This is so damn cool.... you must have been adding your blog entry as I sent you the email about it... hehe

"Notice that it's running a local Web Server on my box at port 4664. Clever."

I hope to god they reject queries that don't come from 127.0.0.1, then, as I don't want random strangers searching my hard drive...

This is VERY cool. There are some troubling setup issues that I encountered that you can see on my review here:
http://www.byronprather.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=fd7871d8-65c6-4462-92d2-bd5a417d3adb

This is really nice. Of course having to go one step further. I set up a magicword of mygoogle in Slickrun and set it up like the default magicword for google so I get the dynamic input box. Now I don't have to have the browser open to start searching my files.

Thanks Scott, you always turn us on to the coolest stuff.

So what about searching local files, say, for that piece of code you wrote that one time, but can't remember exactly what you did. I searched for some obscure methods that I had written, and I got web history for our internal bb that I posted the code on, but not the files themselves.

I really really really want to be able to search my HD FILES for text, not just web history, email, and office documents.

Anyone have any perspective on this?

John, GDS is returning local results in text files for me, even in code files. Do you have "Text and other" checked in the preferences for which files are indexed?

John,

My guess is that will come eventually, after all, it's a first beta release. What I would like to do is just be able to add which extensions are text, so I could include .cs, .aspx, .ascx, etc etc in the search - and also be able to specify extension in my search - so I could search for something like "SqlConnection ext:cs" and it would search only .cs files for the text SqlConnection. Now that would be cool.

Re: the plugin thing.

The plugin DLL's are com objects. If you run OLE/COM object viewer you can see that the "Google Desktop Search Office Addin" supports _IDTExtensibility2 & ApplicationEvents2. If you want the detail, the type info for these are below. So in short, it looks like plugins will be the order of the day ;-)

dispinterface _IDTExtensibility2 {
properties:
methods:
[id(0x00000001)]
void OnConnection(
[in] IDispatch* Application,
[in] ext_ConnectMode ConnectMode,
[in] IDispatch* AddInInst,
[in] SAFEARRAY(VARIANT)* custom);
[id(0x00000002)]
void OnDisconnection(
[in] ext_DisconnectMode RemoveMode,
[in] SAFEARRAY(VARIANT)* custom);
[id(0x00000003)]
void OnAddInsUpdate([in] SAFEARRAY(VARIANT)* custom);
[id(0x00000004)]
void OnStartupComplete([in] SAFEARRAY(VARIANT)* custom);
[id(0x00000005)]
void OnBeginShutdown([in] SAFEARRAY(VARIANT)* custom);
};

[
uuid(000209FE-0000-0000-C000-000000000046),
helpcontext(0x00000fa2),
hidden
]
dispinterface ApplicationEvents2 {
properties:
methods:
[id(0x60000000), restricted]
void QueryInterface(
[in] GUID* riid,
[out] void** ppvObj);
[id(0x60000001), restricted]
unsigned long AddRef();
[id(0x60000002), restricted]
unsigned long Release();
[id(0x60010000), restricted]
void GetTypeInfoCount([out] unsigned int* pctinfo);
[id(0x60010001), restricted]
void GetTypeInfo(
[in] unsigned int itinfo,
[in] unsigned long lcid,
[out] void** pptinfo);
[id(0x60010002), restricted]
void GetIDsOfNames(
[in] GUID* riid,
[in] char** rgszNames,
[in] unsigned int cNames,
[in] unsigned long lcid,
[out] long* rgdispid);
[id(0x60010003), restricted]
void Invoke(
[in] long dispidMember,
[in] GUID* riid,
[in] unsigned long lcid,
[in] unsigned short wFlags,
[in] DISPPARAMS* pdispparams,
[out] VARIANT* pvarResult,
[out] EXCEPINFO* pexcepinfo,
[out] unsigned int* puArgErr);
[id(0x00000001), restricted, hidden]
void Startup();
[id(0x00000002), helpcontext(0x00061a82)]
void Quit();
[id(0x00000003), helpcontext(0x00061a83)]
void DocumentChange();
[id(0x00000004), helpcontext(0x00061a84)]
void DocumentOpen([in] Document* Doc);
[id(0x00000006), helpcontext(0x00061a85)]
void DocumentBeforeClose(
[in] Document* Doc,
[in] VARIANT_BOOL* Cancel);
[id(0x00000007), helpcontext(0x00061a86)]
void DocumentBeforePrint(
[in] Document* Doc,
[in] VARIANT_BOOL* Cancel);
[id(0x00000008), helpcontext(0x00061a87)]
void DocumentBeforeSave(
[in] Document* Doc,
[in] VARIANT_BOOL* SaveAsUI,
[in] VARIANT_BOOL* Cancel);
[id(0x00000009), helpcontext(0x00061a88)]
void NewDocument([in] Document* Doc);
[id(0x0000000a), helpcontext(0x00061a89)]
void WindowActivate(
[in] Document* Doc,
[in] Window* Wn);
[id(0x0000000b), helpcontext(0x003d090a)]
void WindowDeactivate(
[in] Document* Doc,
[in] Window* Wn);
[id(0x0000000c), helpcontext(0x003d090b)]
void WindowSelectionChange([in] Selection* Sel);
[id(0x0000000d), helpcontext(0x003d090c)]
void WindowBeforeRightClick(
[in] Selection* Sel,
[in] VARIANT_BOOL* Cancel);
[id(0x0000000e), helpcontext(0x003d090d)]
void WindowBeforeDoubleClick(
[in] Selection* Sel,
[in] VARIANT_BOOL* Cancel);
};

Hahah, its not a problem if I'm searching MY desktop for porn... its when my girlfriend searches MY desktop for porn that I get worried - blogged@ http://intravenous.info

The Google Desktop Search, as it stands now, is very nice and great for novices, but they need to add support for indexing particular file types, and indexing other common files (PDF, metadata from audio, images, etc.)

And they will find a way to squeeze ads in here, I'd wager they've already got a prototype that does just that.

I like it as well, but am a bit disappointed by what you can do with GDS. I agree with above posts mentioning a few of its failings, more at:

http://www.softwareengineering.ca/jpdaigle/PermaLink.aspx?guid=209ce43f-cd77-4162-bba5-d4471110fbc3

Tech Details in Google Desktop Search http://twinsant124.mblogger.cn/posts/18266.aspx

Chinese in content.