Yahoo! Releases Desktop Search Tool 304
Hobadee writes "According to The Register, Yahoo! has released a desktop search program to compete with Google's. Apparently Yahoo's version is native to Windows, and thus faster than Google's, but less portable. Other question - what does this mean for things like the Google Search Appliance? Personally, I still like 'find / > index' in a cron script, then just grep 'index'...."
Well (Score:3, Funny)
I'm still digging slocate.
LK
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
I still like 'find / > index' in a cron script, then just grep 'index'...."
That does not search the contents of files. Nor does locate.
not true (Score:5, Informative)
Re:not true (Score:5, Insightful)
Although to give the poster some credit, that website 'The Register' is not the best written of websites.
Re:not true (Score:2)
It's right there in the first line: "Yahoo! has licensed the X1 search software for Windows from tech incubator Idealab..."
Re:not true (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not true (Score:2)
Feature by feature comparisons? (Score:2)
Therefore, may I extend the question to ask if anyone h
Why is this a bad thing? (Score:2)
always 1 behind yahoo (Score:2, Insightful)
i wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now they can market it as the Desktop Search Tool of the privacy-concious, and call a lack of a feature a good safe feature. I know this horse has been flogged to death on the other threads concerning Google Desktop Search, but puhleese.
It is blindingly fast at both indexing and retrieval - which is near instant - and has the huge advantage over Google Desktop Search of being a native Windows client.
Don't know what to say - if it does serve 97 percent of the computer market more effectively, then perhaps they will dominate the system. It'll be interesting to see if this turns into a battle of paradigms: programs native to an OS (i.e. Yahoo!) or browser based (Google).
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2)
Of course, the killer feature of GDS for me, is that the results get integrated with your regular google results. So I have one place I go to search everything I need.
If Yahoo's offering won't do that it's pretty much worthless to me, no matter how fast the gui is.
Searching file content! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which helps you find the e-mail from Aunt Mary where she told you the location of her will... how?
grepping a file list does nothing for searching the contents of your files... which both of these products do.
Re:Searching file content! (Score:2)
just my $.02
Re:Searching file content! (Score:2)
Re:Searching file content! (Score:2)
Re:Searching file content! (Score:3, Funny)
And then grepping from index.
Re:Searching file content! (Score:2)
So maybe a better example is finding that document I wrote a few years ago in which I used a quote from "Ralph Waldo Emerson". And in that instance since most people keep their documents in a central place, maybe grep -r isn't so bad
Email clients are tuned.... (Score:2)
I should imaging that doing a grep on
Re:Email clients are tuned.... (Score:2)
Re:Email clients are tuned.... (Score:2)
Re:Searching file content! (Score:3, Insightful)
Hahahaha!
Thanks - that was a good one :)
What is wrong with the current tools? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What is wrong with the current tools? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:What is wrong with the current tools? (Score:2)
Re:What is wrong with the current tools? (Score:2, Funny)
On another forum I recently ran across a guy who was wondering what to do when you "run out of space" on your start menu.
I suggested that he keep his socks, WD40, silverware and ratchet set in different drawers.
KFG
Re:What is wrong with the current tools? (Score:2)
"Ogg, we've really got to do something to build brand awareness of this whole 'cooking meat instead of just eating it raw' idea. Any ideas?"
"Well, Jim, maybe we could offer it at a discount to certain people in the food services industry; you know, try to build a groundswell of support for it among them, and let them tell others how great it is. Plus we'll have a big ad campaign that kicks off during next year's Super Mammoth Hunt."
"Brilliant! Og
Re:What is wrong with the current tools? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got a couple hundred technical ebooks on my box at work - With GDS if I search for "sql server replication performance", the ones that show up first are the ones that have entire c
for all the slocate guys (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2)
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2)
Are we getting a bit off topic here?
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2)
Yes - I was querying his piping the output of find to grep when you can just get find to execute grep for you. I completely agree that running grep over your entire hard drive is never gong to match a proper search app for speed...
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2)
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2)
Another one I use often, but just for finding filenames that I only remember parts of:
locate -i majorfoo | egrep -i 'minorfoo|minorfoo2'
I almost do that often enough that I should script it... but it hasn't crossed the lazy-threshold.
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2)
Obviously their strength is text, but glimpse supports passing files through arbitrary filters which can output text it can use for indexing.
pdftotext for example, although one imagines extracting meaning from an mp3 would also be feasible.
Both are fairly fast and have been around for ages.
checking for content (Score:2)
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2)
Just a thought...
Re:for all the slocate guys (Score:2, Redundant)
'find / index' isn't the same thing. (Score:5, Informative)
Apples and oranges.
Google Desktop Search (and presumably Yahoo DS) also searches inside the actual files. If I search for "VPN", I see a list of all files (and Outlook messages) which contain the string "VPN".
'find / |grep' doesn't do any of that.... even "find / -exec grep foo {} \;" is much slower then an indexed database engine.
I haven't installed it (Not sure I trust it), but a coworker was showing it to me yesterday. Pretty handy...
it can be (Score:2)
Forget about the "-exec" flag; it is almost always the wrong thing to use, and it's dreadfully slow.
"locate
That's probably the main reason people on UNIX just haven't bothered. But there are text indexing systems that you can use a
X1 Software and Website (Score:5, Informative)
X1 Website [x1.com]
15 Day Trial Version [x1.com]
Re:X1 Software and Website (Score:2)
ARGHHHHHHHH!
I made a critical, and stupid, mistake in my original post. I assumed that people would RTFA. I am not talking about alternatives. I mentioned the X1 Software site because Yahoo has licensed the X1 search software for its new desktop search engine. From the article:
find/grep/index wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
and stuff.
Re:find/grep/index wtf? (Score:2)
Re:find/grep/index wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
So sure there is a problem with linux fanboys dismissing anything outside their wo
It's the attitude I object to; not the tools. /nt (Score:2)
Re:It's the attitude I object to; not the tools. / (Score:2)
Take the example of local search - the linux fanboy thinks that just because he can find 'some-damn-anime.avi' in an index file that he has solved the problem, the windows 'solve everything' attitude makes the mistake of wrapping the whole thing up in a single program - capturing code and data in a mess that will only be useful in the circumstance for which it is designed. Between those two attitudes is one where we try
Re:It's the attitude I object to; not the tools. / (Score:2)
I'm not sure why Be failed - it could have wound up being what MacOS is becoming: a sucessful desktop UNIX. I think it had more to do with trying to survive on technical skill and pure hype in a strange and competetive market than a flat out failure of the technology.
My sig is a joke, dumbass [n/t] (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:find/grep/index wtf? (Score:2)
The slashdot mindset is to enshrine the commandline tools (of thirtyfive years ago) just because they are the commandline tools of thiryfive years ago.
No, slashdot ludditism has far less to do with windows and far more to do with what the unix hater's handbook called "the cult of unix".
It's amazing that for being essentially a humor book they described that phenomenon so accurately; it's even more amazing that the sad cult is still thriving today
Re:find/grep/index wtf? (Score:2)
Re:find/grep/index wtf? (Score:2)
Re:find/grep/index wtf? (Score:2)
If I have a fetish for the 'new' it's for 'new capability', and new applications of technology. I understand what you mean by that term and I agree that favoring something new and unproven just because it is new is asinine indeed.
However, what I object to is the mindset
Yes! (Score:5, Informative)
I won't even start complaining about google only supporting programs I don't use (AIM? IE? Outlook?), as it's still in beta and I represent a minority group anyway.
However I have several other problems...
1. When a a folder has the same name as my search term, google search will display *all* files within that folder. For example if I search for 'doom 3' it won't just list the files called 'doom 3' it will list *all* the files in the doom 3 folder. It would be much more useful if it would only display the folder once as a separate search result, and then only display files called 'doom 3'
2. Inability to only search for filenames *only* - sometimes, or actually most of the time, I want to find a specific file. I know I have created important.doc but when I search for 'important' I get a plethora of results featuring different documents / text files which have the word 'important' within them. Windows' search has done this nicely by giving me the ability to search for a 'all or a part of the filename' and for 'a word or a phrase within the file'. I also have the option to 'look in' which brings me to my next point
3. Inability to search within a folder - because sometimes it is extremely useful to look for *.mp3 in my very disorganized 'thereShouldBeNoMusicHere' folder. Or to look for anything at all in a drive different than C...
4. Wildcard searches - oftentimes I just can't remember how I've saved the file. Was my presentation called group4project.ppt or group4.ppt or G4.ppt? A simple search of *4*.ppt should find the file, where * is a wildcard. Currently I can't do that.
5. Un-indexing of files - I just moved 500 files from my desktop to my documents. GDS has re-indexed them in My Documents. When I search for file.txt I get two results only one of which is valid. Of course, I can manually remove the invalid result from the index, but I really don't want to do it 500 times. Even if I can somehow magically get all the duplicate files on the same search, I can only remove them 10 at a time.
Until google resolves those issues (and I certainly hope they do), the search integrated into Windows is more useful. I hope yahoo have made a better job than google on this one, I'm off to try it
Re:Yes! (Score:2)
Re:Yes! (Score:2)
Re:Yes! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yes! (Score:2)
I use google desktop search for emails in outlook for work.. it finds days olds emails and sorts em by thread in seconds while outlook takes minutes.. even better i can click reply to all in google search response and it spawns an outlook email with all the contents required.. its a huge time saver and i'll never use the shitty outlook search feature ever again!
thanks google!! keep on rocking!
Re:Yes! (Score:2, Funny)
Im not huge fan of GDS, but your complaining about a free Beta product. Go drop Google and email and maybe some of that stuff will get fixed.
Also try to remember Google's target audience for GDS is not the
I tried GDS out on my Winxp pc a few weeks ago and thought it was
Re:Yes! (Score:2)
Native to Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they mean the user interface is a Windows app rather than a web client then, yes, but who cares? That's not that bit that's doing the work, that's just rendering some results. It may mean Yahoo will be able to take advantage of some more advanced controls, such as listviews, but Google has already proven with Gmail that it is able to kick out a pretty convining web application so I wouldn't cite that as an advantage.
Re:Native to Windows? (Score:2)
Filename search for Windows? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't care about content, since most of the files I work with don't have searchable content in the first place, and I give them useful filenames anyway. I just forget where they're saved sometimes, or want a quicker way to get to them.
Even with indexing turned on (does that help with filename searches?), Windows takes 2 or 3 minutes to search all my drives by filename only.
I know there's Ava Find [think-less-do-more.com], which is very fast and does what I want, but the UI sucks, and AppRocket [candylabs.com], which is also fast but isn't really a search tool as much as a launcher.
So, are there any others that work like the Windows Explorer search, but faster?
Re:Filename search for Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Filename search for Windows? (Score:2, Informative)
I think that may be what you desire for a Windows search tool.
-Jay
Re:Filename search for Windows? (Score:2)
Re:Filename search for Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
Here's an idea for whoever wants to implement it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here's an idea for whoever wants to implement i (Score:4, Informative)
Since nowadays everyone and their dog are releasing desktop search engines, here's the thing that can give a commercial/technological advantage - implement plugin mechanism for searching other file types.
Next version of OS X [apple.com], probably coming Q1 2005. Metadata will be integrated into the file system, and authors will be able to describe their own metadata to the OS.
Yay.
Re:Here's an idea for whoever wants to implement i (Score:2)
File types that benefit from metadata already have space for it (Word, OOo, PDF, MP3, TIFF, JPEG, etc.). But most people just don't bother putting anything there.
Adding metadata to the file system just causes gratuitous incompatibilities; there is no real benefit. Be tried it, Microsoft tried it, and Apple is trying it as well. In fact, this idea goes way, way back. In part, UNIX was in
Re:Here's an idea for whoever wants to implement i (Score:2)
Adding metadata to the file system just causes gratuitous incompatibilities; there is no real benefit. Be tried it, Microsoft tried it, and Apple is trying it as well. In fact, this idea goes way, way back. In part, UNIX was intended to clean up this kind of mess.
LOL. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You're funny, though.
Personally Leet (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think its retarded.
Re:Personally Leet (Score:2)
Copernic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Copernic (Score:2)
Copernic doesn't seem to index the page-content of your browser history, only the URLs.
Not that the GDS does such a great job of it - sometimes it just plain misses pages, no matter how many times I revist them.
Re:Copernic (Score:4, Interesting)
Advantages of Copernic:
1. Google desktop search is strictly not for commercial use [google.com] (For commercial use, you need to buy a Google appliance) (I wrote to them to find out if this prohibits any use in a commercial setting such as on an employer's computer and they did not reply)
2. Google desktop search does not index PDF files [google.com]
3. Google desktop search does not do partial word matches (huge disadvantage when you have filenames which are just concatenated words with no spaces) [google.com]
4. n GDS, you get to exclude folder that you do not want to index, in Copernic, you get to include folders that you want to index. I prefer the "index only when asked to do so explicitly" option. [google.com]
5. GDS will not index mapped network drives except for files that you actually open and use after installing GDS [google.com]
6. Unlike GDS, Copernic will index outlook email attachments also [google.com]
7. Copernic gives a real time preview of the matched area as you highlight each search result line [copernic.com]
I am sure GDS will be a great tool someday. For now, Copernic offers better options. And now that GDS is here, Copernic is free! [copernic.com] Competition is always good for the end user!
-Adi.
A great open source project... (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing you'd have to think carefully about is privacy and security; how do you stop a user finding stuff out about files they're not entitled to read?
I'd start it myself except that I have a thesis to do :)
Lucene (Score:2)
security (Score:2)
Perhaps it would simply work to store information about each file in a database with the same permissions as the file has. Then if the search runs with the user's permissions, which is probably a good idea, it could only read the index for files that the user could read anyway. In case the file permissions change between index runs, you could throw in a c
Re:A great open source project... (Score:2)
It'd be fairly trivial (a couple afternoon's worth of work for a skilled and experienced scripter) to make something which works better than the combination of the unix file tools (slocate, find, file, grep, etc.). In essence, you'd use those tools in conjunction with perl and a mysql database. You could either have a series of scripts do direct db manipulation, or you could have a daemon which transverses the db communications for the per-user script.
It could
Just to follow up... (Score:2)
Stupid news poster (Score:3, Interesting)
No. The article doesn't say that. Read it again. The news poster twisted the words to make google look good. For once why can't people just agree that someone has done something better than google?
For the morons among us who don't understand what I am saying: the
learn your UNIX tools (locate) (Score:4, Informative)
Try "man locate" and "man updatedb"; that's been around forever. It probably already gets updated nightly on your computer (that's why your disk starts making all that noise early in the morning).
If you want to search for content, you can combine it with grep and xargs: More complicated pipes involve "file", "perl", "awk", etc.
Re:learn your UNIX tools (locate) (Score:2)
my problem with locate is that if I try to combine it with 'rm' to delete tons of files, like 'rm `locate
Re:learn your UNIX tools (locate) (Score:2)
Alternatives... (Score:2)
Re:you know ... (Score:5, Interesting)
On Windows? For non-geeks?
Don't think so, somehow. It's easy enough to point out Unix command-line tools that do the job of any application such as this one, but what exactly is the point?
Will geeks use this Yahoo! tool? No
Does Yahoo! care? No
Just because a tool is not useful for us geeks, it doesn't mean it's useless, period.
Re:you know ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:you know ... (Score:2)
Not really what these search tools are about, but that's not what you asked.
mod parent up (Score:2)
Searching is, as usual for locate, insant.
It also has a checkbox to replace windows find for winkey-F and F3 in windows explorer.
I cant go on enought about how fast and good this prog is. Much faster/better than even the *nix original.
Re:you know ... (Score:2)
I did not know that.
Re:you know ... (Score:2)
I once found the weblogs on a server where I had an account, and sent the sysadmin (a friend of mine) a question about his configuration, quoting the logs. The logs were obscurely placed, so he was mystified as to how I had found them, I responded "locate access.log", to which he replied, "Oh, I've never used that hippy locate command.
As far as searching within files, glimpse was useful for text. Don't know
Do you yahoo? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:google will always rule (Score:2)
Re:More spyware vs.spyware (Score:2, Informative)
Clearly, the ipfilter solution is a bit of a hack, and raises other concerns - but did you really think that Google has both the ability and the desire to transfer store gigabytes of information from your w
Re:More spyware vs.spyware (Score:2)
Eh? Doesn't it creates a local server to feed you the results? I thought that's how it worked and that the remote results (from google's site) are proxied thru said server.
If it's as you say, then that's a serious potential security breach.
desktop.google.com doesn't clarifies it.
Re:Yea works for me too. (Score:2)
Re:yay more spyware (Score:2)
Re:yay more spyware (Score:2)