I am turning off Google Desktop`s ability to search my internet history. Some people might say it poses a threat to privacy, but it simply obfuscates what I am really searching for. If a topic has recently appeared on my mental landscape, I will have looked for it on the internet. Without a doubt. So the first half to three quarters of Google Desktop search results are always from my internet history, and I simply do not consider this part of my desktop. If I am searching for something that I wrote or someone wrote to me, it is likely to be buried beneath a whole bunch of web pages that I visited before or after I wrote or read the document I am looking for.
If the magic behind Google is cross-linking and popularity of search results, I wonder how or whether they are doing anything like that with their desktop tool. If so, I need to google bomb my desktop.
Personally, Viapoint (http://viapoint.com) is more to my liking than Google Desktop. I like to be able to see and manipulate the relationships between the items I am interested in. Because Viapoint is a Windows.Form app rather than a Web app, its more sophisticated UI lets you create and organize these and other relationships into Projects, Groupings, Companies, etc. With Viapoint, you get a glimpse into the future of what WinFS might be.
