First off, apologies for the silence the past couple of days: I was downed by ‘flu. Anyway, here’s some mail from a reader and fellow blogger, David Brake, Internet consultant & journalist, who runs http://davidbrake.org/ and http://blog.org/ on the subject of Searching.

I just tried out x1 and while like you I like the idea of a free local file search tool (remember Altavista used to do one?) the lack of Acrobat support in its basic version is a serious weakness, IMHO. In your discussion of various local search tools I think you under-state the importance of the fact that x1 is the only free version out there so far. This surely is a market Google should get into!

 

Since you are clearly interested in search might I suggest you write about “Dave’s Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar” 
which gives the functionality of the Google toolbar but lots more besides – a single search interface into dozens of translation, conversion and other utility websites. I also recommend Powermarks – for fast, easy to use and portable bookmark management – I now have > 5,000 bookmarks indexed and it still responds quickly.

 

Lastly (obplug) I have just finished a book for Dorling Kindersley – Managing E-mail – which was designed to be a simple non-technical guide, inexpensive enough to give to everyone in an organization ($7), that would nonetheless introduce workers at all levels to many of the key techniques they can use to manage email more effectively and the key security and legal issues they may face. There is also a companion website I have just created which I hope you will take a look at and (if you are so moved) comment on. Ditto my weblog.