title/subject.
Yahoo desktop search -
YDS always displays all the files in the index. The search results are narrowed down as the user types the query. It has separate tabs to search for e-mail messages and also attachments that none of the applications have.
The UI of YDS is based on the version 5.0 beta of X1 and it is a huge improvement over X1’s earlier version.
File format support -
The utility of any desktop search application lies in the number of different file formats that it can support. Obviously, the more the better.
All the applications support text, HTML, MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint, MS Outlook/Outlook Express and the popular music formats. Only Filehand search does not support image and video files. Corel Wordperfect files are also supported by YDS, CDS and Filehand search.
Only GDS does not support the all important PDF format. Considering the popularity of PDF and the number of documents the average user has, this is a glaring miss from Google. GDS redeems itself by being the only one to support searching of chat logs, but, supports only AOL instant messenger.
CDS is the only application in the comparison to support Firefox. With the rising popularity of Firefox, this will definitely be a plus for its users.
The winner in this department is YDS. It supports a whopping 225+ file formats which is impossible to list here. The only applications it does not support are chat tools and Firefox.
Features -
Here I’ll highlight only the standout features of each application, the basic search functionality being the same in every application.
Google desktop search -
The results in GDS are listed in the familiar Google format. The number of search results for each file format is displayed on the top and the results can be narrowed down with a single click.
As mentioned earlier, Google’s decision to stick with the browser pays off here, with a seamless integration of web and desktop searches. If GDS is installed, searching on the Google website will return results which include data on the desktop.
GDS also allows the display of search results sorted according to date or relevance as determined by the Google algorithms.
Supported file formats need to be opened in their native applications, but, chat logs, e-mail conversations and cached web pages can be opened in the browser itself. Also, GDS does not allow searching through attachments in mail.
By using the browser, GDS can’t provide the instant feedback experience, but, using the recently unveiled ‘Suggest’ feature, they may make up for it by suggesting keywords from the index as the user types them.
The stand out feature of GDS is its ability to index the IE browser cache and history. Whether it is a security risk or not is for the user to decide. On single user computers this can be a very useful feature.
Copernic desktop search -
CDS puts a search bar in the Windows task bar which can be used to quickly access the application. This is pretty handy, but at the cost of some system resources. The preview pane is very useful, but, is not available for the multimedia content. It also has a few problems displaying Powerpoint files. Also, although CDS displays that portion of the file where the search term first occurs, subsequent occurrences will have to searched for manually. This is very inconvenient when documents have hundreds of pages. On contacting Copernic Support for a solution to this problem, the impressively swift reply was that the feature was still not implemented and it could be accomplished by using the Ctrl + F key combination.
Another nifty little feature of CDS is that every time it’s indexing the drive the system tray icon changes to reflect it. While it doesn’t seem to be very important, its value becomes apparent during day to day usage. Every time the application starts indexing it takes up a lot of system resources and the user can immediately see that CDS is the culprit. A small move of the mouse and CDS will quietly run back to its corner. But, with other applications it takes some time to realize the cause of the system slowdown.
blinkx -
The latest version of blinkx has a number of new innovative features. This version also indexes the metadata of JPEG images and MP3 files, a welcome inclusion since multimedia search shouldn’t be confined to searching for just the filenames.
There is also something called SIS or ‘Stuff I’ve seen’. Searching under this category allows the user to search only through what he has been looking at online.
The ‘Smart folder’ feature can be used to create folders which are topical and over time blinkx will add content to that folder from the web and local drive when it thinks that specific topics are similar to the ones in that folder.
Another new feature is the inclusion of the ability to search on peer to peer networks. blinkx uses the Gnutella protocol and searches can be performed and files downloaded directly from within the application. The user is forewarned that blinkx is not responsible for content downloaded from P2P networks. P2P networks being extremely dynamic in nature, file availability is never consistent.
blinkx also provides a way to search the web in a number of categories directly just with the click of a button. The default search engine is blinkx’s own, but this can be changed to one that the user desires.
The blinkx toolbar appears on the title bar of the active window and based on the contents of that window provides the user links to related websites, blogs, products and other content on the local machine. The buttons on the toolbar are initially dim, but become coloured when relevant content is found.
The toolbar is supported for the Internet explorer, MS word. Blinkx claims MS Outlook is also supported, but did not work with Outlook 2003 on my computer.
Filehand search -
The best feature of Filehand is the small toolbar that appears above each search result when the mouse hovers over it. The most useful feature lacking in all the other applications is the ability to move from one search term to the next through the entire document. This prevents scrolling through the entire document looking for the search term. The amount of extract displayed can also be increased or decreased. Quick navigation to the beginning or end of the file, or even scrolling through it is possible.
Filehand search also indexes the metadata of MP3’s, but does not support audio or video files. Searching through attachments in mail is also not supported.
Similar to GDS, Filehand search also provides relevance ranking.
MSN desktop search -
MSN desktop search tool’s strength is its tight integration with Outlook. It can search through the Outlook calendar, tasks and notes. MS Onenote is supported too. Certain files can be modified to enable a large number of search shortcuts which can be quite handy. It does not search through the IE browser cache and history though.
Yahoo desktop search -
YDS gives extra importance to e-mail search and it works like a charm. A separate tab is provided to search through attachments. The one area where YDS beats the competition hollow is in the speed of its searches. Results are provided as the user is typing his query and is blazing fast. Although similar instant feedback systems are present in blinkx and CDS, they are nowhere as quick as YDS.
Another killer feature of YDS is it’s ability to preview any file format in exactly the same way as it would appear in it’s native application. Even multimedia files can be previewed within YDS itself! This file viewer support for all the formats it supports is really what sets YDS apart.
YDS does integrate online search, but, it’s not integrated into the application like in CDS. YDS also provides a search tool bars for Outlook and the Windows taskbar.
Searches can also be saved to be used at a later date, a feature unique to YDS.
Search results -
All the applications provide a means to sort the search results according to the modified date, file type etc. but only GDS and Filehandle search use their own algorithms to determine which result is most likely to match the user query. The other applications simply display the matches from their database of keywords. So, the quality of searches is not an issue in the keyword matching applications and in the absence of a well constructed search query, relevance ranking is more of a hit or miss game.
Resource utilization -
Resource utilization is always an important factor to be considered in case of applications which always run in the background. Among the desktop search applications, Filehand search was the most frugal in this regard. It required just more than 1 MB. CDS, GDS and MSN desktop serach were within the 10 MB mark, and YDS needed around 20 MB, but, the biggest shock was blinkx, which needed more than 40 MB of precious RAM space. This is a price the user will have to pay for the many features that blinkx supports. Features like providing relevant search results constantly based on what the user is viewing is bound to be resources heavy. Blinkx is definitely not for someone who is already short of RAM.
Indexing is naturally resource hogging in all cases and is best scheduled for when the computer is idle. CDS, blinkx and GDS gain extra points here as they wait to see when the system isn’t busy and finish their job.
Privacy -
With the growing popularity of desktop search applications, privacy fears were bound to arise. But, by taking some simple precautions everyone can enjoy the benefits of these wonderful productivity enhancers. YDS, CDS, blinkx and GDS do not support searching of network drives. MSN desktop search and Filehand search do, so, special attention has to be paid to their configuration on networks, to prevent the spread of confidential data.
On desktops, users can take simple precautions like turning off a desktop search application if they do not want their activities to be indexed for later retrieval, like on a public computer. Extra care can also be taken by specifying that folders with private information should not be indexed.
Google has been at the receiving end of allegations about how GDS can be used to breach a user’s privacy. This is partly because GDS allows the caching and searching of browser history, especially secure web pages, the kind used in online banking, shopping etc. But, caching of secure pages can be disabled if the user wants to. Also, there are doubts that Google sends personal data to its servers to integrate web and local drive searches. This isn’t true. GDS sits in between the user’s computer and Google’s servers. When the user enters a search query, the GDS application receives the web related results from Google, adds its own locally and displays both in the browser. No data ever leaves the user’s computer.
And the winner is….
Google desktop search is a very good application that has a lot going for it. But, the lack of PDF support is something that can’t be overlooked. Instant feedback during searches is also missed. Like some of the other applications, GDS is still in beta, and I’m sure it’ll be hard to beat when it is ready.
Filehandle search is a minimalist and does the things it is designed to do extremely well. If I had to pick the best feature among all the applications, then it would have to be the ability to scroll to each occurrence in the results. But, it is too slow in its indexing and also takes up a lot of space for its index compared to the other applications. It also does not support searching of attachments in mail, photos or video, which is quite important. With digital cameras becoming as popular as they are, image search is a must.
MSN desktop search is a tool that works for the avid Outlook user. Though it has a polished feel to it, a preview pane is sorely missed. And, I think it will never support Mozilla applications! So, I’ll give it a miss for now.
The sheer breadth of features offered by blinkx is unmatched. ‘Smart folders’ and SIS are extremely innovative features and indexing of JPEG and MP3 metadata is invaluable. If you can get over the lack of a preview pane and the enormous system requirements then, blinkx is definitely for you.
Copernic desktop search will always have many users simply because of its marvelous user interface. Everything falls easily to hand and the search bar is also very handy. It also supports most of the file formats normally used at home and all in all is an excellent all rounder. If you use Firefox then CDS is a must have as no other application supports it.
The application I will not be uninstalling at the end of this comparison though will be Yahoo desktop search. All the amazing features of X1 at no cost is nothing but a steal. For the vast majority of users who don’t use Mozilla or Eudora and don’t need to index remote drives, YDS fits the bill perfectly.
The future….
The desktop search space is really heating up. As I write this, Mamma.com, a search engine is in the process of acquiring Copernic. AOL has signed up to use Copernic technology in its desktop search application. Microsoft might as well use its monopoly with Windows and do another Netscape.
So, what can we expect from desktop search applications in the years to come? Well, I can only speculate.
Google is in a wonderful position to revolutionize search all over again. Right now, web search results only include content on public servers. But, with GDS, Google could give people the ability to search every hard drive on the planet with its application installed. Privacy and security will be an issue, but not something that can’t be taken care of. Blinkx already has implemented a rudimentary form of this in its P2P component, but Google has the ability to make the whole process transparent to the user.
With the exploding popularity of digital content generation devices like still and video cameras, the ability to search through this content will become critical. Otherwise, it will be difficult to cope with the sheer amount of data that is present on our hard drives. Search utilities must be integrated with the already available technology of pattern matching in images and videos. The dream of on demand information at ones fingertips will truly be realized in the years to come and that need will have to be fulfilled on the desktop by these very applications.
Some applications that I did not include in this comparison are -
HotBot Desktop
Note – All screenshots were obtained from the respective websites.
Tags – google, yahoo, msn, filehand, copernic, blinkx, desktopsearch, search
5
Jan 05
Answers.com
Google is a wonderful search tool. But, by design like most other search engines it returns a list of thousands of websites ranked according to it’s PageRank algorithm. Then, based on the search results, you have to select a link and go to that page to obtain the required information. Well, that’s not always the best solution.
A new search service provided by www.answers.com may cater to a valuable niche. Answers.com provides quick answers to search queries directly without expecting you to visit any external sites. It sources its replies from reputed online encyclopedias, dictionaries etc. This ensures that the information is reliable. If no information can be found, then answers.com offers to do a Google search for your query.
The best feature is ‘1-click answers’, which opens the browser with answers related to a word that is clicked on, with the ALT key, in any application. For example, when browsing if you come across the name ‘Gandhi’ and would like to know more about him, all you have to do is press the ALT key and click on the word. A new browser window opens with a profile of Mohandas Gandhi. This feature requires the download of free software provided by answers.com.
Simply put, an excellent add on to Google.
14
Dec 04
Microsoft releases desktop search tool
Microsoft has released their desktop search tool and it takes the form of toolbars for different applications rather than one single application. Typical eye candy, but, one disappointment is that PDF support requires an additional download from Adobe. The obvious advantage MS will have is the tight integration with the OS. The suite has toolbars for Outlook, IE and the task bar. The looks of the application are in traditional MS style, top-notch.
You can get the MSN toolbar suite (beta) here.