Google Desktop File Sharing

March 12th, 2005

This past week, Google updated their Desktop Search software to much acclaim. The most notable update that was given (in the eyes of developers) was the addition of a programmable API to plug into this search utility. In a nutshell, it is now possible to index any file type that you desire and then search this content along with the rest of your personal information.

Giving developers this much access to a user's personal files will certainly create some interesting results. The first possible add-on, that I thought of, would be some form of a local network file search engine. Think of it this way: User A adds users B and C (other users on the LAN) to his personal network. A new main search page is constructed (by the add-on) which provides a streamlined search interface for not only user A's mulitmedia files but B's and C's too. In the search results, links are provided to the share location of B's and C's files, making them easy to access. If this were built, it would be huge. One of the major problems with doing file sharing on local network (with many users) is the ability to quickly locate and find files of interest, with Google already developing the tech to do the hard work, the rest should be easy.

Note: I haven't tested this new version of the software yet. In the old version you could only search your primary hard drive, and no others. If this has been changed so that you can search all of your hard drives then the above idea becomes super easy, without even the need for an add-on. All you would have to do is mount all of your favorite fileshares as a letter drive (X:, Y:, Z:, etc.) and then add that drive to be indexed. There you go! Your friend's files will now be indexed along with yours and it'll be dead simple to copy/use them.

Tags: corp:google, desktop, file, p2p, search, sharing

1 Comment on 'Google Desktop File Sharing'

Google Maps

February 10th, 2005

Google released an interesting application the other day called Google Maps. Apart from the fact that it's very well designed and very easy to use, there's some fun stuff going on in the background that I really want to tinker with. More information concerning the actual tech behind the site can be found in this article.

One of my favorite commands back with Google Local was being able to search for '*' near a location, this would give you a list of results that are immediately close to you. The same thing has carried over to Google Maps, with one exception: The data is now semi-available in a easy to parse XML format. For example:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=*+near+rochester,+ny&output=xml

will return a list of everything closest to the center of Rochester. And to make things even easier, you can use the URL:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=*+near+rochester,+ny&output=js

to import the data straight into your web application. This is a very cool thing.

One of the features that I wanted to do with one of my projects a while back, Google Local Social Network (GLSN), was to provide results inline to the user - now it seems as if that's possible, in a big way. This is because another feature is available in XML format: Directions! Using just another form of the URL above you can get a nice, parseable, set of directions to navigate to your destination, for example:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=buffalo,+ny+to+rochester,+ny&output=xml

I can't wait to play around with this some more, but whenever I get the time, GLSN is definitely due for an overhaul.

Tags: corp:google, maps, xml, xslt

Comment on 'Google Maps'