Note to myself: Smallbuttough.com has a bunch of interesting links to project tools/ideas.

You heard it here...last. 

Seriously, lots of postings that the beta of Microsoft's MSN Desktop Search is now available. 

I read the news first on Marc Orchant's great blog.  Marc added his own thoughts on how the beta compares to various competitors along with links for more info (including Scoble's lengthy developer interviews which really are interesting and seem totally unscripted -- a VERY refreshing change from PR-managed, tightly controlled, and content-free interviews you usually see when new products are being discussed).

Charlene Li has a great follow-up on the Yahoo!/X1 announcment that builds on the point she made previously that web search vendors are busy in the desktop search market trying to cement customer loyalty.

Robert Scoble put together a checklist of questions for would-be desktop search reviewers and Zsmarties has some good follow-up thoughts.

Speaking of competing search vendors,  Charlene Li talks about her research showing the battle to build customer loyalty is driving innovation and specialization.

According to Search Engine News, AOL is going to use Copernic technology for their branded desktop search. Great article here: http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2004/12/aol-to-use-copernic-for-desktop-search.html , including:

- speculation that Yahoo will have to trim X1 a lot to make a reasonable download.  (I don't know about that: I think the X1 download is about 6MB -- big but not impossibly so).

- speculation that it might be a good idea for AOL to acquire Copernic before a deal with Mamma.com is fully completed  (Seems reasonable, but maybe too late now?)

So:
Web - Desktop
AOL - Copernic
Yahoo - X1
MSN - MSN
Google - Google
Ask Jeeves - Ask Jeeves

InfoWorld has an article today about Yahoo's plans to release a desktop search tool using X1 search technology.  It will allow searching through personal files as well as the web (via Yahoo's own search engine). Future versions will include searching Yahoo's email and instant messaging services.

I think X1 is a good product that looks to get even better with the next version (you can test-drive the current beta to see what's coming at www.x1.com).  How much of those features ends up in Yahoo's desktop search tool will be very interesting to see.  Hopefully, the Yahoo version won't be hopelessly neutered.

Certainly, a free Yahoo-branded version of their product would address one concern: that X1 is priced too high ($74.95) for the current market.  I've been suggesting dropping their price in half would be a good start -- but free would really level the playing field.

As usual, Amit Agarwal immediately had an insightful post on Yahoo and X1. 

One thing that caught my eye in his post was the mention of separating desktop and web results:

"Both Yahoo and X1 contend it makes sense to maintain a dividing line between hard-drive search and Web search because one quest focuses on recovering old information while the other strives to discover new information."

I couldn't agree more.  These tend to be two separate tasks for me -- one retrieval, one research -- and combining them isn't typically useful (any more than if I'm looking through my drawer for blue socks and kept running across advertisements for blue socks or articles about how blue socks and brown pants don't go together...well, actually that last might be helpful <g>).

However, I expect there will always be pressure to blur or eliminate that separation for many desktop search vendors because their revenue model depends on connecting users to commercial information on the web.  I wrote a few days ago about this.

I said that X1 could afford to break this model, because unlike competitors, it had a simpler revenue model: selling software.  We'll see if Yahoo tries to find a way to make money on its search tool through advertising, or if it is used primarily to strengthen brand loyalty for Yahoo's other services (search, email, IM).

There sure has been a lot of activity in the desktop search market recently, including another update to Copernic Desktop Search with performance and UI improvements and new products coming soon from companies like Ask Jeeves and Microsoft. InfoWorld has more details in an article title "Desktop Search Avalance Set to Hit."

Still no snow this weekend, so we went to the Victorian Stroll in Troy.

Here's Christopher posing with Patrick Sisti, an old friend playing Father Christmas.  Not only does Patrick have the look down pat, he has a friendly, generous nature that instantly reassures the most shy child.

 "In comes I, Old Father Christmas. Be I welcome or be I not - I hope that old Christmas will never be forgot!" 

Christmasarchives.com has lots of information on English Christmas traditions, including the non-fat, non-red, not-always-so-jolly Father Christmas.

Amit Agarwal points to a news release that Mamma.com is looking to acquire Copernic Technologies.

I wonder what this will mean for the free Copernic Desktop Search.  I like CDS, but I don't see the unique advantage it delivers in what's getting to be crowded market.  What niche can Copernic carve out when much bigger guns like Microsoft and Google also deliver a free product? 

More importantly, is a free desktop search program viable for the long run?

Niki Scevak of Jupiter Research is quoted saying that free desktop search software lacks a clear revenue model on its own, since revenue is really only tied to "searches of commercial interest." 

Essentially, how is anyone going to make money by letting me search my own hard drive for my own files?

A number of possibilities exist, including: 

1) Show me advertising while I'm searching.  (The quandry here is how do you make advertising effective but not intrusive.)

2) Show me similar information from the Internet, whether I want it or not. (That seems to be Blinkx niche now. Personally, it's interesting but not my ideal. When I want to search the Internet, I will.  When I just need to find something on my own computer, searching the Internet is wasting my time.)

3) Tie this tool into other pay- or advertising-driven products in a way that I want (or need) to use both.  (Google and Microsoft's approach)

4) Skip the whole dance of giving you free software and finding someone else to pay for it -- and just charge you for the program (X1's approach. They just need to cut the price in half.)

My guess is that some of these approaches more shaky than others and that ultimately many of the current players will be bought up or will abandon this market.

Alex Scoble asks:

"Here's a question for all of the Computer Engineers out there. Why do PCs become slow almost to the point of unusable when the PC's drive buses are in heavy use?

What am I talking about? Copy a CD to a CD or perform a disk intensive process like copying a lot of data from one PC to another and see what happens to your nice 3.2Ghz P4 with 512MB of DDR RAM. It slows to a crawl! At least it does in Windows...."

Read the rest of Alex Scoble's post here.

He mentions that servers handle disk I/O much more effectively, and wonders why desktop computers can't too.

Great point.  Right now I have two computers under my desk connected via an Iogear KVM switch so that when I tie one up with a long-running task, I can bounce to the other.  With the KVM, shared drives through Windows, and a shared clipboard (using a freeware program called Spike), it's *almost* like getting the benefits Alex would like to see built into every computer -- though at twice as expensive and a lot bulkier.

And this is an area where improvements could mean really noticeable benefits to users (as opposed to the MHz races that made good marketing copy but often didn't deliver anything in real-world use).

- Jim

Ran across this Thanksgiving photo essay at www.donaldsensing.com. 

Thank you for the touching reminder of what we're really supposed to be dwelling on at Thanksgiving (and it's not football, not turkey, not preparing to shop on Black Friday).

We have so much to be thankful for this year, and, as we gather with family this holiday, I hope we'll keep in mind all the good things we've received and look for ways to share our good fortune with others.

Best wishes to you and yours for a safe, happy Thanksgiving holiday!

There's a new 1.2 beta available for BlogJet, the blog editor I've mentioned I like before. Lots of new features that will come in handy, including extended posts, image thumbnails (and resizing of images), and typographic characters.  Nice quick write-up at Working Smart.

We're very proud of Christopher, who was one of nine children recognized from among over 100 entrants in the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library's Design Your Own Bookmark Contest. Christopher's bookmark showed a cross section of an ant colony with the slogan "We Dig the Library." The winners had a little ceremony, where they got books as gifts and learned about writing and illustrating from children's book author and illustrator Slyvie Wickstrom.   A lot of fun and very interesting.

As I've mentioned before, I think libraries are fantatisc places that help foster curiosity and a love for learning. The whole family visits the library regularly and it’s so nice to see Christopher enjoying the trips. 

Several people have suggested I take a look at the new Blinkx 2.0 beta for a better desktop search tool.  From what I've heard, Blinkx takes a very different approach from its competitors by trying to judge the "gist" of any document and automatically show the users related files on the users' PC and other related information from the web.  The new beta includes Search Folders, which let you create topical folders on your computer that are automatically populated with related documents Blinkx finds.  Very innovative ideas, and nobody else seems to pursing them.  However, cool as some of these features sound, I'm still not sure Blinkx is going to be the best fit for my specific needs, which are more about finding/browsing a variety of files on my computer.  Most of the time I'd turn to my search program to find something, I wouldn't need -- or even want -- to waste time with additional information from the Internet (which is what Blinkx seems to do best).  Marc Orchant has posted some thoughts on Blinkx, pointing out some rough spots but ultimately saying the program will stay on his "worth watching" list.

Lots of ideas for getting past writer's block in this post from 43folders.com. And great responses in the comments that add even more food for thought.  For me, writer's block = procrastination + distraction.  When that happens, I try to tackle the work a digestible bite at a time so I can see I'm making progress and negotiate in breaks for reaching important milestones. 

The suggestion about unplugging your router is dead on for me, and I even liked Andrew's comment that a computer with just a word processor can help.  I've also found that I'm much more effective if I also turn off as much background noise as possible -- even instrumental music cuts into my concentration.

At least for my non-fiction work, being at a loss of what to write next usually just means I didn't prepare properly. I find it's a lot easier to start with a very fast and rough outline, which gives me a road map for where I'm going and starts my brain thinking about how I'm going to get there.  If I get stuck on one section, I can always shift to another for a while and then come back.