Published in Search Engines on Thursday, October 14th, 2004
Google unleashes Desktop *Beta. Wow.
Not much to say about this, except that I'm off to check it out. Google is really making it happen: first the search engine (remember that? ;-), then adwords and adsense, then gmail, and now desktop search. When is that browser coming out?
Anyway, the new Google desktop page looks cool, I'm loving that favicon.
Read John Batelle's writup and Danny Sulivan's too!. Hat tip to Mr. Batelle.
Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:
I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.
The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.
Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..
Comments and Feedback
Having read through the review and related security discussion on this over at Search Engine Watch, I agree that it sounds great but I can't help thinking...
Yeah, I hear ya. Adsense accounts, Adwords accounts, gmail accounts, SE cookies and now this? I'm a bit spooked... (ps - drop me a line if you want your e-mail addy unlinked)
That is one complaint I have about desktop search engines--they don't search that fast like google. If google or MS come out with a desktop one that searches like the new Apple Spotlight will, that would be great. I am all for it.
Personally I just don't see the big need for desktop searching, or pc searching. I never use it, but then again, maybe that's cause it sucks so bad I have no idea what I'm missing.
Maybe I'll just have to get myself an Apple and find out what all the fuss is about ;-]
Take this post as a trackback. There are some of my toughs about the product, privacy and security in mind: http://radio.weblogs.com/0140770/2004/10/14.html
Now I have to get a Windows 'puter to discover this...:-(. Hmm, I have already a whole set of tools to search my computers, command line or GUI, and with the upcoming 'Spotlight', it will get even better. No need to have Ms Google take a peek.
Pretty sad when Google is releasing apps that do what a decent OS should do itself. Maybe Google can just go ahead and realease an OS...