Searching For Answers

A recent posting on Slashdot, referencing a writeup on Wired, talks about how the increasingly rapid and robust search capabilities built into (and appended to) modern computer operating systems will inevitably lead to the demise of tiered folder structures to house files. As I've previously mentioned, I can't personally relate to the concept; 25+ years' worth of using computers of all shapes and sizes has permanently drilled neatly organized directory (see, I don't even call them folders) trees into my admittedly anal-retentive brain. My wife, on the other hand, has been using computers for a far shorter time, and scatters files across her computer's hard drive and our network storage devices in quite a spectacularly haphazard manner, reflective of her bigger-picture entropic approach to paperwork and other items in our home (PLEASE don't tell her I said this).

My recent experiment with the latest version of the MSN Toolbar, which I used in order to harness its multi-tab capability with Internet Explorer (yes, I'm occasionally forced to still use IE), wasn't entirely successful; its Desktop Search engine, I suspect, was behind the error message I got each time I closed Outlook 2000. Lookout for Outlook, on the other hand, has worked great for me; although I have my archived email pretty well organized, it's nice to just be able to punch in a keyword or two and near-immediately pull up what I'm looking for, and Lookout also indexes other files on my computer. Google and Yahoo, among others, offer desktop search engines that are conceptually similar to MSN Desktop Search.

The Slashdot post also reminded me of a recent article I read somewhere (maybe in the Sacramento Bee newspaper) about how obtaining the 'perfect URL' is less important than it used to be. Folks are increasingly not bothering to type full URLs into their browsers, so the article claimed, but instead are popping a keyword or two into their favourite search engine toolbar to get to the desired website. At first I was skeptical; I remembered how put-off I was when I discovered that someone had snagged the www.dipert.com domain all for themselves, how feverishly I'd pursued grabbing my own www.bdipert.com domain, and how important I'd felt it was to get the best-possible domain name for other websites I've managed in the past, currently manage, and plan to manage in the future. But then I realized that to verify the Sacramento Bee URL at the beginning of this paragraph, I didn't punch the address I thought was correct into Firefox; instead I typed 'Sacramento Bee' into Googlebar….