I tend to gather stuff while online. Pictures, articles, PDFs, this, that, the other thing. It’s really hard to keep track of stuff. Perhaps it was a website where you read this great article about taking care of your reeds. Or maybe it was that PDF of a solo you downloaded, but what was the file name again? Mac OS X’s Spotlight can only help so much in finding stuff. And on Windows…..you’ll have to wait for Vista for anything like Spotlight.
Fear not. There are a number of solutions for this information overload, and the one I picked was DEVONThink Pro. It’s a great program that can keep track of all the STUFF you gather. All the PDFs I’ve collected. Articles out of FluteTalk, or the Double Reed Society. Or out of Downbeat. I have something like 16 gigabytes in DEVONThink right now. PDFs of songs. I can organize them. Categorize them. Type in some good descriptions. Plus, if I want to find a Beach Boys song, but I don’t remember the title…..I can search on it….instantly.
I don’t really know of anything like this for Windows, but if you have a Mac, you should check it out.
I think a great program for a Windows PC is the free Yahoo Desktop Search. I have been using it on my machine for over a year now and find it invaluable for finding those nuggets of information that you know are “in there somewhere!” It beats Windows Media Player for finding music – and it plays the song in the preview window.
I can find all of the PDF’s I have on my hard drive – no matter where they are – and see them in the preview window
The same thing goes for Word, Word Perfect, Excel, Powerpoint, AutoCAD files (it even previews those!)and many more formats.
I don’t mean to sputter so much about it, but this is really a great piece of software — and you just can’t beat the price!!
That is good to know. Google has a desktop searcher as well. But, as I use a Mac for all my music stuff, and the PC for basically running GPO, Yahoo/Google desktop won’t really cut it for me (as both are Windows only). Plus, I’m always a little concerned with my personal info and other things (internet searches, etc) being collected.
I’ve tried Google Desktop Search and I don’t like it as much as the Yahoo product. First of all, I agree with your privacy concerns related to Google. I’m not sure, but I think YDS is a much-more standalone program. I think it just sticks to your hard drive if you want it to. I also feel that the Google product wastes too many CPU cycles versus YDS. It wants to add sidebars and lots of extra information. YDS just does searching and seems to do it well. ’nuff said. Thanks for the comment!!
Pete