In rare flop, Starbucks scraps chocolate drink

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Chantico, we hardly knew ye.

Googling

Google has been busy lately.

The search giant has released version 3 of its desktop search software with a couple of intriguing new features:

- Search across computers. Basically, this lets you search for files on multiple computers. Basically, it creates a searchable index that is synchronized among all of your computers, letting you pull up copies of files on another machine. All the computers have to be using the software and signed in with your Google account, but the syncing takes place in the background, and unlike services such as Microsoft's FolderShare, they don't all have to be online at the same time. Privacy issues aside, this would be pretty handy in my line of work, where information is often scattered across multiple PCs.

- Integrated contact info. This integrates the desktop with Gmail and Google Talk instant messenger into the search sidebar, making it easy to share info with your IM buddies. And like the Google Toolbar, desktop search now suggests alternative spellings for your queries.

Speaking of Gmail, desktop search now makes a searchable index of your Gmail messages so you can find old e-mail even when not online. Apparently, this is an older feature I didn't know about until now. At any rate, it eliminates Web-based e-mail's biggest weakness, offline access to your messages. Suddenly, Microsoft Outlook isn't such a must-have.

Another soon-to-be-unveiled Gmail feature will integrate Google Talk with e-mail, letting users strike up IM chats with e-mail contacts and archiving copies of old chats.

Because of these and other nifty features, I would love to use Google Desktop as my main PC search tool. I love the fact that a Google search can pull up info from the Web, my e-mail and past stories I've written -- all on one page.

But alas, I am sticking with Windows Desktop Search. First, the Google version still doesn't index Microsoft OneNote files, which contain much of the information I need access to regularly. It's only second to e-mail in that respect. Second, the new Google Desktop requires 256 megs of RAM, which unfortunately is too much for my ancient laptop. The software is still in beta, so maybe that will change.

On the bright side, looking at Google's new offering did spark me to reexamine the Microsoft product. I'd forgotten how powerful it is, with tons of options to narrow searches. One of my new favorites is real-world terms I can use in queries, such as "sent: last week" or "received: December." Nice.