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Microsoft's Upcoming Desktop Search Tool
Back in July, Microsoft purchased a company called Lookout who made a tool that allowed users of Outlook 2000+ to search through their email at greater speed and accuracy to the standard Outlook search tool. Since Microsoft acquired Lookout, the MSN team have been steadily working on Desktop Search and web search technologies. Google announced their own Desktop Search technology recently; the tool is fast but is limited in capabilities.The MSN Toolbar Suite integrates directly throughout the OS and varies according to where you're searching from. For example, if you're searching from within Windows Explorer you will search on your PC, in IE on the web and in Outlook the toolbar searches within Outlook. The bottom line : like the new online search, Microsoft have made a very good effort to get back in the game.
So what they're saying, is that when it comes installed in with Longhorn, we can't uninstall it?
...I think I'm beginning to figure out Microsoft's plans to dethrone Google.
Do Not Eat iPod Shuffle
if it doesnt include spyware, they are one step ahead of Google in that department
but online - they can't catch up, google have secured themselves the #1 position in the last few years - unless it was a groundbreaking type of search technology, another generic search engine boasting "more relevant results" wont bring the masses
Business Voyeur
The MSN Toolbar Suite integrates directly throughout the OS...
Didn't Internet Explorer teach them that integrating something that connects to the web, like this, into the OS is bad? I'm just waiting for a security hole to pop up and leave even more reason to bash Windows security.
Well, atleast this is optional, unlike IE.
At least Google has announced that it is going to make the effort to get its desktop search to support Firefox, Thunderbird, and maybe other third-party products.
I would be very surprised if Microsoft makes this work with anything other then their products.
Would this also be subject to security concerns like Google's Desktop search, or would it work just like standard Windows Search? Let's hope it's the latter.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
I can't wait for the next generation of viruses which will spawn from this. Is this a recipe for disaster or what:
Just as well. I was tired of hearing about new IE exploits every day. This should break up the monotony.
HBH"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
Has CmdrTaco joined Microsoft's marketing team?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I mean, lots of people jokingly refer to "Outlook" as "LookOut" (i.e. for viruses/etc.)? There is actually a company/product called "Lookout" for Outlook?
/. crowd)... Why would they make the filesystem a database if it weren't to allow searching the whole system in some organized manner? And MS was talking about this stuff LONG before I ever heard of Spotlight... Maybe for once (well, excepting pre-emptive multitasking or true multi-user systems, which Apple was talking about for far too long until Jobs kicked their butts and spurred the creation of OS X at long last) MS got to something before Apple?
;)
Also-- to the people who are pointing out (and/or will point out) that this sounds like Apple's "Spotlight" tech... I personally loathe Microsoft, but I DO recall them speaking about making the entire filesystem one big relational database (and I recall the mixed reactions among the
Of course, this being Microsoft, they probably took the idea from someone else first
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
yeah... but does it run on Linux?!
Like the new online search, Microsoft have made a very good effort to get back in the game.
By buying a company. How like them.
According to this Yahoo is working on something too.
You have a new Outlook with Lookout...
Jonathanjk.com
Remember back in the dotcom hayday, everyone and their brother was rushing out to make a new portal? You know, the all-in-one start page for the browser -- stock quotes, weather, sports scores, yadda-yadda. I think it was an attempt to clone the (then) success of AOL. Search engine firms became media companies. Now, these media companies are trying to get back into the search engine fray.
Why? Because the ad dollars that were once banner impressions from billions of page impressions, are now far cheaper than they were back then (revenues are down from them), and now pay-per-click revenues are super-duper high. Remember, this isn't about making software for the greater good of man, these companies are in it to win it.
So anyway, here we are again. Searching your desktop. Web based mail. Yesterday's AOL is today's Google. Personally, a lot of these tools are overhyped, in my opinion. I really hope that these companies have more forward looking people, instead of just sideways looking (i.e. at competition). Because when contextual text-based ads start losing their value, it'll just happen all over again, and we may be talking about the search engine wars the same way we look back at the portal wars.
.
like the new online search, Microsoft have made a very good effort to get back in the game.
What game is that?
Follow The Innovator?
Sure they are still a monopoly but competition is competition. The only way Microsoft can really dethrone google is if they come out with a better internet search engine. If we get a improved system and outlook search, all the better. I really hope that this gives Linux the kick in the pants it needs for someone to come up with better system search solutions. Find is absolutely terrible in my humble opinion, especially it's tendency to freeze up when you stop a search. Lack of metadata search makes baby Linus cry. Bring me browser wars! Bring me os wars! Bring me search wars! These are the only kind of conflicts in which the consumer benefits, so we might as well encourage them!
Most of their user base is unfortunately computer illiterate. These users don't really know what a program is. They think of everything has buttons and windows. They buy a computer with Windows. They use Internet Explorer because it comes with it. So then 85% of their costomers are using MSIE. Then Microsoft make money selling Frontpage and maybe even ISS.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
It sounds like MSFT are on the defensive, rather than the offensive.
Although now that I think about it, they never really innovated anyway - so I guess they were never truly on the offensive.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
...by buying other companies. Microsoft talks a lot about "their" innovations yet if you look at who they bought over the last 10 years its obvious that almost everything they put out is someone else's product.
btw before you think I'm just some MS hater I guess I should state I'm not against the practice nor Microsoft's products in general. If the end result is a good product then who cares how it was made. Just wanted to point out that its a bit ironic that people expect brand new innovative products from the ground up from OSS yet don't give a single thought to the fact that almost everything MS puts out wasn't developed in-house at first and they rely almost soley on outsiders for many of their innovations and ideas.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Perhaps they dumped WinFS, previously known as 'NT Object Filing System', because this will do most of what it did with less of a hassle in programming and backward compatibility?
And - where is the role of metadata in all of this?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It's nice to know nobody can make a buck in the computing industry without microsoft's ear perking up and moving over to take a slice of the pie.
With the OS, Outlook, and searching integrated, I forsee entire personal mailboxes being accidentally searchable by the rest of the world. The best part will be that's it'll the default configuration.
...if I wanted to read garbage like that, I'd go to \.
I think they learned a lot from bundling internet explorer. They learned that if they tie some specialty app into the OS, bundle it with every Microsoft product, and require people to use it to get MS proprietary content, they can go from a niche player to 95% market share in a couple of years. That tactic worked for IE, worked for Outlook Express, worked for Windows Media Player, it's starting to work for MSN messenger, and it'll probably work for their new search tool, too.
0 1 - just my two bits
cheer microsoft on their bold attempt, as frankly Google Desktop Search blows. Before I get modded -1, troll, let me say I am a big fan of google. I'm just unhappy with google's take on what a desktop search should be.
Let me count the ways in which GDS annoys me:
0. Lack of support for programs I use (Firefox support? Pretty please?)
1. When a a folder has the same name as my search term, google search will display *all* files within that folder. For example if I search for 'doom 3' it won't just list the files called 'doom 3' it will list *all* the files in the doom 3 folder. It would be much more useful if it would only display the folder once as a separate search result, and then only display files called 'doom 3'
2. Inability to only search for filenames *only* - sometimes, or actually most of the time, I want to find a specific file. I know I have created important.doc but when I search for 'important' I get a plethora of results featuring different documents / text files which have the word 'important' within them. Windows' search has done this nicely by giving me the ability to search for a 'all or a part of the filename' and for 'a word or a phrase within the file'. I also have the option to 'look in' which brings me to my next point
3. Inability to search within a folder - because sometimes it is extremely useful to look for *.mp3 in my very disorganized 'thereShouldBeNoMusicHere' folder. Or to look for anything at all in a drive different than C...
4. Wildcard searches - oftentimes I just can't remember how I've saved the file. Was my presentation called group4project.ppt or group4.ppt or G4.ppt? A simple search of *4*.ppt should find the file, where * is a wildcard. Currently I can't do that.
5. No automatic unindexing. I just moved 3000 files from my desktop to another folder. Now whenever I search for any of those files I get two results, one of them pointing to a non-existing location. There's no way in hell I'm removing 3000 files from the index manually, ten at a time.
The generic search that comes with Windows does a much better job, IMHO. I hope they improve on GDS in the future, because I'd like to googlize my computer some more.
Just buy google and get over with it..
I would be extremely surprised if Microsoft would support those, and just make thier desktop search support their own godforsaken applications.
I wonder if there is any off-line search engine like X1, Copernic, or that one, for Windows that support search plugins via some kind of API. So a developer can add e.g. mp3 ID3 tag search, DVD metadata search and other things like that. If MS is going where I think they're going, they'll just drown in the bunch of desktop search engines with nothing new to offer. I can't see why not even Google was thinking of this when they designed theirs. Right, we're supposed to wait for a single company to let me search for what I want efficiently? That feels so... err, stone age.
A feature like that would be great and certainly an idea for Mozilla.org as an upcoming open source project -- read another article here that they were looking into this area.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Whatever they do, I think Google will do better. The internet is a more level playing ground for competition and I think google could use that kind of threat to keep themselves on top. I've seen good days and veryu bad weeks for google searches... the only thing that will keep them as good as they sometimes are is some good old fashion foot racing
"Lookout"...
...
Isn't that the name of their email client?
Ah... no - it's just what I call it.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
I've been running both for a while now. Some observations:
Google Desktop supports Unicode which is invaluable if you use non-ASCII languages, like my wife does. YMMV. However the Google Desktop search is not integrated into the Outlook shell (understandably) nor the Google Deskbar, which I think is an obvious oversight - and suggested as much to Google.
Lookout allows you to index mapped drive letters or network locations, which Google Desktop doesn't. This is great for me where I have documents on a laptop's local hard drive as well as on network shares. I can't quantify it, but I think it has slowed down my Outlook 2003 a little, particularly on start-up. Most hits are returned in less than a tenth of a second. My major gripe about Lookout is that when I move items from my inbox to my PST it stuffs up the index - I know it rebuilds the full index once a month, but more often than not I look for something that has been indexed as being in my Inbox, yet I have since moved it to this month's PST folder. Nonetheless, it gives me a clue what to look for in my PST. I predominantly use Lookout for Outlook at work, and can't really comment on how this compares to using Google Desktop search on a "busy" Outlook mailbox.
Both systems use the CPU power of your workstation to build the indexes when idle. I think this is poor. E.g. you disconnect from the network and go roaming. When you return to the office, you want to find all documents and mails containing 'squeamish ossifrage'. Why should you have to wait for your PC to do the indexing? And does your indexing process "touch" each file? If it does, it could seriously screw up any attempts to archive all old data - everything would look current as every file was being touched by all PCs' indexing programs.
Surely it's feasible to get a master indexing catalogue built from a number of indexing sources. What I would like to see is an indexer for Exchange that indexes each individual mailbox but returns user-specific queries. So when I dock back at the office, I can immediately search for new documents that have been delivered to the Exchange server while I've been disconnected, and indexed on my behalf. Of course, what hits I get returned are unique to me as only my mailbox index is visible to me - as your mailbox index is unique to you. Meanwhile, common areas, such as shared file servers / public folders / web content etc can have their index shared across both of us.
Nonetheless, do not underestimate the joy of being able to use either of these tools and have an instantaneous method for locating a buried document that you know is somewhere on your PC, yet cannot remember precisely where.
Aegilops
updatedb and locate is fine for me.
Whereas if you use M$ windows what do you have at the CLI?
I don't care what M$ comes out with, I defecated on my M$ Windows(oh use that (R) remember? gotta use that (R) when referring to Windows LOL) and buried it in the yard. Every so often I go out and urinate where I buried it in celebration. I love to laugh at Windows (R)etarded users because they need so many extra tools to keep their OS from being hax0red. Gotta love the silly pathetic fucks.
I would be very surprised if Microsoft makes this work with anything other then their products.
This is just a defensive move by Microsoft. They are responding to initiatives from non-Microsoft groups because they don't like the non-Microsoft groups to have relationships with customers that don't require Microsoft. So they work this defensive Me Too strategy short term.
Long term, Microsoft needs to get the customers to buy LongHorn and OfficeHorn and Otherhorn products.
The LongHorn timeframe, 2 or 3 or 4 more years, is difficult for Microsoft. They don't have a particular reason for customers to care about Horns or not Horns.
All we really know at this point is that computer users care about security, privacy, trust, reputation, community, support, standardization and TCO.
From http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=22288&catego ry=main
p df&pub=ACM
"Microsoft didn't buy this company for its technology. Microsoft Research already has a very good tool called Stuff I've seen which searches Outlook mail and desktop files/ IE histroy etc.
See http://research.microsoft.com/copyright/ac...nal.
It seems that Lookout already has some patents on desktop search technology.
Microsoft's work was independetly developed. They are just protecting their back from patent litigations."
Promoting innovation. Yeah, right...
i don't get it. what's up with search being the "holy grail" of computing? kindly explain this to me. is everyone really this disorganized that everyone has to search for their own files now?
if everyone really wants to be able to search their stuff, it might be better to do away with files for documents completely. why not just make a real database (not fs database like winfs or whatever other bullshit they were thinking), where all documents, presentations, spreadsheets, are inputted into a real sql database as xml? maybe allow each application to create their own "database" with their own "table" with their own specific fields. then allow all these to be searchable by whatever search engine can be integrated with whatever desktop interface you may have. let's do away with files completely if people just keep on losing them, and have to search for them.
actually from reading what i just typed, it sounds like how a palm works. each app has their own searchable resource files. i don't really know how that will work with the stuff people type though. and images are another issue. most of the time, i find organizing pictures the toughest. documents are easy to categorize, but pictures, that's really a tough one.
"I like the smell of Competition in the morning... Smells like... Victory" - for the consumers that is.
(apologies to the Francis Ford Coppola's The Apocalypse)
The bottom line : like the new online search, Microsoft have made a very good effort to get back in the game.
Considering how their beta search is keeping up now, they should be working a bit harder. But that's not the point. Thing is, I don't really like the parts of the stories which sound like "Then, on a sunny day's morning when our stock began to rise, Microsoft bought up some solution and suddenly became our competitor. That's when we started loosing grip."
In spite of this, I really think this will turn out to be something good. Don't get me wrong, I'm not rooting for MS here (never would). I just think this will make people like the good fellas at Google work harder and provide us greater solutions. Good competition will never hurt us (i.e. users).
I just hope that this indeed will be "good" competition. I also hope that integrating MS desktop and web solutions into Windows (next logical step from MS as we know them well) won't make others sue them, bacause that would make the others loose money and loose focus on development, thus making MS happy.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Google didn't invent desktop search (look at ON Location) any more than they invented internet search (Lycos, of course).
Microsoft? More like Moogle.
As it is, I wouldn't trust any company (including Google) with total spidering access to my local files, if there is any kind of a link out to the Internet. Here for the first time you are bridging your entire local contents with the greater "marketing" Internet out there.
And on top of it, Microsoft has shown us that they feel things that we know should be user level applications are instead hooked right into parts of the OS. I would definitely not install something like this, I think there would be too many possibilities for my sensitive data to escape where I don't want.
I currently use a local file searching tool, but I'm comfortable using it because it contains NO networking code. There is no way the local information can get to the Internet.
the marriage of the hackable and porous OutLook with a technique for rapidly indexing desktop contents will eventually produce an exploit that lets a hacker find things on your computer by remote control of some fashion.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
IIRC Lookout uses Lucene (or, more accurately) the .net port), so I guess this is a victory for free software,
:-)
It's also worth looking at Beagle, a similar project for Gnome using lucene.
Congratulations to the Lucene developers. Taking over the desktop
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
If Microsoft make achieving technological parity with google a priority long enough, they will. Even if google keeps innovating, the capabilities of the two search suites will eventually be close enough that 95% of users out there won't know the real differences. Now, the real quandry is whether googles current dominance of the search industry to the point where people refer to websearching as "googling" will be powerful enough to overcome Microsofts' ability to make their tool the first one new computer owners see. Lazy is a pretty powerful market share.
Am I the only one who doesn't get the point of this new-fangled "Desktop Search" idea? I mean, I tried installing the Google Desktop Search for awhile, but I never actually used it. In fact, I couldn't even think of a use for it. Unless you're hard drive is completely unorganized, or you're on a multi-user computer, I don't see the point of searching for things you should already know you have.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
Although now that I think about it, they never really innovated anyway - so I guess they were never truly on the offensive.
a lot of people around here still find them offensive.
IMHO Microsoft and Apple are both playing catch up, but with the advantage that they own their respective operating systems.
BTW: I don't consider any of these products or the concepts behind them particularly insightful. Just about anyone who uses computers daily in their business could have dreamed up the feature sets. Implementation itself is trickier, but Copernic, X1 and Google all demonstrate that there's no shortage of developers who know how to carry out the harder tasks.
Wow, talk about bad moderation. Moderators, notice the article synopsis: "The bottom line : like the new online search, Microsoft have made a very good effort to get back in the game."
They've made no effort whatsoever. They just stole someone else's idea.
I'll second his statement.
Rather than improving desktop search, they should be searching for a way to sure up the limerock-esque Internet Explorer.
File search programs are handy if you *rougly* know the name of the file or what is stored in the file. I think someone should re-think the way computer information is organized in the first place. Traditionally, we store every thing in Folders and Subfolders. There should be a better way to do this - or at least make it more convienient to browse multiple subfolders in Windows so as not to need programs to search for files. Its over-kill to have a program on the desktop to search data on the web when all one has to do is open up a web browser to a search engine.
Final Cut Pro involved buying an entire project off Macromedia. Mac OS X came from NeXT, essentially. The iPod was made with Pixo technology, although Apple didn't buy the company.
If anything this really just shows a complete lack of innovation on Microsoft's part - not step forward. They were dumb enough to let another company steup in and tell them "your OS search methods stink", and stick it to them. While Google is stated as a very limited desktop search tool - I've had more accuracy with it than any search feature in Winblows thus far. For MS to comeback, hijack another company, and then counterattack is as well as saying "I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you do, bounces off of me and screws to you!" Given that, I'm glad I'm saving up my dollars for PowerMac G5.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
All I need is the ability to find text within all of my Microsoft Office Files quickly and accurately. It's a PITA to have to dig through hundreds of documents to look up a simple fact buried inside one of hundreds of spreadsheets.
At work I often have projects that require several different types of documents (i.e. a spreadsheet of names/addresses, several documents as handouts, a slide show for meetings, e-mails with other task members, etc.). There's no way to link all of these files together besides putting them all in the same folder, and that's not possible for individual e-mails. I need some sort of Project Manager©, and I thought that Longhorn's theoretically relational filesystem could be the answer to my needs. I need Gmail's groups integrated into the filesystem, but without spending hours entering metadata. I want automatic filters to add metadata for me using criteria I select. These filters should work the way that iTunes automagically categorizes my music into folders. I know that all of my wants are possible because I see them in software provided by other parties, and I need Microsoft to realize I have trouble keeping my room neat and can't waste time doing the same on my computer. Computers are tools; the maintenance should not require more instruction than actually using them.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
Beta means thing. How long has froogle been beta?
It's just a word. Sometimes it means something about a product, but in the way Google uses it it means nothing.
Apple's Spotlight isn't technology, it's a software product. The technology itself is various indexing, search, and user interface techniques that have been around for many years.
I find the GDS very useful - yeah, it has glitches, but it's free (on the Windows platform - that's not something which happens too often to useful stuff)...
I'm glad they put it out in beta form as there's no free alternative to GDS (AFAIK).
It's good to see Microsoft playing, "me too" instead of spinning FUD. I remember the days when MS would announce a vaporware technology just so they could stave off competition and play catchup to avoid any loss of market share. However, it looks like MS has slipped a bit and is now playing the "me too" game.
It's really sad that MS should have to do this when they have for all practical purposes an infinite R&D budget. Somone should tell MS that creating a "good" search tool infrastructure with desktop integration is a bit more complex than playing catchup by writing a webbrowser application.
I'm glad to see MS join this competition since it will only serve to make Google even more innovative. I think the Google is going to own the search and webmail market. Maybe it's time for Google to buy Amazon, Ebay, or Yahoo and really put the pedal to to the metal! Go Google! Go Google! Show MS nothing but tail lights!
When Microsoft decides it's time to compete they always have the same MO:
1) Buy a company that is already doing it and doing it fairly well.
2) Rapidly make "improvements" to the software (including whatever adjustments necessary so that it only works well with other Microsoft products) without focusing on security issues.
3) Release it, giving it away for free if necessary.
4) Continue to update and improve it while you drive the competition out of the market.
4) Integrate it into the next version of Windows (again ignoring any potential security issues) to put a final stake in the heart of your competition.
5) Once the competition is gone, move the developers on to something else.
I don't care how good their desktop search product becomes; nobody who uses Windows should ever use it. It'll be crap when it's first released but get better and better. Eventually it will probably be better than the offerings from other companies but have no illusions. If Microsoft is able to gain market dominance, they'll stop working on the product. Of course, by that time it'll be integrated into the OS and there will be a whole host of security vulnerabilities just waiting to be exploited by the script kiddies.
We've been through this before with Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, etc.
... for someone to exploit a security hole in this? I'm only asking because we all know that Microsoft has a habit of shitty/agnostic coding practices. Heh, here goes M$, shooting themselves in the foot again.
Long Live Linux !!!
... M$ has shown over and over again that they are too stupid to learn anything.
Come ON people, did you really think they wouldn't do this? It was only a matter of time...yes, it's only a matter of time, master...I mean it WAS a matter of...I, uh...LOOK! Over there! It's Linus Torvalds! (runs away)
Did you know you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
Give credit where credit is due.
nt
I understand if licensing or patents are involved because then MS would want to own them now instead of geting into trouble later. (Indeed, one of the story links indicate patents are involved: It seems that Lookout already has some patents on desktop search technology. Microsoft's work was independetly developed. They are just protecting their back from patent litigations.)
Also, if MS buys the company then there's less similar competition in the future (the small company already proved it could out-Microsoft Microsoft).
In these cases it wouldn't be about the technology at all.
Any of the 'side effects' are much smaller then the ability for it to increase market share and push out the competition .. Most people just use what came on their pc.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So I can find the uninstaller file very quickly..
Mmm.
It's just a question of time before the defenition of search engines change.
MS search = SEARCH engine.
Google = FIND engine.
-- forget
Windows has had file searching support since the very first versions. It's not like google is the first company to think "hey, it would be nice let people find files". Microsoft is just expanding the functionality of thier existing search application to included a toolbar and new technology because they have some new competition. Isn't that how competition works? You get new features because 2 compeeting products are battling for market share.
I'm happy as long as there's no little animated dog trying to help me out. Or a paper clip. Or an animated einstein rip off.
GUIs are playing catch-up again. "locate" has been around on Unix platforms for, what, 20 or 30 years? And, it does wildcard searches for filenames, ready to jam into grep for content search.
Content could be indexed, but its a bit project specific (so us Unix heads only do it on specific projects, right?).
For the un-initiated, a process runs (typically once a day), and indexes all filenames on your system. You can then get instant answers to "Show me all Microsoft Word documents on my system"
file `locate *.doc` | grep Microsoft
and many other queries. This stuff is PLAIN ORDINARY UNIX/LINUX. Ah well, doesn't help the completely casual user. You know, "If the option isn't clearly presented, it can't possibly be done -- or I just don't want to bother".
More power to 'em, them -- but people PLEASE don't ask when this will be ported to Linux/Unix!
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
THe Lookout program was mentioned a bit back on Joel on Software and interestingly enough, it looks like they used the Apache Foundation's open-source Lucene full-text indexer to create a good search plugin for Outlook.
-Brendan
I think I've heard something about this somewhere...
hang on, lemme use my Google Desktop search to see if I have anything about this....
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
I use Lookout myself. That little search utility simply rocks. You can configure Lookout to index file folders as well as your mailbox. Simple interface and fast results. I recommend that anyone using Outlook give it a try.
Where does this leave the indexing service on 2k and xp? This service was meant to allow you to search for files and the contents of files etc. Will this totally replace the indexing service service? (not that it was of much use, and it always seemed bizare that you could search the contents of each file on your drive quicker than just searching by filename).
You will forget this sig before you next see it
I've already got near instantaneous searching in iTunes, iCal, Mail and the Finder. Safari already has an integrated Google search box. How Spotlight/WinFS is/was supposed to be different is/was quick full-text and metadata searching (IIRC). It didn't explicitly say anything in the Neowin article, but I got the impression that this suite won't do it.
As I said above most of the Apple apps have this (at least the ones where it makes sense). And I believe there's an API available to put it into 3rd party apps as well.
IMHO, it looks like MS is just trying to save face after they dropped WinFS.
is this the reason that XP's built-in search sucks so much? Explorer refuses to search through non-associated file types. Can anyone tell me why this is, what has changed since Win 2k, and how to restore the functionality without requiring third-party tools (or telling me to switch to Linux or OS X since this is a work machine)?
Just to be clear, LookOut allows you to search any directory on your Hard Drive, in all of the typical "MS like" documents (Word, Excel, etc. -- perhaps, even Firefox files??) and text files. From what I've seen, searching is *much* faster than Google Desktop, though indexing does tend to eat up a bit more CPU than I'd like...
All-in-all, it made Outlook much less painful for me to use...
- Hawkeye
"...The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." - Erwin Rommel
Folks, ZOË has been doing a fantastic job of email archiving and searching for some time now. Check it out... it's open source and totally cross platform and will happily co-exist with whatever email client you are already using.
It's such a great system, that it's not uncommon to see comments on the mailing list from users who keep 10's of thousands of emails in ZOË without any problems. I, personally, have email going back to 1995 in ZOË and have back burner plans to copy my old Tapcis emails from the 80's to ZOË.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
I used Lookout for a while, but all it did was make Outlook slower to load. I just wasn't searching for emails THAT often.
.PST files), but still, I just don't search for messages that often. I don't need something that makes Outlook SLOWER.
.EXE or PHP or .PL or dozens of other types. Still waiting for a killer app here.
OK, so part of that is because I only use Outlook to sync with my PDA, but I also use Outlook for email is mandatory. Thousands and thousands of messages (lovely bloated
OTOH, I also have Google desktop and have used it a few times. It works fine for finding pr0n and html files but does nothing for media files,
Hey! Micro$$$$ does'nt have to be better software, it just has to make all competitive software on its platform unusable or difficult to install or use, etc. Look at the recent lawsuit by Novell concerning WordPerfect. These are two excellent programs that the monopolist Novell swallowed up from others. They work fine and do everything that hogosoft$$$$$$$$ wanted 'Office' to do. Usually they do it better and are not so bloated. The only trouble is that they were hard to install in windows. If you used Office and installed Wordperfect or/and Quattro first before installing any 'Office' component, installation routines in the microsoft installer would either disable WordPerfect/Quattro and/or redirect all file pointers to 'Office' use; or it would make WordPerfect/Quattro crash for no apparent reason.
Micro$$$$$ covered up its monopolist' dirty tricks by only having the malware in the installer buried in a 'cabinet' file so nobody could 'legally under the "attempt to discover" clause of the DMCA and related 'acts' passed under the influence of Al Gore'.....find it. They were doing this as early as 'Office 97'. I have a copy of that and WordPerfect 7. I always had to install WP7 last.
So you see, Micro$$$$$$$ does'nt have to have a better product at all. All Micro$$$$$$$ understands is force, and it knows how to use force very well and has practiced it for years. According to their demonstrated actions over decades of time, competition be damned. They will tweak their monopoly operating system, and they will strong arm hardware manufacturers as much as they have to in order to force any product they miscreate into a market share leading position. When MSN gets finally integrated into the new 'longhorn', and it will, there will be no room for any other competing product. The MSN toolbar will be as bad as the 'Xupiter' toolbar and other browser hy-jackers are today...and worse. They will be uninstallable. Redo your operating system, they will re-appear in all their 'glory'.
On top of that, you will have agreed to whatever they do as part of the 'software defect acceptance and agree to be bound and less than worthless limited warrantee' that you click yes to before the microsoft operating sysmalware is even installed. Just try to use another searcher! The MSN product will forward all your data to Redmond's servers anyway, at best doubling all the search times, and at worst.....well think about it.
Well, I wonder if they would have found the guy with the warezed soundforge quicker with the desktop search tool and their ability to capture data.
Just to spite them, why not put files on the desktop with the same meta data as the offending wav files.
Why UNIX?
dashboard . ms is going to be the last to the party. A good overview description can be found here.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
just don't call it 'innovation'
microsoft hasn't innovated anything since pre-dos days...
Gekido's Lair
Google was the first company to do it BETTER, tho. Windows' search tool sucks. I'm not usually an MS basher, but it seems to me here that the only reason they're doing this is because "ooh, look, someone else can do it better, so we need to copy it!"
I hope this microsoft desktop search is faster than explorer's search. I've got 370gb of diskspace with a fair number of files. Running a search in explorer takes up to 20 minutes. Google's desktop search is almost instantaneous... However, I uninstalled it, as I don't like the idea of a search utility logging my internet and chat use. Hopefully microsoft's search won't be as intrusive, or will at least offer the ability to disable intrusiveness.
Microsoft. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
beagle is the offshoot indexing and searching engine part of dahsboard.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Just push all the paper and PC's off my desk and bingo! there's the desktop. Just filling in the forms for the patient office now "A method for the interactive retrevial and reindexing of desktops"
You don't need a lab to make mud.
Sounds like Microsoft's "very good effort to get back in the game", following Google's validation of the market, is built mostly on their monopoly advantages in owning the proprietary OS and apps. Google's smart, funded, motivated, and competitive - their name is literally synonymous with "search". Yet MS has an advantage from inside knowledge that offers them better integration. That sounds like monopoly abuse. If Google is that good with the disadvantage, how much better would they be with the same advantage as a Microsoft search app company? Wouldn't everyone (except Microsoft) benefit from a competitor like Google buying a niche player like Lookout? Even if Google is forced to compete in court as well as the market, like AOL, IBM, Netscape, Novell, and everyone else, why does that same obvious monopoly battle have to be fought every time we innovate a new market? Would't we all be better off with the billions in fines going to engineers instead of lawyers and the government, and the features being sold to consumers rather than judges?
--
make install -not war
Have you ever faced Rover over a 64kb link? No? Well, I can assure you that the idjuts in MS who thought him up haven't either, 'coz if they did, they'd've realised that the dopy dog soaks up all of the available bandwidth, to the extent that you can't get rid of it because you can't keep focus on the controls long enough to disable him. All you can hope to achieve is to shut down the offending app - for your convenience.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
For what I like to do, Ava Find is better. Google's search limits you to AIM, Microsoft products, and Outlook. However, I use OpenOffice.org and Gmail (and I don't want to log my AIM conversations). This is just another attempt by Microsoft to conquer the entire computing market at once.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
I think Clippy is the only thing that MS has never had a problem with, other than generating hate mail! Unfortunately, Clippy has no brains!
Exactly, that's how competition works. You can't blame Microsoft for trying to improve it's product because someone else tried to make something better. That's how we get better products. By your logic, Microsoft could NEVER improve it's search tool, ever, because someone else had made a better one. By my understanding, Microsoft has actually released this search tool with more features then Google has. My guess is that Google will follow suit, and improve thier search tool also. Competition is a good thing.
Yes. Competition is a good thing.
But then again, is it really competition? MS makes MSN's search function just as good or better than Google. It's the default search engine IE uses. So why even bother to use Google any more? So what if they improve?
And this new desktop search tool. It'll find it's way into Longhorn. Screw downloading the Google version!
See what I'm saying? MS sees a good idea, steals it/makes theirs better/whatever, and then makes it impossible for anyone to compete.
One of the things I completely hated about Windows XP's search system, was the daft animted Search ASSistant... Thank goodness I found you could turn it off.. and infact, there is a nice registry setting that lets you change the search window back into win2k style (alot more nicer, as it uses the space it's got more efficiently).
I hope they don't start sticking stupid stuff like that in it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
all the more ironic buying Lookout since internally within microsoft in the mid-90's while we were dogfooding it against the still-being-developed exchange server, outlook (aka Ren, I think, as in Ren & Stimpy) was hatingly referred to as "lookout", as in "look out! it's about to hang again," or "look out! they're about to change the personal store format and you'll never see your old email again," or "look out! you've crashed again halfway through an email and drafts don't work".
n@
he said stuff that was present in XP, that he missed in 2k. I agree: i'm quite happy using Win2K here at work, but i'd love to have cleartype available. it's not, you only get it in XP.
>For example, if you're searching from within Windows Explorer you will search on your PC, in IE on the web and in Outlook the toolbar searches within Outlook.
Who here uses IE?
Must-not-watch TV!