“Google Desktop”:http://www.desktop.google.com/index.html has arrived and two more desktop searching products are on their way. AOL is reportedly developing AOL Desktop Search and a new search engine, “Exalead”:http://beta.exalead.com/search also plans a “desktop search product”:http://beta.exalead.com/search/C=0MlQAMAA%3d/2p=5.

BBC World’s Click Online just did a “short report”:http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_clickonline.asp?pageid=666&co_pageid=2 about hard disk indexing programs which covers some of the same ground as I have done earlier (for example “here”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_search_engines.html#001238).

The Wordcount site is an interesting art project and trivia goldmine in one. Did you know that ‘internet’ is the 30525th most used word in the written English language? On the other hand it is the 66th most popular word searched for on Wordcount according to its companion site, “Querycount”:http://www.wordcount.org/querycount.php

Thanks to Yahoo’s “Pick of the Week”:http://picks.yahoo.com/picks/ feature for the tip.

P.S. I just noticed that the right hand column of my weblog sometimes gets shoved to the bottom of the page when using Internet Explorer (though it displays properly in Mozilla). Can anyone suggest why?

I thought I was doing pretty well with a combination (Telewest and “Telediscount”:http://www.telediscount.co.uk/accessnumbers.php) that cost me 10 pounds a month, a 6p connection charge and between 1 and 3p a minute to call the UK, France, Canada or the US (depending on whether it’s daytime, evening or weekend).

I am still stuck with the 10 pound line rental but now I find 1899.com has a 3p connection charge, lets you call any UK landline for free (except 0845 and 0870 numbers), mobiles for 2p a minute weekends, 10p weekdays and Canada and the US for .5p a minute (France 1p)! An alternative provider “18866”:http://www.call18866.co.uk/printer_version.php charges somewhat more but with a connection charge of just 1p.

When I first came to the UK from Canada my phone habits changed drastically – I was used to paying nothing for local calls to my friends – now I had to pay for every call I made, so I kept my calls short. Now I suspect the boot is on the other foot – certainly my father pays around 50% more for his line rental and I’m guessing I pay less on a per-call basis (except for the fact I still have to pay 3p per call while his local calls remain completely free).

I suspect too that since companies like 1899 rely on word of mouth and (I’m guessing) people finding their website it’s (ironically) the wealthier, better connected people in the UK who can find and take advantage of these deals while poorer people without the time or skills to shop around end up paying much more.

In the interests of better understanding of Arabs by the West, the (American) “National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education”:http://www.nitle.org/ has produced a useful overview of Arab culture – the Arab World Project. Of course I can’t say much about its accuracy but it seems fair. I would be interested to hear if anyone who knows Arab culture well finds the site lacking.

(Or to be more precise Onion-esque humour about a particular kind of teen blogging) from Modern Mirth Magazine. OK it’s a bit obvious and shooting-fish-in-a-barrel-ish but it did make me chortle. Don’t forget I – like ‘Jennifer Meyers’ – allow comments, “so that when you read my thoughts, you can have a place to agree with me and add additional support for what I said.”

I noticed the arrival in London of “Bright Leaves”:http://www.brightleaves.com/ – a new film by an oddball American independent film-maker Ross McElwee – and on a whim I went with my wife to see it. While the premise of the film was promising (a grassroots view of the tobacco industry mixed with McElwee’s characteristic personal reminiscences) I found it more than usually self-indulgent so it was a bit of a disappointment.

However, I discovered to my surprise that McElwee himself was there as this was a premiere. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to thank him for producing his most memorable work, “Sherman’s March”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091943/. It’s a pity that there doesn’t seem to be a European standard copy of that film available on DVD or tape…

Having finished a self-imposed game-free hiatus I just downloaded a bunch of game demos.
* Kohan II was OK but nothing special (rave reviews notwithstanding)
* Doom 3 wouldn’t run properly on my machine (no sound)
* Axis and Allies wouldn’t install at first then turned out to be very similar to Kohan II as it was produced by the same developer
* Medieval Lords, Nexus and Superpower 2 had no tutorial modes and just plunged you straight in to rather complex games so I became confused and bored
* Tribes: Vengeance had a demo that was so limited I couldn’t really get a flavour of the game.

I had been looking forward to hours of demo-playing fun to give myself a break after a tough couple of weeks but it looks like if I want to play anything I am going to have to play some of my old favourites – eg “Combat Mission”:http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/cmbb.html. Or maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me I shouldn’t be playing games?

The “Diskmeta”:http://diskmeta.com/ search engine ‘works on all Windows platforms (98 or higher)’ and ‘ is fast, intuitive and unfussy. You can also view the raw text in a special preview window but doesn’t have a preview facility like X1, dtSearch or the new Copernic Desktop Search’. Unlike some other desktop search engines it supports a variety of “boolean operators”:http://diskmeta.com/en/doc/request.asp.

The free version (for non-commercial use) only indexes txt, .doc and .html however – for indexing PDFs you need to pay, and Diskmeta doesn’t index Outlook email.

Thanks to Jeremy Wagstaff for the heads up.

Also see “here”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_search_engines.html#001230 and “here”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_search_engines.html#001202 for earlier coverage of hard disk searching programs.

Yummy cake

Originally uploaded by derb.

Went to the lovely wedding yesterday of “Simon and Mary”:http://www.sandm.co.uk/ (more of my pix here, more of other people’s pix coming “here”:http://www.sandmwedding.co.uk/ shortly)

which they held in a cottage attached to “Kew Gardens”:http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/. I saw people there from my old computer journalist days I hadn’t seen for years. And by a bizarre coincidence the wedding was on the same day as the wedding of another friend a year ago yesterday. Ah lurve…

But does it have to be the clownish conservative Boris Johnson? In France they have a serious politician blogger, “Dominique Strauss Kahn”:http://www.blogdsk.net/