Thursday 13 September 2007

Google desktop search to the rescue!

You know you've got that document somewhere. But where did you file it? One of the nice things about having huge hard drives these days is being able to save things without pausing for a moment to think whether you actually need to. One of the consequences, though, is that you have an awful lot of clutter to go through when trying to find something!

I wanted a document I wrote back in April (nearly six months ago). Trawled through the obvious places where, if I'd been vaguely awake and sober, would have been sensible places to put it. No luck. Tried the less obvious places. Found lots of things I'd forgotten I had but still not the document I needed.

So I typed web design degree into the Google Desktop search bar that floats around the screen and hit Enter. Not obvious in the first few items it offered so I went for the View the 1086 results in your browser. They arrived in date order and I reached April without a problem. And there it was! But that alone wouldn't have prompted me to scribble this in celebration. No, it was where it was filed: it was a document saved on my pc at home, not on the laptop I was using! Amazing. OK, so I couldn't open the document there and then but I could see the text which was really all I wanted.

I keep saying this but it's a really good idea to get a Google account and try out some of the tools available.

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