by Daniel Semper

Write-up by Cedric Price

Google released the initial version of their Desktop application back in 2004. This program enables you to immediately search your personal computer for specific content, just like you would normally search the internet employing google.com. It looks in your email messages, chat logs, media content, zipped archives and the net. But Google Desktop gives considerably much more functions than just looking by means of your nearby files. The plan can be downloaded for cost-free at the official site (desktop.google.com) or at http://www.freesecuredownloads.com. It is readily available for MAC OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows server 2000. In 2007, Google released the newest Windows version – 5..

1. Installation

The installation of Google Desktop is a straightforward approach, requiring minimum user input. Just download the application from http://desktop.freesecuredownloads.com and run the installer. It will install the software and location a small icon on your Window program tray, and make a desktop shortcut. When the installation process is completed, a browser window will open up, asking you to set up a few preferences. When you click on the ‘Set Preferences and Continue’ button, the initial indexing will start. Google Desktop is programmed to startup automatically with Windows. When your laptop or computer remains idle for a lot more than 30 seconds, it will start off to index the files on the challenging drive, which depending on the size, could take up a couple of hours. As a result, it is possibly a good idea to leave Google Desktop do its indexing for one whole night, or when you are going out for a couple of hours.

According to Google, the recommended system requirements are at least 256MB of RAM and a 600Mhz or faster CPU. Even though, the installer itself is really tiny – just over 2MB, as soon as installed Google Desktop can take up to 4GB of space on your hard drive for the indexing file (containing the location and description of all files found on your laptop or computer). If you want to check just how considerably space is the indexing file taking, go to C:Documents and SettingsUSERNAMELocal SettingsApplication DataGoogleGoogle Desktop Search, replace USERNAME with your actual username in Windows.

2. Interface

The interface of the application has undergone some dramatic changes. The most current version functions a sidebar permitting users to personalize and customize the details they want to view, by clicking the title bar of a given panel and dragging it anywhere you want on the screen. The separate panels on the sidebar are referred to as gadgets. To add far more gadgets, point your mouse on leading of the Sidebar and press Add. A new window appears containing the diverse gadgets that you can add alongside the existing ones. The gadgets are sorted in categories, so that users can easily come across the correct 1. Removing a gadget is as straightforward as adding it, just position the mouse on top of it and click on the ‘x’ button. If you want to hide the Sidebar when inactive, click on Alternatives and put a check on the Auto-hide feature.

By default, the Sidebar consist of the following panels:

-Email – connected with your Gmail account (if you have 1). You have to enter your Gmail username and password in Choices -&gt Preferences. The E-mail selection gets automatically synchronized with Outlook or Thunderbird, so it will show you all new email messages, even if the email account is not provided by Google

-Scratch Pad – shops random notes

-Photos – displays all photos from My Pictures folder

-News – consists of the most current headlines from Google news

-Web Clips – shows the most recent posts from your favourite RSS feeds

three. Indexing

The technology behind Google Desktop is called indexing. When you install the application, it indexes all files on your pc to make future searching far more efficient. This makes the whole process really faster than Windows’ built in Search, because instead of going trough every single file on the personal computer, it just scans the card catalog. A excellent factor about this indexing process is that it is being performed when you are not utilizing your personal computer, so that it will not slow down the method even though you are performing something crucial.

GD can index and manage a large quantity of resources as Office docs, media files, zipped archives, e-mail, browser history and even chat sessions. For security reasons, it does not index password protected documents and encrypted internet pages, by default. Besides that, Google Desktop also tracks your activity whilst you are viewing internet pages, files, reading and writing email messages. By doing that, it creates cached copes of the tracked details, so that the user can access it afterwards. In that way, it is achievable to search and access information even right after the file no longer exists on the method.

Often you require to manually re-index your method, in case you have moved files around and made some substantial changes to your difficult drive. To re-index, proper-click on the Google Desktop icon in the program tray, click on Indexing -&gt Re-Index.

four. Google up your Desktop

To begin a local search utilizing Google Desktop, enter the query string in the field at the bottom (by default). Results will right away appear in a pop up window as you punch in the symbols. When you click on a given result, the specific file will be opened with the respective application. For example, if it is an e-mail, Outlook will open it up, or the default email client. If it is a PDF file, Adobe Reader will load. Of course Google wouldn’t be Google if you didn’t have all the filters available in your search.

-”precise match” – if you put the search string in quotation marks, Google Desktop will return only precise matches.

-website: – the site: operator it will create results from the internet site that you specify soon after it. For example, if you enter ‘help internet site:www.google.com”, it will return pages you have noticed in google.com containing the word ‘help’

-filetype: – let’s you specify the filetype of the of the outcomes returned. For example, if you enter ‘google filetype:pdf’, it will return only pdf files that contain the word google in them.

-under: – makes it possible for you to restrict the folders in which Google Desktop will search

-machine: – if you are utilizing Google Desktop to search by way of many computers connected in 1 network, with the machine operator, you can specify a single laptop or computer to appear into.

A wonderful thing about GD is that it allows you search thoroughly your emails. If you enter ‘Subject: searchstring’, it will return all emails with subject matching the searcstring. In the identical way you can use the other accessible e-mail operators such as – To, From, Cc, Bcc.

5. Inspector Gadget

The simple functionality of Google Desktop is nearby looking, but a lot of extensions are readily available in the form of plug-ins, known as gadgets. Those gadgets are free of charge and can be downloaded from http://desktop.google.com/plugins, exactly where you will see them divided into separate categories. The installation of those gadgets is absolutely a ‘no-brainer’, just click on the one you like, confirm and it will immediately integrate itself into your GD.

The programmers at Google have also released the SDK utilizing which, you can create your own gadgets and publish them if you want. You can download the Google Desktop SDK at http://desktop.google.com/downloadsdksubmit.

There are many gadgets that really stand out. The diGGGadget brings digg.com directly onto your desktop, so that you can simply browse the topics and categories. An additional exciting one is the Dictionary gadget utilizing which, you can appear up any word when reading a internet page. Just highlight it, press Ctrl + C to put in the clipboard and go on reading your text, the result will seem on the Sidebar.

6. The Timeline

The GD Timeline is like a diary of your every day personal computer operations, showing you a detailed list of everything you did, each and every file you opened, every single website you visited, when you visited it, every single email received in a minute by minute breakdown. Just double-click on the method tray icon of GDesktop and then click on ‘Browse Timeline’. You will see today’s timeline with the most recent events being placed on best. To filter out specific events, click ‘emails’, ‘web history’ or ‘chats’ at the top of the screen. If you want to clear the list (fairly usually it can get overpopulated), press the ‘Remove events’ link and do not worry, this will not delete the corresponding file on your laptop or computer, it will just get rid of it from that list.

7. Security Concerns

There are a lot of security concerns surrounding GD. GD listens on port 4664 for connections to localhost or 127…1. When you have it installed and you open up google.com to search the web for one thing, you will see local results integrated into your search results, meaning that Google Desktop is transferring information to the server, hence an attacker could exploit it and gain access to a portion of the tough drive. To eliminate this insecure feature, go into Alternatives -&gt Preferences -&gt Display and uncheck the Google Integration at the bottom.

8. Download

For a secure download of Google Desktop, cost-free of any spyware or adware, go to http://desktop.freesecuredownloads.com.

Google Desktop is one way to quickly search for items on your desktop and on the Web. Find out how to install and customize this handy tool. For a lot more info, check out the About.com write-up: google.about.com Watch Much more How To Videos on our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com Watch Much more How To Videos on About.com: video.about.com Connect with About.com on Facebook www.facebook.com Follow About.com Video on Twitter: twitter.com
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