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Microsoft Releases Toolbar Suite
Philipp Lenssen writes "Microsoft today released the MSN Toolbar Suite Beta. This brings true desktop search to Windows (for those who don't have Google Desktop Search or similar software running already) and also includes features like search term highlighting in web pages, auto-completing of forms, and a pop-up blocker."
There is a toolbar for firefox: check here: http://www.firefoxtoolbar.com/
Here's another link: http://googlebar.mozdev.org/
May conflict with other pop-up blockers and cause you to not be able to click on anything at all.
The toolbar has to be on-screen for pop-up blocking to work.
Needs administrator privileges to install.
Includes a plugin to search PDF files.
Includes desktop search.
Currently supports U.S. English only. Don't try to install it on a non-U.S. English version of Windows.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
For the last time, Microsoft promised features found in Google Desktop and Spotlight, years ago as part of Longhorn. There are *plenty* of cases where MS steals ideas, but in this case Google and Apple got to the market first with a product MS promised about prior.
Yeah, I'm aware MS didn't invent the idea, but they certainly didn't steal it from Google or Apple.
Thats funny... isn't MSN Search a... beta? So "final version" = "beta"? Explains a lot!
It will be interesting to see how this compares with Google's DS. I've been using Google's at home since it came out. I tried this one on my work computer. It definitely seemed to do its indexing faster than Google. Like Google, it only indexed when the CPU usage had been low for awhile. Search response also seemed a little better, mostly because of the results-as-you-type feature. It also seemed to do a better job finding music files, including AAC files I ripped with iTunes.
I just downloaded and installed this thing. 4.some megs for what appears to be an IE plugin. There doesn't seem to be the option to make the 'search' bar integrate with the taskbar at all (which was what my initial pre-install impression was).
I will say that I'd half expected for there to be a minimalist appearance. Nay, there's about 10 different buttons on the bar that gets installed in IE, and I was initially pestered with 2 desktop bar-specific nags. Additionally, the damn thing defaults to searching the web, not the desktop.
So I've been sitting here for about 10 minutes waiting for the thing to build an index. The Google Destop Search tool has about 40Mb of files on this machine, and I honestly don't think I've got much more than (if even) 1Gb of files on it. I've run a search for a couple files within the "My Documents" directory, and nothing turned up. There's no indication that the index is being built, or when it might be done, etc.
There also doesn't appear to be must customization ability for the actual search tool, either. Just build, or rebuild the index. No "exclude directory" type stuff.
The additional pop-ups look useful, though, for an IE user. It's all standard fare for a Firefox user, of course. Considering that most people that would likely use such a tool from MS are likely already using Firefox, I'd say chacnes are slim this sees much fanfare.
Can't say I'm impressed. It's got the same intrusive feel of Clippy, with the nice interface of MSN Search. Not impressed in the least.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
What pop-up are you talking about? IE6 SP2 only shows a small notification below the link bar of your current open window, which auto-hides after a few seconds.
Unlikely, as even Microsoft wouldn't consider this a critical update, which is the only thing that AutoUpdate downloads. If they tried that, they'd have thousands of large corporate customers ticked off that this had been dropped onto their systems without their consent.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
No, most corporations use an internal SUS server to distribute Windows Updates. Using SUS, the administrator must first approve the critical updates before they get pushed to the clients. That is, unless some assclown configured the SUS server and makes it auto-approve anything...
The funny thing about that statement is this line on the Google Desktop Search download page:
* Requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+
"...and now I'll have search term highlighting (which wasn't in SP2)..."
You have that the moment you use Firefox. No bloat required.
You misunderstand. It became market leader due in part to being a purely reactive organization.
One might argue that Microsoft cannot innovate to save itself, or you could say that Microsoft fills a huge gap by taking best-of-breed IT concepts and working them into a viable solution for customers.
Depends on who the spin doctors are.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/
"We are delighted to announce that Microsoft has acquired Lookout Software!"
BTW, Lookout works like a charm!
Didn't do that for me, Google toolbar (and Google Desktop) is still there and working fine.
File extensions have been used on the Mac since the first Macs were rolled out. It is just that they haven't been mandatory, and furthermore not limited to three characters. Currently, a file's content can be determined by a) extension, b) magic number, and c) resource fork information. Needless to say, there's no evil_knivel.exe.doc problems on the Mac. Furthermore, file extensions is not a Microsoft invention (Microsoft doesn't invent). IIRC CP/M and predecessors used file extensions, and Billy Boy just copied this method of recognizing file content.
I didn't know this. What's the point? ZIP has limited use on a Mac, since it needs special attention to preserve forks. It is used primarily for raw data, and has so many alternate compression schemes (b2zip, gzip and so on). The Finder is not supposed to do everything.
It is an old feature on the Mac, as is speech recognition, text-to-speech and other technologies.
Right, just that it didn't make sense before Mac OS X, since Mac OS 9 wasn't a multi-user OS.
I dont care for the toolbar (I use Firefox anyway), but the little taskbar search button is quite handy. I just type, and see the results right there. This gets a thumbs up from me, whereas I didn't much care for GDS or Copernic.
I'm sorry, but I have to repost something I posted earlier, in this same thread. I don't deny that the phrase the real first movers have been wiped from the public mind might be (somewhat) insightful, but I'd like some actual refutation to the points which were quoted. Actually, the parent poster is correct (to the extent that I checked). Here are the facts I found (3 minutes, dudes -- not diffucult!):
Actually, Xerox WAS the first photocopier company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photocopier ; TI seems to be a little ahead of Intel for microprocessors (but close!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor ; TI developed the transistor radio, but Sony very much popularized it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio; and so forth. (AOL was a direct competitor with CompuServe, and, in fact, did a lot to popularize it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL). The thing that clued me in was the Xerox comment (since I knew they were the first photocopier company), but, in fact it was mainly your knee-jerk reaction and lack of any real information that made me go look these up.
The original poster is vindicated.
Cheers!
I don't know who was 'first', but Microsoft was founded in 1975. Gary Kildall's CP/M dates back to 1973 or 1974. Digital Research Inc., the company that was founded to sell CP/M was also founded in 1975.
AOL - one of the original online services
CompuServe predates AOL by quite a bit. CompuServe was founded in 1969. The company ("The Source") that would eventually become AOL was founded in 1978.
Intel - first microprocessor company
Sony - first widespread transistor radio company
Texas Instuments was probably the first to develop both these technologies. The microprocessor situation is fuzzy at best. TI's transistor radio predates Sony's by about three years (and Robert Denk's radio may have predated that by another 6 years). Sony's wasn't even first-to-market. That honor belonged to I.D.E.A's Regency TR-1.
Frankly, I don't think there's any 'first mover advantage' in these examples at all. On the other hand, there's a very real ability for the dominant companies to use their marketing muscle to 'rewrite' history in their favor. Few people question the 'fact' that Microsoft was the first software company, or that Intel invented the microprocessor, or that AOL was the first online service.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Sorry, I had an appointment. But I knew most of those, certainly Microsoft (ever heard of CP/M from Digital Research?) and Intel, were in no way the first movers, so that's what jerked my knee.
The original poster is vindicated.
Your own post shows that none of the companies, except perhaps Xerox, was the "first mover". So who is vindicated? Changing the qualification to "first popularizer" is a different question altogether.
I'm just glad Microsoft is right on the bleeding edge of technological innovation. Clearly, they're pushing the envelope, with two fingers squarely on the pulse of the market.
Appreciate this post, I had to kill 200 pop-ups to use slashdot.
Actually, there IS a way... Try the program called "Buzof", from Basta Computing (http://www.basta.com/ProdBuzof.htm). It's an extremely useful utility - it gives you a crosshairs icon which you drag onto the "OK"/"Cancel"/"Whatever the hell" button in any annoying dialog, and the next tme that particular dialog pops up, POOF! Buzof will press that button for you instantly.
Laughter is the best medicine, but in certain situations the Heimlich maneuver may be more appropriate.
Like what should have been in an OS from the start?
I don't remember the pre win95 days, but from Windows 95 onward, MS had a search utility.
The Windows 95 version allowed the following searches:
Its possible to search with several of the above restrictions, but not all combinations are possible.
While it may not have had all the features of unix's find command (and did not have the in-depth filetype understanding of google's desktop search, nor GDS's other capabilities), Microsoft's find command worked well, and worked relatively quickly, even on older machines. For the average Microsoft user, it was probably more than enough.
In addition, Microsoft Office came with a "Fast Find" utility which tended to grind the hard drive to a halt while it periodically indexed Office files. Most people turned it off since it slowed the machine and caused other problems. It may have been useful for searching documents if there was an insane number of them. I never had to search a large number of disorganized office documents, so I am unable to comment on its effectiveness.
They will have tried it, but found (like everyone else thats ever tried to use Windows search) that it completely misses EVERY filetype that doesn't have a handler configured in the registry.
Source code files are a special problem for me using the windows search.
I know they are there, I know they contain certain strings, yet by default, windows search will NOT scan the file.
I've gone into this in detail in previous discussions, but it basically needs a shotgun registry update to tell it to use the default text search handler for all types of files (one reg entry per file extension).
It bugged the hell out of me when I got XP.
liqbase