Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Yahoo Releases Desktop Search Tool Beta

Posted by timothy on from the beta-would-be-a-great-name-for-software dept.

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."

8 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Yet another desktop search tool by albn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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....

    --
    Some call me Howie Feltersnatch
    1. Re:Yet another desktop search tool by sH4RD · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.)

      --
      WASTE - The Secure P2P
    2. Re:Yet another desktop search tool by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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'..."

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  2. Forgot something? by mscnln · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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??

  3. OpenOffice.org/StarOffice by kosmosik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:OpenOffice.org/StarOffice by danielcole · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  4. Lacking by Docrates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --

    There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
  5. Re:Usefulness by hal9000(jr) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.