index

They wouldn't want you to believe it, but there's more to powered-up desktop indexing and searching than Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo. Copernic's Desktop Search tool makes it fast and easy to find documents, e-mails, and other files on local drives. Like other desktop search tools, it creates a searchable index of all the data on a computer's drives, and updates it every time a file is added, removed, or modified.

A left-side search column allows simple keyword queries and more refined searches based on file size, date, file type, or folder. Easy-to-read icons at the top … Read more

If you've ever had trouble finding scanned documents on Google, it's probably because it was not indexing them. On Thursday, this all changed. Google has announced that it is now indexing scanned documents.

Google is now able to perform optical character recognition (OCR) on any scanned document it finds stored in the PDF format. OCR technology is able to "read" a scanned document and covert it into words that can be searched and indexed.

OCR technology has always impressed me, I mean deciphering between a "0" and "O" is hard enough for … Read more

A wide swath of technology stocks posted double-digit gains Tuesday, as the broader markets surged to exceptionally high levels as investors anticipated an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

Cisco Systems, Amazon.com, Dell, and Comcast were just some of the tech players whose shares crested above 10 percent gains at the market's close, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped a whopping 889.35 points to 9,065.12, up 10.9 percent.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 143.57 points, or 9.5 percent, to close at 1,649.47, while the S&P 500 soared … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices falls nearly 10 percent on Thursday, as the broader markets pull in competing directions.

AMD declined 9.7 percent to $3.27 a share, following the release of its third quarter results the previous day.

The chip maker may have found some comfort in that its share price didn't plunge as far as Cadence Design Systems, which fell a whopping 25.5 percent to $3.22 a share. Cadence took a hit, after the company disclosed it expects to restate its financial results for the first quarter and first half of the year, as it investigates … Read more

Research In Motion was a big loser in an otherwise positive day for tech stocks after it was the subject of a research note authored by a pessimistic financial analyst.

James Faucette of Pacific Crest Securities rained on RIM's parade with a research note Monday suggesting that October sales of RIM's BlackBerrys have been less-than-impressive, causing the stock to plunge $5.10, or 8.64 percent, to close at $53.91 on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The note also comes a day before Apple is expected to report iPhone sales of around 5 million units during the past … Read more

Yahoo on Wednesday announced the rebranding of IndexTools as Yahoo Web Analytics (beta). Currently an enterprise product, the move brings it closer to being a consumer and small business tool, although it's not available to everyone just yet.

Yahoo acquired IndexTools back in early April and promptly made it a free service. Its big advantage over Google Analytics is that the information is updated within a few minutes of user activity. In comparison, stats from Google tend to take about 24 hours, however anyone can sign up for it. Both products feature colorful, easy-to-read charts and graphics for data reporting, deep tie-ins with each company's ad services, and a single-service user log-in that works with other company properties.

According to a post on Yahoo's blog the updated version of the service is already out to advertisers and third-party application developers, with Yahoo Small Business users to follow. If you try to sign-up on the new site, there's simply a wait list where you can subscribe to updates. Yahoo's Director of Data Insights Dennis Mortensen says the easiest way to get your hands on this before Q4 is to become an advertiser.

You can read more about the changeover here. I've also embedded a five-minute overview of what the service did (five months ago) after the break.… Read more

After finding my post from last March about tweaking Vista's index locations, a reader sent me five questions. I don't have the person's name or e-mail address, so I'm going to respond in this post and hope they're still reading.

"Please advise step-by-step how to delete all the locations in the Indexed Locations screen at one time."

Press the Windows key, type indexing options, and press Enter. In the Indexing Options dialog box, click Modify > "Show all locations" (you may need to click through the User Account Control warning). Uncheck … Read more

Vista won't win any popularity contests, but even with its faults, I'll take the most recent version of Windows over any of the predecessors. My biggest beef with Vista is that it's slow. At least the OS makes it easy to optimize your system for peak performance. Here's a quick recap of my three favorite Vista speedup tips.

Put indexing on permanent hold I've been using Vista for a good 18 months now, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've used Windows' built-in search feature. I … Read more

On Thursday, Microsoft announced four security bulletins for Tuesday. The announcement is intended as a heads-up for IT departments before Patch Tuesday. All four are considered critical, the most serious ranking offered by the software giant.

Among the critical patches, two affect Windows Media Player, one affects Windows, while the other affects Microsoft Office. All could enable remote code execution if exploited.

Starting next month, Microsoft will be sharing the technical details of new vulnerabilities to give software developers a catch to update affected products before the public announcement. Also in October, Microsoft will start providing each bulletin with an … Read more