New Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta Goes Beyond the Desktop
When we
last wrote about Yahoo!
Desktop Search, we mentioned that we wanted to change the idea of
what searching your “desktop” means. The latest beta release of
Yahoo! Desktop Search continues to deliver on that vision by allowing
you to search your online world from your PC.
Have you ever tried to find an IM conversation from within your
you’re a big Messenger user like I am, this can be pretty difficult
when you have a large number of IM conversations to dig through.
Enter the new YDS Beta, which can find Yahoo! Messenger IM
conversations as fast as it currently finds emails, files, and
contacts. Another bonus? YDS will even let you search your archives
even while you’re offline – a big plus when you’re on a plane or your
internet connection takes a siesta.
Want more? We’ve also added
the YDS index, so you can search all of your Outlook and Yahoo!
contacts in one convenient place. Like the Messenger integration,
your contacts will be searchable both online and off, so you can whip
out your laptop on the road and still grab the phone number of an
important client.
This is all just the beginning. Our goal is to make the word
desktop in “Yahoo! Desktop Search” refer simply to the place where you
launch the product. I hope you’re as excited as we are about the
possibilities.
Please download the latest YDS Beta and give us your thoughts about
the new Yahoo! integration points, as well as your suggestions on how
to improve the product. As always, we welcome your feedback, and
encourage you to post on
message board as well as on
feedback form.
Warren Wan
Product Manager, Yahoo! Desktop Search
The Y!Address book search is pretty cool.I like the fact it is being indexed by the desktop search.
I hope to see other Y! online services like the photos, briefcase Y! mail integrated as well
I agree with the idea that the desktop search tools need to include information from other sources. I like this capability and this is a big plus for Yahoo! vs. other search providers (Microsoft/Google) who still haven’t managed to integrate their services with the desktop search. Nice work.
I hope Yahoo! looks a step beyond the Yahoo! stack to the next level of obtaining information for the search client from services outside of Yahoo! by working with 3rd party developers to build plug-ins like Google is doing and doesn’t get tripped-up by being in a partnership with X1 that closes the architecture.
Another big thing would be to look at search on the desktop as a service for other applications so people can do work. We have an application for desktop organizing in virtual folders(http://www.viapoint.com) and ended-up partnering for our latest release with Google Desktop Search because we couldn’t figure out how to work with Yahoo! as an ISV connecting into desktop search.
Good improvement. However I still use Copernic Desktop Search as it’s UI is much better and has more functions. It’s also much lighter on my CPU.
I tend to prefer MANY aspects of Yahoo Desktop Search over any other, but there is ONE *KEY* feature that is *MISSING* that MUST be implemented before I will consider switching from Copernic: Indexing *ON THE FLY*. I cannot wait for a scheduled indexing session to happen before my new/changed files are available in the search pool. I do realize this takes a small hit on resources, but it’s worthwhile. For those who do not want this, an option to turn it on or off would be a solution. Indexing of network drives would be great as well, but that isn’t a dealbreaker for me as on-the-fly indexing is. Add that, and I’m switching immediately. Read the commentaries on BetaNews and other sites, and you’ll find that this is a major reason why a significant number of people prefer Copernic at the moment.
The Yahoo Desktop Search message board is terrible; there’s no easy way to search whether other users are experiencing the same issues you are. Plus, there doesn’t appear to be a place to find out the latest release notes of newer versions of the YDS beta. In fact, I didn’t know any newer versions had been made until I read this blog post! Maybe I was looking in the wrong places, but there’s no links to useful information from within YDS. I’ve switched back to Copernic until these issues are sorted out.
Sorry for the repeated comments; user error.
What I like best is that results show me *where* the document is.
I’ve used Outlook’s search and Google desktop search for finding mail. While both find what I want, neither tells me which mail folder (I have lots) the message is in.
Quite often, there are many related messages that I need to find as well, and they would have been stored in the same folder. Knowing where it is, allows me to go directly to the folder.
YDS is a good product, and i use it at work, because i’m curious about its features. however, at home, i can’t give up Google Desktop Search.
having the desktop search integrated with Google.com is the one feature that makes Google Desktop Search more convenient and useful than all the rest.