If you have a Mac, like me, don't bother reading this inspirational post. This is for PC users only.

Then again, I invite you to read on just so that you can live vicariously, for once, through the non-Apple Computer world -- bless their lucky souls.

Yesterday, Google announced a new first. In addition, to helping you "google" the Web, they can now help you save time time by searching the hard drive of your computer.

Google's new downloadable software application is called Google Desktop Search.

The index of searchable information created by Desktop Search is stored on your own computer.

With Desktop, Google "caches" your documents and other files, effectively taking a real-time photograph of everything you do on your computer.

PC Requirements

In order to take advantage of this brilliant time-saver which is free, you must have a Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2000, 500 megabytes of hard-drive space and a minimum of 128 megabytes of RAM memory.

Google Desktop Search works best with Microsoft Internet Explorer. It will also work with Firefox, Mozilla and Opera, but with limited functions.

What Google Desktop Search Finds

Microsoft Office files - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
Text files
Digital music files
Photographs
E-mails in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express
AOL Instant Messenger chat transcripts
Web history, i.e., pages you have previously visited

What Google Desktop Search Won't Find, Yet

Google's own Web-based Gmail and Yahoo mail
Adobe PDF files
Files on an external hard drive

Desktop.Google.com

To set up Google's new service go to:

Google defines Desktop Search as follows:

Google Desktop Search is how our brains would work if we had photographic memories.

It is a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, chats, and the web pages you've viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop Search puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails, and bookmarks.

In addition to basic search, Google Desktop Search introduces new ways to access relevant and timely information.

When you view a web page in Internet Explorer, Google Desktop Search "caches" or stores its content so that you can later look at that same version of the page, even if its live content has changed or you're offline.

Google Desktop Search organizes email search results into conversations, so that all email messages in the same thread are grouped into a single search result.

Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products, said the company decided to move forward with its desktop search in response to overwhelming consumer demand.

Mayer said that consumers don't usually remember where they saw a piece of information, but can usually approximate when; she said the new tool enables users to sort results either by date or relevance.

Now, that incredible photograph taken on the lake in Sweden can be easily found for my upcoming Summer 2003 iMovie. And my mother's best chicken curry recipe will be up on the screen well before the water's boiling.

Google's crawling technology, which users download to their personal computers, does not communicate with the company's servers, said Mayer.

Rather, it is a stand-alone piece of software contained on a user's hard drive, so users' privacy is secure.

The desktop search can be customized to not retrieve certain files -- a feature that's especially useful to protect the privacy of individuals who share computers with others such as family members, said Mayer.

Currently, the Web history search function is only available for Internet Explorer, but Google is looking into making its desktop searcher compatible with other Web browsers, IM clients (only AOL Instant Messenger is currently supported), and file types such as like PDF documents in the near future, said Mayer.

Microsoft has its eyes trained on the desktop search space, and will incorporate search technology into the next version of its operating system due out in 2006. Microsoft also plans to offer its own Web and desktop search capability later this year.

Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves are also naturals to get into this space.

Google's Upside

Google is banking on you using their Web search site more often. They do not plan to serve up ads to you via your hard drive.

For Google advertisers, like us, because the desktop searcher also crawls the Web, we will be able to bid on keywords typed into it.

Talk about reaching our target audience!

Congratulations Google.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful and "find it fast" living!

~ jck