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Search and Delay


By Larry O'Brien
January 15, 2005 —  (Page 1 of 3)
Community Technology Previews or desktop search? Desktop search or schedule slips? Cv or desktop search? What a depressing way to end the year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as happy as the next guy not to have to deal with that stupid dog anymore (what is with Microsoft and its belief in annoying animated helpmates?), but I just can’t get worked up about the battle of the find and grep commands. “But it’s Google versus Microsoft! ‘Don’t be evil’ versus The Borg from Redmond! It’s the story of the year!” Sheesh.

Search is an interesting field, but not when it’s a question of keywords and indices. Search is interesting when it’s a question of relevance in an 8-billion-page World Wide Web. On the desktop, even on desktops with hundred-gigabyte drives, search is only interesting to the extent it involves digital photos and videos. Which is why the second slip of WinFS is a much bigger deal than the release of Microsoft’s desktop search toolbar.

That the current advances in desktop search is a big deal is a testament to the moribund utility software market. For years anyone interested in quickly finding files on his PC could use Copernic, X1, LookOut or any of several other products. LookOut, in particular, solved a crucial need in that it dealt with Outlook, whose monolithic, always open, always growing file structure would be a finalist for any “Most Troublesome Design Decisions in an Essential Application” award. Microsoft acquired LookOut earlier this year. (Ironically, “Is LookOut used in Microsoft Desktop Search?” gives no relevant results on the first pages of either Google or the beta of MSN Search.)

It’s not the utility vendors that are to blame for their relative lack of visibility. They’ve been innovative all along. Excuse the tangent, but a new program called Consistency is a great example of a useful idea, executed perfectly. It is a To-Do List manager for tasks with fuzzy frequencies (like “Get a haircut” or “Go for a hike”), and I registered my copy minutes after installing the trial. Check it out at www.sciral.com. Now, back to our regularly scheduled column…


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