Regular readers will know (archive item 1, “archive item 2”:https://blog.org/archives/001061.html) that I am keen to find search tools for the files on my own hard disk (and email). So far I have been dissatisfied but it seems Google is about to enter this market if you believe the rumours about Project Puffin. “According to the New York Times”:http://news.com.com/2100-1011_3-5215707.html Google’s desktop search software has been in use within the company for about a year.
Don’t expect Googling your hard disk to be as effective as Googling the web though – Google’s web searching relies heavily on the ubiquitous cross-linking in web pages to indicate the importance of one page over another for a given search and most people’s hard disks don’t contain that kind of handy cross-referencing.
Microsoft is also looking at this kind of thing of course but I’m not sure I want to wait for the next version of MS’s operating system and upgrade to it in order to take advantage of their new search features.
