Google and desktops and index oh my!

My coworkers have all heard me rant and rave about how handy Google Desktop is. (http://desktop.google.com)

It's fast. It searches INSIDE a myridad of files. It's saved my bacon a number of times. When my wife couldn't find a grocery comparison matrix she'd laboriously constructed (by visiting 6 different stores and pricing 25-40 "staple" items...) we just did a quick search on "Winco" "flour" and "price" and POOF! it was just there. I was a hero. (thank you google desktop team!)

(see, it really did "save my bacon"! Get it? Bacon..groceries...)

(Nevermind.)

It does, however, have one small shortcoming. A small, glaring, obnoxiously hubristic shortcoming.

In short, it doesn’t reindex. That’s right – as you ADD new stuff (emails, bookmarks, web surfing, files) to your system, it’ll index those yessiree.

But if you move or rename a file, you’re out of luck. It won’t find it. This is especially annoying on the occasions I use it to find email. My email rarely stays put as I move messages around according to some GTD principles.

Google Desktop seems to take the jedi philosophy towards reindexing.
"You don't need to see an option to reindex...these aren't the files you're looking for...just go about your business..."

In short ~ rename or move ANYthing and your search results are suddenly useless.

Lookout for Outlook overcame this problem by providing an option to reindex on a configurable schedule. Unfortunately, my Lookout toolbar has disappeared and refuses to come back. Very sad.

(back to GDS)

All is not lost!

Thanks to the wonder of TweakGDS, you can manually update, index, or reindex everything. Set it to run via the windows scheduler, and you can even have your index fresh, hot, and steamingly new every morning. (or however often you choose to run it.)

TweakGDS – just index it.

http://www.podsync.com/tweakgds.htm


Disclaimer:
Aaron is in no way attached to, profiting from, or otherwise gaining positive compensation from TweakGDS in any way, shape, or form. Except for, ya know, positive karma thrown off from spreading warm and squishy goodness to the masses. And a correspondingly lower therapist bill. But that’s all.