So I awoke very early, and very cold. A crappy beginning to a crappy day I guess. It's all but certain by now that yes, I am in fact sick. I also showed up very late to a class today because of a bad accident on the highway. Beyond that, it just seems like all sorts of little things aren't right today. My shoes have come untied a dozen times, I keep dropping things, I even came close to forgetting to put the parking brake on in my car just now.
So yeah, it's just a cold, but I hate being sick. I'm doing my best to fight it with the usual combination of orange juice + rest. Okay, well, I probably shouldn't be out at Panera and I probably should be in bed. But I've never really been big on the whole sleep before midnight thing.
I did get started on the search builder tool last night. I should have something to show you soon. It's insanely simple, but useful nonetheless. Hopefully the MSN guys will expose more of the search engine's advanced features in a future version.
Regarding search, though, I read an interesting take on Apple's Spotlight today. Microsoft Monitor said that Apple was treating desktop search as a “platform” more than just a product. I think they have the right idea.
Developers should be able to:
-Silently install an IFilter for their application's content/data files.
-Incorporate a search bar into their apps (a COM object, .NET control, whatever) and control how it operates (certain filters, search locations, etc.)
-Query the search engine without requiring the user to interact with any MSN toolbar boxes. For instance, a chat program like Trillian (or Messenger) could add a little button to the chat window that shows me desktop query results relevant to the person's name. And that's just an example off the top of my head. I'm sure there are way more useful applications as well.
Maybe these things are planned for Longhorn. I don't know. In fact, I'm very confused about Microsoft's strategy here... Is Longhorn going to include MSN Desktop Search? Or is it going to have its own solution? What happens if someone tries to install MSN DS on Longhorn?
One thing that might help would be a consistent and open search engine API. Let the user plug in whatever engine they want (MSN, Google, X1, Copernic, etc) - as long as it supports some common interface. Then Windows could use that for all searches, and so could any application that requests access to the system's default search engine. This might also help the guys at Microsoft keep the regulators off their backs.