Yahoo Releases Desktop Search Tool Beta

Rolan writes "Yahoo! has released to BETA their Desktop Search Tool. It has a much longer list of file types that it will search, including compressed files, than the Google Desktop Search Tool. Though, the usefulness of a good number of those file types would come into question for most people."

Comments

Directories

[rwurth]

Yes, but can you specify the directories that it will search?

Re:Directories

[bdcrazy]

Wouldn't the point of this be that you don't care about directories? You just want to find something?

Re:Directories

[AntigonusPiglet]

It's in the FAQ (http://desktop.yahoo.com/faq):

Yahoo Desktop Search ... gives you control to change those settings including:

• Only index files that are explicitly marked for indexing
• Only index specific file types and not index others
• Only index files under a specific file size
• Configure indexing options on a directory by directory basis, including:
• Never index
• Index only filenames and sizes
• Index filenames, sizes, and file contents

Re:Directories

[2674]

What good is searching within a JPEG/WMA file? How would you do it anyway?

Re:Directories

[Anonymous Coward]

EXIF and meta data. Artist/composer/album/year/genre/etc.

Re:Directories

[Anonymous Coward]

EXIF. Most digital cameras use that to store info on how/when the picture was taken and what settings the camera was using. There are other uses as well but you'll have to discover those on your own =)

Re:Directories

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you want images bigger than 200x200 pixels?
or audio media files shorter than 2 minutes?

Yahoo! Says, "Me Too!" -- Again

[savagedome]

Motley Fool has a write up about YDS.

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2005/mft05011117.htm

Yet another desktop search tool

[albn]

MSN, Yahoo and Google have the desktop search tools. Now everybody will follow suit. That's all fair and good, but isn't that why your OS has a "search" tool? I do not see the usefulness of a tool and will open you up to more problems than you need....

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[savagedome]

I wish Google had named their product Google Desktop Find. After it is finished indexing, it doesn't really 'Search'.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Desktop tools index and search quickly

of course outlook had a email search tool but Lookout made searching 1000 times faster by indexing.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[sH4RD]

Hmmm...I assume you mean Windows? Well Windows has a picture editing program, but I don't see you using that do I? Competition == good, almost always. If the search companies want to compete with MS, more power to them. If MS wants to sit back and let the search engines compete, more power to them. In the end a better product will result. You already install your new picture editor when you install Windows, so why not install your new search too? (Oh, and a note: MS is not sitting back. They own MSN after all.)

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[Vombatus]

isn't that why your OS has a "search" tool?

What do you want, something that does the job easily, or the standard windows search tool?

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[EnronHaliburton2004]

That's all fair and good, but isn't that why your OS has a "search" tool?

Well, the built in search tool for Windows isn't very good. It's slow, can't search (Some? All?) compressed files, doesn't have ranked search results, doesn't search your Outlook folders, and I need to turn off the stupid doggie every time I log into a new system.

I haven't used any of these Desktop search tools, but the Google search mechanism is great, and I can definately see it being a useful tools. I won't use it because of the privacy concerns.

I can't imagine why MSN has a desktop search tool... "Microsoft says that Microsoft's built in search tool 'sucks'..."

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[El_Servas]

Mine has been indexing for 3 months now.. :(
(GDS)

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[albn]

Or any other OS I have run across. KDE has a nice search tool, you can use "find" on slackware, and if you really want something to be useful for you,perhaps a BASH file to find your stuff when you need it?

It is not just Windows. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Yes, competition is good, and they can do it all day long if they want to. I just do not see the usefulness of such a tool. If you find it useful, great.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[hal9000(jr)]

Ah, lots of reasons. Windows search tool is pretty limiting. You can search the hard drive. Or I can search Outlook but those are seperate operations. Don't try to go back and read that email while searching Outlook using the Outlook tool because the search will end. And takes for ever to run.

It doesnt' have really good boolean support. Lot's of reasons.

I use Google Desktop because it supports the seraching I need to do (mostly microsoft files and Outlook) and it fast.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[beakerMeep]

Just wait 'till they release a tool that allows you to display pictures right on your monitor. I bet you wont be so smug then eh?

Oh, wait...

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[LiquidCoooled]

Windows xp search is downright broken.
It can "sometimes" bring back the file you KNOW is on the drive, and sometimes completely miss it.
Note, this is only searching by Filename, with no string parsing at all.
MS made lots of areas out of action (windows folder is especially offlimits).

THEN

When you actually switch it to advanced mode, and start to dig in, it kicks you again.
You enter a string contained within a file you know is on your computer, and you ask it to search for it.
Granted, the old 95/8/2000 search was slow, but that was kindof expected when its searching all files.
Windows XP is just as slow, except now it ONLY searches files it has been explicitely told are searchable.
By default, win xp will not search for any code files, any web files, documents and all sorts of other files.
They released a gunshot fix which made it search "some" filetypes, but even today its still broken, especially with new file types.

It was so bad, I first created a registry patching tool which searched and found all unhandled filetypes, then I gave up entirely and wrote a much better code searcher for myself :)

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you used the Google Desktop Search tool or something similiar? It's hard to miss the glaring differences between a standard OS "search" tool and the service that the GDS (or similiar tools) have to offer.

For starters, the standard tools scour your computer each and every time a search criteria is put in. (Maybe not the *nixes and their caching, but that's limited in itself and is an artifact of the OS.) Meaning, search times are not trivial. They can take quite a bit of time.

However, with the GDS and other tools of that ilk, it indexes the files on your hard drive for future reference. This means search results are pulled up in seconds. (I haven't had a search take over a second yet.) Index once, search many. The drawback to this approach is the index will take up space, quite a bit of space depending on how much it has to index.

So for you, the usefulness could be blazing fast search results as compared to the standard search method.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[the angry liberal]

MSN, Yahoo and Google have the desktop search tools. Now everybody will follow suit. That's all fair and good, but isn't that why your OS has a "search" tool? I do not see the usefulness of a tool and will open you up to more problems than you need....

The built in search in Windows XP is slow and does not carry the features these other tools have.

If you are going to be marked Insightful for mentioning "problems" associated with this, I must ask: Does your Linux box have "locate" installed and do you consider it a possible source that "will open you up to more problems than you need"?

You obviously have never set up a desktop search tool for a new PC user. Trust me, they are a godsend to these people. Let's save the "OMG SECURITY HOLE!!!" for when there actually is one, k?

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[scarykitty]

What about the Indexing Service in Windows XP Search? I just turned it on so can't compare, but I sure do like Google Desktop. The web history search is a little freaky and not that useful, so I turned it off.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[scarykitty]

According to the Help: Indexing Service can index the following types of documents in several languages: HTML Text Microsoft Office 95 and later Internet mail and news Any other document for which a document filter is available GDS improves on this how? Is Indexing Service slow?

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[Gregory-Eric]

Although I generally agree with you, I could not avoid the temptation, and have recently downloaded these 'tools' to test them out.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[Augusto]

Most people don't know how to use the MS indexing service the right way, plus it's number of file types is very limited.

Re:Yet another desktop search tool

[scdeimos]

Ever tried to use Windows Search/"Find Files and Folders" to find text in even simple Unicode .txt files? It doesn't work, although commandline FIND works every time.

No amount of complaining to Microsoft has seen this condition change since Windows NT 4.

Finally!

[solowCX]

I can search my collection of MacWrite II files!

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Ichitaro is still quite persistant in Japanese desktops, so... yeah! nice!

Re:FINALLY!

[lukewarmfusion]

When I was studying in Japan (just a couple of years ago), I saw nothing but MS Office anywhere... and as Wikipedia's entry on it notes, the latest version (as of July) was Ichitaro 13.

Ichitaro 5 is probably a late 80s-early 90s release. I doubt it has much, if any, market presence.

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bleh, I still see it around...
There's actually quite a big community around it, mostly with grannies and non geeks, it's still the default bundle on some pc's.

It's last version is Ichitaro2005...
http://www.ichitaro.com/2005/inde x.html

Re:FINALLY!

[fbjon]

Right :)

But note that it searches EXIF tags too! Now that is useful.

Re:FINALLY!

[-kertrats-]

sarnath'd.

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

excellent, now i don't have to use dir /s to find stuff. this stuff will set the world on fire! yawn. ;p

FINALLY!

[lukewarmfusion]

Finally, someone has put out a desktop search tool that will index my JustSystems Ichitaro Versions 5.0 files!

adobe?

[pnrgi]

PDF is the only one i wanna see

Re:adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF is on that yahoo list. MSN also does PDF if you install the proper ifilter (From here)

Re:adobe?

[Dink Paisy]

I wouldn't mind seeing InDesign or GoLive in there, since both can legitimately contain lots of text. I'm a bit surprised to see Photoshop and Illustrator in there, but the support seems pretty useless since Photoshop support is version 4 only (current version: 8) and Illustrator support stops at version 9 (current version: 11).

The inclusion of lots of old DOS formats seems pretty gimicky (as opposed to useful), although it seems they just took whatever file formats the people they licensed the technology from support. Perhaps there is a legitimate reason for a more specialized search tool to support all those obsolete file types.

Honestly...

[rainman_bc]

I find this desktop search too be a lot of hype and it's a tool I'm not all that interested in - the cost is too high. Open up the security of your machine to some external source... Not good IMO... Your security is as strong as its weakest link (granted in my case it's Winodws)...

Re:Honestly...

[albn]

I have to agree with that. If somebody is really interested in a web front end, could you just write something in your favorite language and at least know what you wrote?

Then at least you can restrict access to only your machine. Again, why have that when you have a "search" tool already there.

Re:Honestly...

[rainman_bc]

Not only that, but what the heck's wrong with Microsaoft's index service that runs on XP? Yeah, it's limited, but it's more secure than sending information all over the net...

Re:Honestly...

[Xenna]

Google's desktop search does *not* send your information all over the internet. It only seems that way to the clueless. Yes, I guess they're guilty of overestimating their customers.

Re:Honestly...

[rainman_bc]

Yes, and neither does the toolbar.

Thanks but no thanks. Call me paranoid, but I have no need to trust in google like that.

If I can find a replacement for google groups, I'd gladly give up my google usage.

Re:Honestly...

[Xenna]

I don't know about your PC usage, but I regularly trust companies and individuals by installing their software on my PC's/servers. Like it or not, in practice, you have to trust some people.

Google doesn't seem like such a bad guy to me. Being paranoid can be good, but it's more important to have a realistic view of risks and the parties involved.

Re:Honestly...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

You do realise that webbrowsers can access local files, and even make connections to local webservers that refuse to connect to outside clients, right?

Re:Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're paranoid.

Cool

[durtbag]

I'm still waiting for CoolWWWSearch to come out with their desktop search utility.

Usefulness

[papadiablo]

While it's an interesting subject to explore, I'm not convinced of the usefulness of this product. I installed the Google desktop search when it first game out, used it for about a week, and then stopped. Usually I know where things on my computer are, and don't need to search for them. But if I do need to search for them, chances are I will just use whichever application is appropriate to search for them. For instance, if I'm in Outlook and I want to find a mail about something then I'll search in Outlook. I don't want to switch to a browser to find emails. I don't know how applicable it would be for me to want to search through both email and other documents for the same thing. Anybody have some counter examples to share?

Re:Usefulness

[hal9000(jr)]

Yep.

I use Outlook and I can search for and locate Outlook emails in about 2 seconds. When I use Outlook search, I have to wait until it searches every single email and them presents them to me and here is the kicker, I can't do anything else while Outlook is searching otherwise the search stops. I have a couple of 1000 emails (I tend to keep deleted email for a long time and I rarely clean out my in box).

Another use is that I have alot of files for work in My Documents that I refer back to often as far as a year or so. No amount of organizing is going to save me time locating stuff.

The point is, computers are good at indexing and searching, I am not, so let the computer do the work.

Re:Usefulness

[dakirw]

The problem with Outlook search is that it can be incredibly slow if you have a bit mailbox. The search options are also limited.

Going with Google search is a lot faster in this case. It's also convenient to see all possible results in one search location.

Of course, there are security issues involved, but that's another story.

Re:Usefulness

[MrEnigma]

The answer to this is Lookout for Outlook.

Basically does google type searching, very fast, and it adds right in. I use it almost daily.

http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/

Re:Usefulness

[starrsoft]

I also installed it right after it came out, but it wasn't useful to me, so I uninstalled it a couple of days later. It didn't search Thunderbird.

Re:Usefulness

[jalefkowit]

I agree, Lookout makes Outlook practically tolerable. In fact, Microsoft thought so much of the Lookout team that they bought the company and turned what used to be a for-pay product into a free download.

Additionally, many of the Lookout team are supposed to have worked on the new MSN Toolbar for Outlook, which is supposedly quite good (though I have not had a chance to try it myself yet).

Re:Usefulness

[johnnliu]

I find it a lot quicker to find an Outlook email with Google than with Outlook...

Re:Usefulness

[fbjon]

The search in M2 (Opera) is really fast btw, it seems to index every mail as it is received, and presents the possibilities as you type.

Re:Usefulness

[matusa]

I think it would find most use if it was given an easy API; obviously most of the time you say 'oh I want to start working on ______', and you know where it is; the on the fly stuff--inserting images, tracking down headers, reading docs, checking some email for a spec: little files needed for something larger, which could have littered your hard drive for years in who knows what locations--THAT is where I believe this would find greatest use, and hence wants to be closely integrated into programs (enhanced file selection dialogs for instance).

Re:Usefulness

[NeoSkandranon]

I was doing an interview with a friend of mine for a school grade (i was being the interviewee) via AOL instant messanger and her computer crashed (a mac. I giggled) and she lost the session. had google desktop not archived it then the whole thing would have been lost up to that point and we would have had to start over.

Mostly what I use the google desktop search for is going through instant messanger convos to find a particular link, or website, or what have you. I also use DeadAIM, which can log chats, but its search utility is pathetic as far as UI is concerned, so the GDS works better for me.

Re:Usefulness

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody have some counter examples to share?

Using Apple's Spotlight for the past few months has proven to me that the *concept* is brilliant. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft's *implementations* all suck, in different ways and degrees. Most importantly, they have shitty ass shitty shit shitty interfaces compared to Spotlight.

Yes, using your browser to search for local files ist stupid. Using a proprietary toolbar that's branded with your lame-ass ISP is almost as bad. Spotlight's API is very flexible -- I didn't like one particular thing about Apple's interface, and so I wrote my own with most of the same capabilities, in an afternoon. My company integrated it into our app in practically no time. It's much, much, faster than our old search. And much simpler.

This kind of tech is useful, but "Me, Too!" entries like Yahoo's aren't showing it very well.

Re:Usefulness

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously had not worked on 49 different projects in the last 10 years...

Re:Usefulness

[Anonymous Coward]

Counter example would be to index your company network with all the technical documentation and do a search in hundreds of Word and Excel docs, although direct indexing of specific locations is not supported with Google Desktop

Re:Usefulness

[Cato]

I used to use Lookout and it was OK, but much slower (probably because it uses .NET Framework) than Google Desktop (GDS). The main benefit of Lookout is that it makes it easy to search for specific attachment types etc.

Our IT dept claimed Lookout was hitting the Exchange server very hard, which seems unlikely given its indexes are on the client PC, but who knows...

Re:Usefulness

[dakirw]

True, I've taken a look at Outlook. It's not a bad tool for searching within Outlook. The native Outlook search tool is pretty slow. However, my personal preference was to go with something like GDS. It's been handy to be able to do a relatively comprehensive system search, including documents, especially when I was searching for project documents too. Now if only GDS would allow me to select the directories to search from...

Forgot something?

[mscnln]

They spend their time deciphering file formats that haven't been used for 10 years, but they don't include AbiWord or OpenOffice whose file format is open??

Re:Forgot something?

[KillerCow]

They spend their time deciphering file formats that haven't been used for 10 years, but they don't include AbiWord or OpenOffice whose file format is open??

They probably bought someone else's stock library.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some 1st year computer science student's half-assed Knuth-Morris-Pratt implementation can search any friggin file format that has ever or will be invented... so I don't understand what this means...

Re:So?

[delphi329]

so you want to do a full hard disk scan everytime you want to search something? desktop search is all about indexing, there is hardly any relevance here, and usebilities.

OpenOffice.org/StarOffice

[kosmosik]

I can't understand why it does not index OOo/SO documents? Those formats are *open* and well documented. Or FireFox/Mozilla bookmarks/mail/history - it is also open and documented - I bet the community is also willing to help when they (Yahoo developers) have some issues with that. Also probably it is more common than some obscure DOS editors...

In my office we use only OOo (but on Windows) FireFox and Thunderbird - we have crafted some rather nice services including central databases with LDAP export to email clients, custom web apps running exclusively with FireFox (XUL-based), OpenOffice.org is connected to databases also, all server infrastructure is running Linux (Fedora) and lowlevel stuff (DNS, routing, FW etc.) is working on OpenBSD...

So - having desktop search tool that will allow to index that (OOo/Mozilla) will be usefull to us. Todays offering simply suck as they go indexing only some expensive and crappy formats that some expensive and ureliable software produces...

Re:OpenOffice.org/StarOffice

[danielcole]

can I please work in your office? please!?!

Re:OpenOffice.org/StarOffice

[stg]

Have you actually seen the documentation of Firefox's formats?

The history file, for example, is spectacularly awful. Check out https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24143 8
(not a link since bugzilla won't accept Slashdot as a referrer) - "please make history.dat easier to parse (i.e., not Mork)"

Some other references to the format:

http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/arch/mork/primer.t xt
http://jwz.livejournal.com/312657.html
http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html

Re:OpenOffice.org/StarOffice

[jambarama]

I've used Copernic for a while (since the comparison on http://slate.msn.com/id/2111643/) and it'll do star office, open office or anything else you want. By default it searches firefox history (I don't use thunderbird so I can't vouch for it's ability there). I have found it quite effective for OOo though.

I don't use it now just because I know where my stuff is, but it was fun to mess around with. Give it a shot here: http://www.copernic.com/.

Re:OpenOffice.org/StarOffice

[bestadvocate]

>>" I can't understand why it does not index OOo/SO documents?"

actually it says that you can index
"StarOffice Write for Windows and UNIX Version 5.2 (text only)" in the format list. as well as calc files and such, so maby that even means open office support? If not now then easily later?

I'm a big google fan, but I am giving this product a shot.

Re:OpenOffice.org/StarOffice

[MadChicken]

Try it, OOo and SO works, though they say "text only" whatever that means.

It even indexed my mapped network drive even though there was no notice of it in the options.

No Firefox/Thunderbird though...

Re:OpenOffice.org/StarOffice

[tatafornow]

The Mozilla history file format (i.e. Mork) is far from being fully documented.

Does anybody knows how to read it?

Firefox Cache?

[cca93014]

Has anyone found a win32 search tool that indexes your browser cache? Is that not probably the single most useful potential feature of these tools?

If I want to search my email/My Documents/messenger history I can do that either with the appropriate client or a basic file search (albeit not indexed, but normally that's not an issue).

Why are the search providers not addressing page cache/history? Is there a firefox plug in that achieves this? I just want a "look in pages" checkbox next to the history search field really...

Re:Firefox Cache?

[prostoalex]

Google Desktop Search does it.

Re:Firefox Cache?

[delphi329]

Make suer you really want it. If you can search your history, someone else can as well.

Re:Firefox Cache?

[cca93014]

Does it handle firefox history?

Re:Firefox Cache?

[prostoalex]

They did not when they first launched it, but now they do.

Re:Firefox Cache?

[damiam]

Only if you give them the password to your account, in which case you have bigger things to worry about.

Not this...

[riteshm]

.. I want a Yahoo Blogger or a Yahoo Orkut! Things to integrate with my Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo groups.

what, no OOo?

[sootman]

C'mon, it's gzipped text, what could be easier?

Maybe the guys who did the filter for "StarOffice Write for Windows and UNIX Version 5.2 (text only)" never heard of OOo? :-)

Re:what, no OOo?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed it. Tell it to index ".sxw" files and it will search them and even display them in its preview pane. I don't use the OO spreadsheet or presentation software, so I can't say whether it would work with them.

It even searches the Thunderbird inbox, draft box, etc. (what you get in the preview pane is not a single matching document, but the entire inbox file with the keyword highlighted; I think it should be useful to at least narrow down the search within Thunderbird).

Re:what, no OOo?

[MadChicken]

What could be easier? Actually trying it out!

It works fine.

w00t

[tuxter]

Google - "w00t"
MS - "w00t"
Yahoo - "w00t"
Google - "Ah, fuck it!"

If Google were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge...

[turnstyle]

nuff said? ;)

and, fwiw, Google should lose that "I'm feeling lucky" button.

Lacking

[Docrates]

What I need is for these tools to look into email headers, so that if I'm looking for information regarding "contract negotiations with Xerox" it will look into the "to:" line in the message header (@xerox.com) even if the message doesn't mention the company's name. The fact that this feature's not there yet has been the source of at least 50% of all failures by google desktop to find what I'm looking for. Yahoo doesn't seem to fix this either.

And before all those "what do you need this when you have the windows search tool" posts start popping up... two words: indexing and content (as in the content of files, not just the filename.

Re:Lacking

[bigberk]

My solution to this is pretty damn simple (and platform independent)... I archive all my emails to individual files where the file name is composed of the Subject, To/From address, and time stamp. So I can search for any of my communications, on any platform, just by looking through a directory listing. Efficient, fast. This is also the format used by the jbmail mail client for archiving emails.

Re:Lacking

[Clover_Kicker]

grep -i to:.*xerox\.com ~/Maildir/cur/*

HTH, HAND.

Re:Lacking

[papadiablo]

And before all those "what do you need this when you have the windows search tool" posts start popping up... two words: indexing and content (as in the content of files, not just the filename.

The built in Windows search tool allows you to search content of files.

Re:Lacking

[damiam]

Only plain text files, though. It's no good with binary formats like MS Office.

Re:Lacking

[kulack]

I'm biased based on my experiences with these tools. I love them.

I assume Yahoo searches those headers. I just validated that X1 search finds the host.domain in the to header on my system.

Though I haven't actually used the Yahoo search tool, Yahoo recently did an agreement with X1 and I'm a user of X1 Search (http://www.x1.com). The user interface looks very similar. I'm guessing the underlying engine and application is the same. As far as I'm concerned, X1 search stomps all over Google desktop search.

I removed Google desktop search after driving X1 search for several weeks.

I've only got about 400,000 files including email/attachments indexed because I don't do my entire machine. I use the many additional file types, the more thorough settings/customization and the far better search user interface (I.e. condense more information on one page, search in document contents, then allow filter/search in any of the columns among the hits like path, extension, from, to, cc, bcc, etc).

The problem I see is that the Google brand plus the fact that many people just don't need as much search function to be productive.

Tools like this can really change the way you work. You find ways to optimize your taking and keyword generation in files all over the place on your hard drive. Recovering information becomes trivial. Unfortunately, you also tend to stop studying a little earlier than you normally would. It can be sort of a bad trend as you actually "offload" some of your memory to the machine.

Why the hype.

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Namazu and other full-text indexing tools handle this a long time?

The name's Light... Spotlight

[xcfx]

Spotlight will simply own them... the pleasures of a Mac... a never ending experience.

Re:The name's Light... Spotlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuq Qu3 F4nB01

File type list sounds fishy

[greppling]

If you list support for "executables", aehm, doesn't that meant that the search tool just does the indexed equivalent of 'strings filename | grep "searchterm"'? That makes me wonder about the quality "support" for some of the file formats, too.

Re:File type list sounds fishy

[Myen]

It could be the file version stuff... (VS_VERSION_INFO or whatever; the stuff that shows up when you go to file properties in Windows)

Great picks

[zackeller]

Great, a hundred DOS formats that haven't been used since DOS 1.1, but no Rar format.

Did they outsource this to a company who makes conversion programs or do it inhouse? It's the worst mix of random formats I've ever seen.

Move along folks, nothing to see...

[waimate]

The Yahoo product is just the old X1 .. nothing new here, move along folks.

All these products have one thing in common - they're aimed at very basic searching suitable for the home user. They're not professional grade search products, like for example, ISYS. There's a world of difference between a freebee home product and a professional tool, both in terms of feature set and price point. We compete against free search tools every day of the week, and beat them routinely. The only time we don't is when the 'customer' is looking for a free tool to search through his recipe collection and Outlook Express in-tray.

There's two different product-spaces going on here.

Re:Move along folks, nothing to see...

[grazzy]

If you're so sure about that, how 'bout you give me a free copy of this 'isys' to let me try it?

Re:Move along folks, nothing to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the site he linked. There's a feature-limited trial version.

what you say?!?

[sootman]

I just RTFA (I know, I know)--why is this the first I'm hearing about AskJeeve's desktop search?!?!? :-)

What is wrong with find?

[beforewisdom]

What is wrong with just using find on *nix or MS's search tool that comes with windoze?

Re:What is wrong with find?

[bigberk]

The problem is that most people fail to use descriptive directory and file names. If you use very descriptive file names, you will find that you can efficiently locate any file you need without resorting to a nasty/expensive file content cataloging operation. I'm working on a cross platform file search tool that is optimized for finding files by file name; faster than any of these 'desktop search' programs of course.

Re:What is wrong with find?

[delphi329]

because there are certin things you can use find to get the results: mails, attachments, photos exif info fields, ...

Re:What is wrong with find?

[JoshRosenbaum]

I think the problem is related to the searches taking so long. If I could type in part of a filename and have the results come up as fast or faster than a page comes up on google then I think that'd be good enough. (Better yet, display the results for me as I type!) I've thought about writing a tool to do this, but haven't really had the time. (I'd also want to search around for one first too.)

I believe 'locate' on Linux does something similar to this, however I have not seen a perfect solution on Windows. (Haven't looked either. ;) )

Re:What is wrong with find?

[DrEasy]

Desktop search tools create an index of your files' content which makes searching files almost instantaneous.

Re:What is wrong with find?

[JoshRosenbaum]

Just so you guys know, I've tested the Yahoo Desktop Search, because of a post later on in the comments that mentioned that you could index by only filename/size. Yahoo Desktop Search is pretty customizable, and while not quite as simple as I'd like things, it's usable. It also does find as you type, which is cool. I've scheduled it to reindex at 4:30am everyday. So basically it does mostly what I mentioned I wanted in my parent post. (I'd just like to have a simpler interface similar to windows explorer search.)

-- Josh

open source?

[weighn]

this isn't meant to be a troll, but has work begun on an open source desktop search tool?

A quick peek at sourceforge makes me think no.

Re:open source?

[naugrim]

Beagle is the closest thing out there that I know of for open source. It isn't web based but when it works properly (it's still in development) it is supposed to be able to search bookmarks, email, IM logs, etc. similar to how these desktop search programs work.

Re:open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Jesus!

Re:open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that I'm out of college and I have a job, I'm beginning to realize this more and more... Do open source projects just copy the features that closed source applications provide? ...after the company producing such closed source code finishes spending X millions to research?

Do open source projects start only as copy-cats? Then the innovation comes from big companies (ahem, IBM, RH) after the project shows a hint of market play?

I'm still not getting it. People are paid to work on closed source software. People are paid to work on open source software. OSS and CSS are in the same moral camp. It's a capitalistic endeavor.

Then again, I guess there is no open source spyware. Maybe someone should get to work on that. Then you can trust it, because the source is open.

Re:open source?

[burns210]

There sure has.

Re:open source?

[kousik]

Beagle is what you want. And best part is, you can use it. Today.

Re:open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do open source projects start only as copy-cats? Then the innovation comes from big companies (ahem, IBM, RH) after the project shows a hint of market play?

Because innovation is very hard. Copying is work, often hard work, but innovating is harder still.

Don't believe me? Try creating an open-source project that's innovative and useful... today. Go on, we're waiting...

Easier to say than to do isn't it.

Yeah, I know, you're busy, why doesn't somebody else do it.

Almost a ported DOS app.

[MLopat]

Yeah has simply licensed this software from Idealab, which is the company that makes X1. People that are familiar with X1 know it was the successor to Lotus Magellan. It'll be an okay desktop search engine, but Idealabs already admits that it doesn't have the power to be in the business market, so it will continue to develop its X1 product for its potential business customers.

Yeah, competition sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why software patents are taking off. It's best when we only have the one implementation!

Clean interface

[g_braad]

YDS has a very clean interface with a nice large preview pane, something i disliked in Copernic (small and cluttered at the bottom). Although, I don't think it is the best... it has no specification of which files to index and where from?! i can't specify the directories and probably it also always index Outlook and Outlook Express??? I don't use it.

On un*x/linux (mono) I like Beagle very much... it can become VERY promising.

Re:Clean interface

[g_braad]

It does have directory specification:

Tools -> Options -> Indexing -> Files -> More Indexing Options

Yeah, what's wrong with "Find Files..."?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well?

MOD PARENT FUNNY, NOT OFFTOPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

(finshes the line)...Yahoo would follow.

Insensitive clod mods! You wouldn't know humor if a desktop search engine hit you in the forehead!

WordPerfect support

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone who does a fair amount of consulting for a law office, I have to tell you that WordPerfect support is key. WordPerfect is much bigger in the legal sector than it is in the rest of the market. The problem I've been noticing from my users lately is that they have to search a large corpus of WordPerfect documents and they don't have any tool like this with which to do it efficiently. Unfortunately, Google Desktop Search does not support this.

Too little, too late

[mboverload]

Yahoo has already fallen out of favor. With their BLOATED website and TONS of multimedia ads (big bandwidth for even broadband) I have not used thier search in at least 5 years.

Re:Too little, too late

[g_braad]

Too bad, since they have a REALLY good search engine on http://mysearch.yahoo.com/ . It is still a beta, but for quite some time have also have a slim down http://search.yahoo.com/ which also works with the googlepreview extensions for firefox. and no, they don't use the google databases anymore, since Yahoo! also owns Overture and AllTheWeb.

proof of concept?

[Antonymous Flower]

I'm not sure I understand what yahoo or google have to gain from this product. It appears to me this is more a proof of concept than a tool. Could this be the groundwork for some future invasion of privacy?

Re:proof of concept?

[bestadvocate]

>> I'm not sure I understand what yahoo or google have to gain from this product

Lots of reasons,
for google for instance, their desktop search just gives you one more reason to always go to google.com as a one stop solve all everything answer.

In the end its about control over the average computer and the average computer user. create a monopoly and your going to make a lot of money, even if its a free product.

Then again perhaps your right, and the power percived in the value of an advanced search desktop tool will become just another bad guess, like the "portal" builders.

Re:If Google were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

[SUB7IME]

But then the search for 'French Military Victories' would be so bland.

Firefox support????

[dclaw]

Why is it that neither the Google or Yahoo! desktop search programs index Firefox pages? I mean, Google screwed up the first time by not putting it in, and then Yahoo! still doesn't include it, yet includes all these archaic formats that hardly anyone ever uses anymore. And if people did use them, they wouldn't exactly be the ones you'd see installing this tool in the first place.

Link to google

[mboverload]

Thanks for the link to google in the description. Major props

*rolls eyes*

Is it just me...

[redmond_herring]

Or is everyone jumping on the "Beta" bandwagon?

Re:Is it just me...

[bestadvocate]

the pendulum is swinging man, before the culture says its best to clame your product is super advanced and bug free by saying it in say version 8 on first release, now people want you to say "this is good for a beta" so they call it beta. Open Source programers with high class products have been running this way for years (because its easyer to shrug of complaints?)

ps
hazah for finaly GAIM being declaired in its 1.0 stages. Perhaps the open source pendulum may swing the oposite dirrection of the rest of the software world?

Google is a joke...

[mrawl]

...they don't even let you choose an installation drive, so I can't use it because my C drive hasn't got 1.5 Gb spare. How absolutely pathetic is that?

How useful are these tools?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep files on my computer better organised than stuff in real life - directories are organised, email is routed into separate folders. Having never used a desktop search tool (and being fearful of installing crap that I'm never going to use - or that refuses to uninstall), I can't imagine using such a tool would be because I don't see the need for one.

So my question is: has anyone tried these tools and actually found them useful? Or are they really just hype? Do the really save you time - and have they changed how you work?

Re:How useful are these tools?

[vkt-tje]

Well, in one word: Yes. I used to use the winblows search tool a lot. It gave me loads of time for coffee and disturbing friends over the phone. Now, whenver I'm looking for something (file/mail/webpage) I know I received/saw in januari 2001 and contained keyword "foo". it takes me a couple of seconds to find it. It has allready (I've only been using GDS for a couple of weeks) saved me et least twice of writing something one of my predecessors has written before: instaid of diving into the editor whenever somebody asks me to write some code to this or that, I first search this huge pile of junk that is called a code archive and often it turns up nice things. I agree with other ppl here that if you organise your pc well, there is no need for such tools. But in my position, where I "posess" a sh*tload of files that was compiled by many different persons over time, It really helps.

Copernic Desktop Search

[Anonymous Coward]

works very nice for me - you can fill in what file types to search and it's very fast. Google is behind the times, try it;

http://www.copernic.com/

Try searching lots of PDF's

[OldBaldGuy]

I find X1, the underlying search engine very useful. Its Outlook search is much faster than the native one. If you have a large collection of PDF files (e.g. technical references) its very simple to find all papers that refer to a particular paper, or that use a phrase, etc. Basically its as fast as I can type. Similarly for searching code files (you can add file types and search just those.) Great for finding that (commented) code fragment that you wrote last year!

OS should support indexing first

[mrkite00]

First things first. The thing is pretty and useful to some extent, but the OS (windows, linux...) should support indexing files in the first place. Like tagging your photos about your brother. Then you could search "brother" and find photos, email, documents etc...

I know Microsoft are working on WinFS and I've seen somewhere a project for gnome. Anyone knows how those projects are doing?

Let me search my Source Code!

[kevlar]

All I want to be able to do is search all the source code files on my machine. You currently can't do that with any of the desktop search apps out there other than windows built in search (which takes decades).

Re:Let me search my Source Code!

[Myen]

Copernic lets you add file extensions to search as plain text; I'm using that now.

GDS (as of when I tried it last week) doesn't want that, so I can't seem to add *.in and *.js... That and it wants admin privileges (I'm one of those weird people using a non-admin account by default), which is just annoying.

Re:Let me search my Source Code!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I use copernic currently (successfully) to search thru source code.
Stopped using GDS almost within two days after installation.

Re:If Google were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

[calculadoru]

not only that, but Firefox would lose one of its most useful features. when I type a single keyword into the location bar, and it takes me where I want to go (in 99% of cases) it feels GOOD.
so the feeling lucky button stays then.

I'm disappointed

[PoprocksCk]

I'm very disappointed in Yahoo! Up till a couple of years ago, I always saw them as sort-of a platform neutral company. Even though they did it in an arguably "evil" way, I always appreciated that the vast majority of their games ran as Java applets, and were cross-platform. Recently though, I've noticed that they've begun to loosen that, which worries me.

And now they've confirmed my worries by releasing this: a mere copycat of Google's search tool. They seem to have copied it right to the very last detail; notably, no support for any OSes other than Windows. I know it would be more difficult, but it would not be impossible to write a Java-based tool that accomplishes the same thing on many OSes.

At this point, Yahoo! can't afford to be a copycat: they have to reach a market that its competitors are not.

Re:I'm disappointed

[Anonymous Coward]

Java-based tool is being developed using Apache Lucene http://www.peerfear.org/rss/permalink/2004/10/28/L otsOfInterestInLuceneDesktop/

Readable version

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/12/0 056252

Re:Come and get them

[fbjon]

Ey! Throw one at slashdotteds9.fbjon@xoxy.net, if you're not too out-of-invites, please.

Major missing type

[adeydas]

There is no search feature for PDF files.

Re:Major missing type

[ColdPepsi]

"Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Versions through 6.0" is listed under "Graphic Formats". Is that what you were looking for? Doesn't that mean yahoo can do PDFs?

MSN can also do PDF's - you just need the PDF ifilter installed (Get it here)

I don't think google does it yet... but I could be wrong...

The REAL Desktop Search

[CypherXero]

This is what a REAL desktop search looks like.

Re:The REAL Desktop Search

[Hack Jandy]

Click here to download plugin.

?

Yup :)

[headkase]

Yup. Bad Religion rocks IMHO. Sucky 120 char limit though limits me giving them a tagline.

Do you have a lot of emails?

[Augusto]

I have years of emails, and it takes a long time to do searchers in Outlook. Ironically, GDS is way faster and much better than outlook to search for email, I no longer use Outlook search which is slow and as mentioned by another poster stops me from other work I might be doing with that application.

As it turns out, searching is a common OS like function that is justified to be outside of the individual apps. It's nice that you seem to have a good organization system for all your stuff, but I have so many files that a hierarchy is not going to help me find stuff in 1-2 seconds.

Any tool that can index only "selected folders"?

[sisukapalli1]

I dabbled a little with swish, got it to index pdfs, but didn't pursue it after a while (didn't get to the search interface part beyond the command line). I hate to admit my laziness, but I wonder whether there is a point-n-click thingy that can let me select a few directories and say "index these", and later click and say "get me results from the index" (even multiple indexes).

Mostly, I have collections of pdf documents, and they are in a set of folders (some across the network).

I tried Google desktop, and checked yahoo features (and did some Google searches for tools too) but didn't find a way to index selected folders.

Any one has some leads into this?

S

Copernic Desktop Search

[__aailob1448]

Didn't we establish that copernic desktop search was the best some time ago? I gave google desktop a try but it wouldn't play nice with Internet Download Manager and Netlimiter (both excellent applications) so it had to go.

I'm very pleased with Copernic by the way. Great interface, fast indexing and only 2.8 Mb on memory. Google desktop search was several times that.

Re:Any tool that can index only "selected folders"

[marbux]

Both Isys and dTSearch can do this. They're not free though. You can also designate by filetype. I prefer Isys, and have used it since the DOS days. Isys supports over 125 file formats. I don't recall how many dTSearch supports, but do recall that it was less.

Are you guys paying attention?

[Augusto]

Hello?

Windows search or find?!?!?

Why don't search engines stop all that silly indexing stuff, and when you search the web, have a script that starts going site by site looking for your query? That make sense to you?

Please try one of these products, compare the speed and then come back and join the discussion. I really find it troubling that there's quite a few people comparing these indexing search engines with "Windows search" and "find". That doesn't make any sense!

Searching for filenames

[DMUTPeregrine]

Why can't there be a good fast search tool on windows that can search for filenames. I don't care about searching inside files, just something keeping a database of filenames and searching it.

Re:Searching for filenames

[bluebarron]

Check out eLinx at www.maxplanet.ca

DocYouMeant Hound

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a link to DocYouMeant Hound in a previous article similar to this and found it pretty useful. http://myradus.com/

No live updates?

[pammon]

The major problem with all these search tools is that none of them actually update when you change a file. They only update when they reindex. In that sense, they're no better than a GUI on top of slocate. Only Apple's search tool (and WinFS, if it ever appears) does the live updating.

Re:No live updates?

[ratpack91]

err yes they do. Haven't used yahoo but Google and copernic update in real time whenever a file is changed. Hence they are a lot better than slocate.

Re:No live updates?

[pammon]

Can you tell me how to make it work, then? Because I can't.

I created a file called "first.txt" and put the phrase "bicycle turpentine" in it. I searched for "bicycle" and Google found it. I then changed the contents of the file to "aardvark turpentine" and searched for "bicycle" again. Google found the same file: it was not aware of the change. I then renamed the file to "second.txt" and repeated the search, and Google found "first.txt." That is, it found a file which doesn't exist which, even if it did exist, wouldn't contain the word that I searched for!

I then searched for "turpentine" and Google found both first.txt and second.txt, even though second.txt is first.txt renamed!

So how do I make Google actually do live updates?

Not:Lacking

[edsarkiss]

the feature to restrict the search to specific mail headers in in the Yahoo! product...
http://desktop.yahoo.com/faq#advanced

GDS already does this

[Augusto]

It treats source code as text files it seems. I know I get results in .h, .c, .cpp, .java, files.

It's also nice because it keeps a sort of version history with it's cache. Be nice if it could also do a diff between cached versions.

That's what I wrote in feedback to them

[Nicolay77]

You seem to have a lot of ancient formats, but you have to see the future too.

In other words, there is no desktop search engine that has support for indexing microsoft reader (*.lit) files, or Aportis doc (*.prc, *.pdb) files and all the ebook formats out there.

That's more important than ancient database file formats.

Re:That's what I wrote in feedback to them

[pammon]

Apple's Spotlight engine is pluggable. You write a simple "sniffer" program and suddenly you can search that sort of file.

Re:That's what I wrote in feedback to them

[Nicolay77]

Huh ???

I don't have an Apple computer.

Yahoo! Desktop Search requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+

Suggest

[doog]

How long until they do suggest?

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

background:

http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004/12/google -s uggest-dissected.html

-doog

How Useful?

[Zaulden]

Exactly how useful are all these search tools coming out? If you have all of your files organized in a logical manner, how practical is it to have some third-party software to search for files? Granted, when dealing with databases and things, a tool like this could come in handy. But for an average day-to-day user, what in the world makes searching your desktop so hot?

JPEG and WMA (was: Re:Directories)

[Baramin]

I guess they don't mean "searching within JPEG/WMA" but "searching with knowledge of JPEG being a picture file format and WMA being a music file format", so you can just click some "music files only" search option and it'll consider *.WMA files as valid results if filename matches query.

Re:JPEG and WMA (was: Re:Directories)

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps even something like "find me all colour images larger than 100x100 pixels that contain the word tortoise in the filename". How often do you know that the file you are looking for is JPEG instead of GIF or PNG, anyway?

Well I won't be buying it....

[JaF893]

because it doesn't have Ogg support!!!!!!!

Re:Well I won't be buying it....

[Unordained]

You know, as funny as you're being, you're right. I searched this page right before posting -- not a single entry for "meta" ... I don't know about everybody else, but searching text is the -last- thing I do. I don't care about text. I care about images and sound; I want to be able to hunt down all music that includes a violin and singing, but exclude all music involving an electric guitar. And yeah, there's porn too. These tools don't do any work for you beyond "fast" text searching; they won't tag files appropriately, they won't organize them, they won't add all the metadata you'll someday want. And so long as we rely on file formats that can't include arbitrary additional plugin-specific metadata, we're screwed. You want to start tracking your mp3's by certain criteria? There's a set built-in; now if you want to add onto that, either you have an external database referencing the file which a) means you get things out of sync and b) means you can't just copy the file around, or you just do without. Every file format supports different metadata (and really, metadata and data are the same thing) ... but few ever support arbitrary extensions (I seem to remember targa files having the ability to store user-defined binary sections for future compatibility -- and it's a file format almost nobody uses anymore.)

Re:Any tool that can index only "selected folders"

[J1]

Aduna Autofocus can do this. It lets you create multiple indices which can be (networked) directories, web sites, IMAP servers or even a remote index server. You can query each index independently or all together by simply (de)selecting them.

Another nice thing about this tool is that it also lets you search on a lot more facets than just keywords (you can search specifically for title, age, owner, source, document type and a number of other facets) - and it has a very useful graphic visualisation (screenshot) of the search results. Not open source, but free for private use.

Re:open source - Nariva

[Tincan2k]

I've been working on one since before Google Desktop search came out (honest!). Some of my other projects have taken priority though. Check out http://nariva.sf.net/ . It's an Apache Lucene based desktop search service. Uses Apache VFS so conceptually you should be able to index anything network reachable (ftp server, webdav) in addition to the local filesystem. Methods are exposed using Apache's XML-RPC so you could write your own GUI if you want to. I wrote a Firefox based GUI that I also make available on sourceforge. Nariva is still beta and so are some of the libraries it's using but feel free to try it out. I could always use some help. :).

Re:If Google were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

[Kick the Donkey]

Speaking of Firefox: Has anyone gotten YDS to download from Firefox? I'd click on the download button, and it'd take me to a 'Thanks for downloading' page.

However, I was able to download and install it from IE.

I feel a strongly worded email coming one...

Re:If Google were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

[calculadoru]

YDS? YDS?? have no idea what you mean. sounds like a nasty disease to me.

Google Desktop Search doesn't re-index files

[Cato]

GDS is not bad overall, but it doesn't have any way of picking up file renaming, emails moved to another folder, and so on. The result is the frustration of 'finding' a useful document and not being able to open it after all, because it has moved or been renamed.

GDS does hook into new file events, and often manages to index a new file within a minute of its being created, so I don't see why this shouldn't be possible. I suggested all this to the Google team but they probably have other priorities.

Copernic does manage to do re-indexing, and generally gets more hits, and has many other useful features, but I'd prefer GDS to just work better due to its integration with Google.

Re:If Google were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

[Kick the Donkey]

On the off-chance that you're not being sarcastic, I ment: Yahoo Desktop Search.

This is a useful tool...

[William_Lee]

I don't understand all of the bashing of desktop search tools in general, and yahoo's X1 based flavor in particular. For anyone in a Windows based environment, the X1 based tool is a godsend if you have large amounts of data across multiple drives and are not completely anal retentive with your organizing. The built in Windows search is horrifically slow and does a lousy job on top of everything else. It is not even a useable If you're trying to track down pictures, mp3s, etc. across 4 or more hard drives and haven't been the best at organizing stuff, it comes in very handy, and is very fast. It is not a clone of Google's tool either, which I'm not as big a fan of for both security and useability issues. Give Yahoo a little credit...It's a BETA tool that is basically a package you had a pay for from X1 until today. It is light years ahead of the built in Windows search tool and FREE, WTF are you complaining about it for?!

Re:If Google were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

[calculadoru]

oh, I see. I wasn't being sarcastic, by the way.
haven't tried YDS yet - Copernic works fine for me. you really should check it out, much better than google's desktop search thinggy.

File Formats

[cthrall]

According to the "About," they're using Outside In by Stellent to parse file formats. This lib has been around for a long, long time, which is why you can search MacWrite files.

The "About" also refers to X1, which is another desktop search solution.

Looks like X1 Desktop

[Da VinMan]

Yahoo's desktop search looks like a re-branded version of the X1 Desktop Search tool, which is a $75 product. I'm still feeling it out, but it seems to beat the snot out of Google Desktop Search and Copernic. That's saying a lot, especially in the case of the latter.

If you're using a desktop search product, this one is worth checking out.

What I can't figure out is why all these portal sites are so hot to put desktop search tools in our hands for free. I don't object as I find them tremendously useful, but I just don't get it. Get 'em while the getting is good I suppose.

Do any of them really work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have tried Copernic, ISYS and Google Desktop. Copernic and ISYS crashed and Google Desktop would not handle all my file types.

I have serveral gig of of various doucments from over the years that I would love the index, but nothing seems to cut it.

Re:Come and get them

[fbjon]

Ok. You can all stop now, I got a bunch :).

Re:Any tool that can index only "selected folders"

[sisukapalli1]

Thank you. I downloaded the tool and it looks like a very good tool. Does exactly what I was wishing for.

Thank you agin.

S