BANNED
I am worthless beyond hope. Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley
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I find it strange that spotlight does not search the internet in anyway. I realize doing so would in some way go beyond Spotlight's intended purpose but at this time nearly everything has internet integration. Would it not be possible for Spotlight to integrate various Google searches into it's results. Say when you type "baseball" into spotlight, amongst all the hits you would get now on your hard drive you'd also get web hits, and image web hits, and maybe maps or something.
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Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Houston, Texas
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It's a good idea, but I think it would need to be controlled tightly to keep it all from going insane.
And you know ads would pop up and suddenly the user's entire damned computer would be a piece of adware. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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It's an interesting thought, but I think it's a bit too far-reaching. You have a finite amount of data on your computer... the internet is, in most cases, a nearly limitless repository of information. I think it would be overwhelming.
However, Spotlight does search your Safari bookmarks. What might be nice is if Spotlight were able to search your internet cache for information. So if I were to do a Spotlight search for "return of the," it would return internet history entries containing your username. Spotlight is for finding stuff you know you already have. I'd put recently viewed web pages (recent enough to be in your history and/or cache) in that category. |
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BANNED
I am worthless beyond hope. Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley
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well, i suggest it since im really developing a habit of just going to the upper right hand corner to search for anything, find anything, and even open apps. I guess this would begin to approach launchbar status if it could open web pages or search them from there though.
But spotlight seems to be the replacement of sherlock. Sherlock was able to search all the search engines and sort them according to relevance, it was able to find airport info and movie times and trailers. I think Spotlight could easily do the same. Type a movie name in, it searches your hard drive and the internet, maybe comes back with documents you have of it, a few of the top web hits, a movie trailer, etc. Of course all of this could be optional, or accessed via a disclosure triangle or something Spotlight could be a lot smarter I think. Maybe for Spotlight 2.0 though. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Leiden, the Netherlands
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Please no internet integration.
If I wan't to look for something on the internet: I'll look for it on the internet. Reason is simple: stuff on my harddisk is there, just a click away: stuff from the internet will often take (considerable) time to download. |
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BANNED
I am worthless beyond hope. Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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I think it could work and I like Luca's idea about including cache information in Spotlight searches. Maybe there could be an "expand to include internet searches" button in the next rev?
"What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds." - Steve Jobs |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: San Francisco, CA
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Leiden, the Netherlands
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Veteran Member
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Aren't we all forgetting here that Spotlight is only as fast as it is because it pre-caches all the info on your computer...
Isn't there something about it spending the first few hours indexing your computer, so searches will be slower until that is done... As Luca says, with an almost limitless search area (if you include the inet) then pre-caching would be impossible. Look at how long it takes Google to *really* update it's info, rather than just check *important* sites and appear to be truly globally 'indexing'. We have Google integrated in Safari.. We could have an internet search integrated in the Finder, or in Spotlight, as an option... But I for one would leave it turned off.. The advantage of Spotlight is managing your own data, not the rest of the worlds!! 'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take' Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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"What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds." - Steve Jobs |
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Veteran Member
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He He.. Not to get sidetracked either but Google can take up to a week or more to get up to date site info into it's cache... You sometimes get totally different pages being listed than actually come up when you click through...
Agreed, expand search to internet could be added... But I still don't think that is what 'spotlight' is about. I think the name itself could be taken to be rather introspective. It is about indexing your data. 'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take' Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt |
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