Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

I have something of a love/hate relationship with desktop search tools.

They're something I need - often desperately, but I just can't get on with their user interfaces. They're all the same, just variations on the old folder view. If I wanted that, I'd be using Vista's library views or spending my time working with Mac OS X's Spotlight. Instead, I'm after something that will find contextual links between my various emails and documents, and help me find the most relevant file.

Blinkx comes close to doing what I want, but that final step is a gaping chasm, and "almost" is worse than "not at all". So at the moment I'm using an unholy mix of Lookout and Yahoo! Desktop Search. Two tools that together give me a semblance of what I'm after. But I'm considering dropping them both for Windows Desktop Search, thanks to PHLAT.

PHLAT is a new interface for Windows Desktop Search (enabling search through a user's own email, files, and viewed web pages). PHLAT lets you easily specify queries and filters, attempting to integrate search and browse in one intuitive interface. In addition, Phlat supports a unified tagging (labeling) scheme for organizing personal content across storage systems (files, email, etc.).

It's the closest I've seen to the UI I want - and it gives me the ability to add my own tag-based folksonomy to my files, providing me with my own metadata for my own files. Worth giving a spin, I think...

...Windows Vista may have lost its sidebar, but the new Google Desktop Search adds one.

Not as invisible as Blinkx's tool, but still quite useful, the Google bar gives you plenty of information in one place. Just look across to see news headlines, notes, recent web sites, weather - and if its not there a published API allows you to develop new plugins.

Worth looking at.



Google gives what Microsoft taketh away...