08-03-2005 01:42									#1
	Google Desktop Search 1.0...now with Firefox/Thunderbird, API Tired of ads?

http://news.com.com/Google+moves+be...ml?tag=nefd.top

quote: Google moves beyond beta with desktop search Published: March 7, 2005, 6:33 AM PST By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com update Google has introduced a full version of its desktop-search software, with a developer's kit and support for the Firefox and Netscape browsers. The Mountain View, Calif., company on Monday released a PC application for searching Microsoft Office documents, images, e-mail and Internet Explorer Web pages. Google Desktop, which had been in public beta for nearly five months, now includes search capabilities for video and music files, full PDFs and Web surfing history in three Web browsers, including the fast-growing Firefox. It also includes a software developers kit, or SDK, so that outsiders can build new search plug-ins. Already, Google has built a plug-in to search conversations in the Trillian chat software. "Google desktop search stores a copy of everything you see," said Nikhil Bhatla, a Google product manager. "That can be extremely useful if, for example, an application crashes. With (the tool), you can get the text of that last document you were working on." For that reason, security plays a bigger part in the full version. Because the tool had been able to index privacy-sensitive documents--against users' wishes--the final product avoids indexing those Word and Excel files that are password-protected, Bhatla said. It also allows people to block indexing of secure Web sites. Google previously had to update the software because of the potential for malicious hackers to capture some personal data. Google has heavy competition in the consumer desktop arena. Not only have its top rivals, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, introduced similar tools recently, but a litany of upstarts have emerged to compete for Web surfers' attention. Some are even having success; Blinkx said Friday that its desktop-search tool is now fielding 100 million searches daily. All the search companies are hoping to lock in new visitors with desktop applications because they believe it will help them drive more Web searches--and hence more advertising sales. Search-related advertising is expected to be worth between $4 billion and $5 billion this year. For now, Google has no plans to display ads related to consumers' personal information, Bhatla said. Still, the company is pressed to keep pace with rival innovations. Yahoo, for example, licenses technology from X1 Technologies for its desktop search tool that lets people narrow searches of e-mail text by typing only a single letter. Bhatla said Google is aware of improvements that can be made to Google Desktop. Other additions to Google Desktop include support for searching e-mail in Netscape mail and Thunderbird. The tool is also available in Chinese and Korean. Search experts applauded Google's SDK. "It means that anybody who feels like it's not doing what they like can go out and build something extra for it," said Danny Sullivan, editor of industry newsletter SearchEngineWatch.com.

The new version supports searching Firefox web history, Thunderbird mail/contacts, PDFs, audio files, image files, video files, etc.

The big news is the release of the API, making it easy and free to make "plugins" to expand what kind of documents GDS can read (http://desktop.google.com/plugins.html), as well as let any program detect GDS' presense so it can do things such as ensure GDS always has an updated index of its data...and so it can use GDS' data inside the program itself.

Sound familiar? Of course it does, it's something Apple said is a unique feature to their upcoming Spotlight program.

It also adds the deskbar: and floating deskbar: (which can be dragged anywhere on the screen).

http://desktop.google.com

Screenshots: http://desktop.google.com/screenshots.html

One of the plugins already available is an OCR program...it reads text from PDF images, scanned images, etc. and indexes them as well.

	08-03-2005 01:47									#2
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

somewhat related.

apparently, winfs is supposed to be backported to xp/2k3.

	08-03-2005 01:49									#3
	Get a bigger avatar today!

quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed somewhat related. apparently, winfs is supposed to be backported to xp/2k3.

Yep: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/arti...,1772619,00.asp

Avalon and Indigo are also going to be backported in some fashion.

	08-03-2005 02:01									#4
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Also somewhat related, screenshots of the latest Windows Longhorn build...
http://winsupersite.com/showcase/lo...review_2005.asp


Fast Search results let you sort by custom metadata ("Reference" in this example).



The Longhorn Explorer features a left-most pane of Lists and AutoLists, a breadcrumb navigation bar, instant filtering with an integrated Search box, and quick file preview at the bottom of the window.


Stacks let you dynamically group documents and files so you can view the same data in multiple ways.

	08-03-2005 02:04									#5
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

that's fine... aesthetically, however, i really don't like the direction longhorn's going.

especially with the beta i have, in which i can't turn off how amazingly massive the title bar's become.

	08-03-2005 02:06									#6
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The betas that have all been leaked have a placeholder theme and design.

Only one team has the actual Avalon/theme builds, and it's very much under lock & key. MS is worried about its competitors copying it.

	08-03-2005 02:09									#7
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Leaked? I'm using the one obtained through MSDN Premium or whatever it is the Uni has.

I am impressed with how fast it installs, though, on a 1.6GHz P4.

	08-03-2005 02:11									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed Leaked? I'm using the one obtained through MSDN Premium or whatever it is the Uni has. I am impressed with how fast it installs, though, on a 1.6GHz P4.

Then you have a very old build, and it absolutely doesn't have the Aero theme design.

	08-03-2005 02:15									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Then, I'm seriously hoping that the direction taken by these developer's builds are not the ones that we'll be seeing in '06.

They're fugly.

	08-03-2005 02:19									#10
	Inflate your Upload Space

Notice how the title bar has decreased in size since your build and the recent screenshots.

Also, it's apparently scalable (you can resize them).

	08-03-2005 02:21									#11
	Remove this text

I'll wait for the next build to be released before trying it again.

That's a positive interface step, though. Particularly if you have lower resolutions, like 1024x768.

Mostly because I don't want to bother trying to find the leaked ones (kinda hard to find), and why do all that searching when I can get one from Microsoft sooner or later?

	08-03-2005 02:29									#12
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Google

	08-03-2005 02:46									#13
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Google

Imran

	08-03-2005 02:50									#14
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Ted Striker

The Google Desktop is indexing my files now. Soon I should be able to use it .

	08-03-2005 03:36									#15
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

I'm using Copernic desktop search. It works very well. One thing I like about it is that it searches in PDFs. Irc, Google doesn't look in PDFs, a major drawback if you ask me.

	08-03-2005 03:43									#16
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Google says it looks at pdfs.

	08-03-2005 04:59									#17
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Imran
You know very well you don't bring facts into any forum discussion!

	08-03-2005 05:01									#18
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

cool

I was just thinking the other day I needed something like this when I was looking for something.

I google. If it had a dick, I would suck it.

	08-03-2005 05:01									#19
	Get a bigger avatar today!

Imran, I just checked and your right. But, irc, the last time I checked, a couple of months ago, it didn't. That's why they say that Google can now search PDFs.

Last edited by nostromo on 08-03-2005 at 06:42

	08-03-2005 05:08									#20
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

How large does such an index get? I only have ~900MB free space on my HD (20GB)

quote: Fast Search results let you sort by custom metadata ("Reference" in this example).

The thing with metadata is: someone has to enter it and it get's lost when putting the file on the internet or burn it on CD/DVD, no?
#2 could be solved, but #1...



Btw, I tried Picasa2 over the last days, some things are very nice and other make me hate it - one is the absence of gif support (it's patent free now, no?) and the other is that I cannot tell it where to put the imported images from my digicam. It would always put them into "My Pictures", when I want to have it in a subfolder.
There are some more annoyances, but I don't remember them now.

	08-03-2005 05:54									#21
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Metadata has to be entered by something. It could be the user, like after you upload a bunch of pictures from a vacation to Costa del Sol, you would add keywords to the collection like "vacation, 2005, trip, holiday, beach, Costa del Sol, Spain, Europe". On the other hand, when you rip music this metadata is automatically collected from services like Gracenote, or programs can automatically assign it otherwise.

And it would get lost unless it's in the file format itself (JPG, MP3/ID3, WMA), and not just the filesystem (NTFS/WinFS).

As for Picasa, I don't ever import from my camera with it...I use my camera software.

	08-03-2005 06:25									#22
	Remove this text

quote: How large does such an index get?

	08-03-2005 06:48									#23
	Suffering from ads?

I'd imagine theoretically it could be terabytes in size.

Do you want to ask me a real question?