Do you really need MS Desktop Search ?

Just when Google released the Desktop Search, Microsoft also launched the much hyped MSN Toolbar Suite Beta which promises to find files, photos, and music, the interface is fancy and cool.



I am sure this has convinced you enough to download this suite and try it yourself. But just wait before hitting the download button. Why do you need MS Desktop Search when your computer already has MS Desktop Search installed - Microsoft just didn't tell you until now how to use it. It's called Windows Indexing Service, and it's a standard feature of Windows 2000 and Windows XP. You can use Indexing Service to index documents and document properties on your disks and store the information in a catalog. You can also use Indexing Service to search for documents, either through Search on the Start menu or through a Web browser.



To actually use Indexing Services as it was originally intended, you need to utter a few magic words, which Microsoft has chosen to keep secret from the common user.



First, turn on Indexing Service, and leave it alone for a few hours so it can index all your drives. Then open the Windows file search box as you would normally.- for example, by choosing it on the Start menu.



Here's where the magic starts. First of all, type only in the space labelled 'A word or phrase in the file' (or in Windows 2000, 'Containing Text').



Now, to find a word inside a file, simply preface it with '!'. And, to find a filename, preface it with '@filename'.



So typing '!vacation' and hitting 'enter' will instantly find files containing the word 'vacation'. And '@filename vacation' will instantly display all filenames containing the complete word vacation. You can add a '*' to the end to find other words like 'vacationing'.



It appears that the new MSN search simply provides a more user friendly front end to this existing service, and makes a few more file types searchable. If Google hadn't come along to give Microsoft a good kick up the BIOS, Windows' secret desktop search function would have remained in obscurity for many years to come.



So Microsoft is just trying to market a tool that is already on your computer. Microsoft is just a marketing company that also sells software



Via Microsoft reinvents its own wheel

Download freeware and shareware from The Register

The Register have just announced the launch of their new download site. The download site is offering Windows and Macintosh software. Next to that, they also announced their software shop, which offers software in boxes. I'm pretty much convinced this will be one of the major download sites in no time.



The content is provided by 5 Star Network, which is, just as The Register, based in the UK, and also provides the content for the LockerGnome downloads.



We’re absolutely delighted in the run-up to the Festive Season™ to be able to offer our readers a little something from the Vulture Central “get-something-for-free-pay-nothing-ever” department.



Indeed, we’re sure that fans of El Reg will find this a refreshing change from the inexorable “buy-now-pay-2020-at-86%-APR” Yule orgy of capitalism which has so sullied the spirit of Christmas.



What has surprised me the most is that a search for "Desktop Search Tools" in the Register Download site did not return even a single desktop search product like X1, Copernic, etc. though the page said Found 902 titles for "desktop search tools" in Windows. (0.32 seconds)



So that needs a bit of tweaking I guess.



Via Shareware Blogs

Five great reasons to switch to OpenOffice

Jem Berkes offers some very good reasons to use OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office, and the best reasons have nothing to do with cost of the software.

After all: software companies die, but information lasts forever. If a company takes the secrets of unlocking your data to its grave, where will that leave you?

*OpenOffice.org runs on multiple platforms. Currently: Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Mac OS X.

*OpenOffice.org is stable, and runs smoothly.

*Microsoft has made it clear that it wants proprietary document formats, and inconsistent ones at that. This may work as long as Microsoft is around and developing software that supports files created by outdated products.

*OpenOffice.org uses data formats designed to be easily interchanged (OASIS specification), and other projects are cooperating with the vision of open document interchange - e.g. Abiword, and KOffice.

An 82-year-old Nobel laureate will marry 28-year-old graduate student

Chen Ning Yang is a prolific author, his numerous articles appearing in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, The Physical Review, Reviews of Modern Physics, and the Chinese Journal of Physics.



In 1950 Yang married Chih Li Tu and is now the father of three children: Franklin, born 1951; Gilbert, born 1958; and Eulee, born 1961. The 82-year-old Nobel laureate Chen Ning Yang will marry a 28-year old graduate student.



I just found this news very interesting so I decided to share it.

Via Notes Above the Underground

Forget Reliance Mobile Support *333

I know calling *333 on your Reliance India Mobile and then waiting for a operator to get free so that she can answer your simple queries - this whole exercise is such a pain. Then Reliance IndiaMobile Discussion Forums are there for your rescue.

RIM Services - Discussions related to Reliance Indiamobile services. (RIM Postpaid, RIM Prepaid, Miscellaneous, FWP/FWT, FLP)
R World - Discussions related to the much hyped 'R World' service of Reliance IndiaMobile
R Connect - Discussions related to the 'R Connect' service of Reliance IndiaMobile

P.S. I am not sure if these forums are supported by Reliance Infocomm but the users are very quick to answer your queries. The owner of the website just confirmed that the website is not associated with Reliance Infocomm.

Reliance IndiaMobile Discussion Forums

Preview the Firefox Ad that will run in NYTimes tomorrow

The Firefox Advertisement for New York Times is complete and would be published tomorrow.

The Mozilla Foundation has announced that the long-awaited New York Times advertisement for Mozilla Firefox will run in tomorrow's edition (Thursday 16th December 2004). The two-page black and white ad (small image of the ad, large image of the ad) features the names of the 10,000 donors on the left with a large
Firefox logo graphic and quotes from satisfied users on the right. A PDF of the finished ad is available but be warned: it's a large and complex document.

Spread Firefox ealier announced that at the conclusion of their New York Times advertisement donation drive they have raised $250,000, with roughly 10,000 names to be placed in the ad. The team expects to use roughly $50,000 on the actual ad itself, and the remainder will go towards the Mozilla Foundation, and Firefox 1.0 launch activities. More info is available in the FAQ.

Update: Red Herring has an interview with Rob Davis, the mastermind behind the NYT ad campaign.

A preview of the Firefox ad
Firefox Ad In PDF

Some really bad news for Google

At the time, when Google Desktop Search is already competing with big players like Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves, Gartner has just made the going even tougher.

Don't use Google desktop search in your business, warns Gartner. Google Desktop Search has great potential for business use. Its security problems and lack of corporate-ready functions, however, make it unsuitable for widespread use right now.

Gartner has warned that companies shouldn't use the new Google Desktop Search tool because of security concerns and a lack of features. In a three-page research document, the authors - Whit Andrews, Maurene Grey and David Smith - say the tool that was released in beta in October is "not the proper search tool for businesses right now".

Instead they reiterate concerns put forward by the CEO of Google rival Copernic, David Burns, two months ago: "Google's 'Consent to Collect Nonpersonal Information' states that GDS collects non-personal data; however, the policy is a one-sided contract in that the user must trust that Google will make the right decisions as to what it will collect."

However, it also doesn't offer enough features and for it to recommend Google it would want to see "greater customisation of interface, flexibility for visualisation of results, groupwide administration and index load-balancing".

This is certainly not good news for Google at a time when its biggest competitor MSN desktop search is getting better reviews. Preston Gralla of Oreilly writes:

Google may be the ultimate Web searcher, but when it comes to finding things on your computer, the just-released beta of MSN Desktop Search beats it hands-down.

That's because Microsoft's search tool has been built specifically to search through emails and documents, and so it lets you fine-tune your search in ways that Google doesn't. So if you're looking for a specific piece of email, for example, you can search by folder, by sender, by date, by size of file attachments, and more - and you can combine them all for exceedingly fine-tuned searches.

Additionally, MSN Desktop Search has an interface that lets you easily sort and resort your results, and lets you right-click on any result, and then take actions on the file from a pop-up menu - the same pop-up menu that appears when you right-click in Windows Explorer.

There are a lot of other nifty extras in it as well. It can sit as a box in your Taskbar for example, and when you want to do a search, type your search into the box, and results pop up, menu-style. Click on any result to get straight to the file or email.

Google's search tool, on the other hand, uses the Web search paradigm. You can fine-tune it in ways you would when searching the Web, but not in ways you'd like to when looking for files or email on your hard disk. The interface is bare-bones Google, which is fine for the Web, but not suited for when you're looking for files, and then working with them on your PC.

Don't expect either of these search tools to change drastically. Google has applied the Web approach to searching and applied it to your computer. Microsoft instead applied what it knows about Windows, Outlook, and documents. And the winner, without a doubt, is Microsoft.

You can buy the report titled Discourage Broad Use of the Google Search Tool from Gartner's site here.