The internet is my computer. Really.
From my perspective, from how I work with and store information, I’m coming to rely on web-based services at least as much as I rely on software and storage in my little iBook laptop. My content, literally, is all over the place.
I adore the powerful Spotlight desktop search feature of my Mac’s OS X Tiger operating system. It’s so easy for me to find anything stored on my laptop.
The trouble is, a lot of my content (most of it, actually) isn’t stored on my computer, so spotlight doesn’t index it and can’t search for it. For instance…
I use Google’s Gmail as my primary mail program. I keep track of cool or relevant stuff I find online via Furl and del.icio.us. I create this weblog in WordPress, which lives on my web host’s server. For The Right Conversation, I, Reporter, and other blogs I use the hosted service Typepad. I maintain several private project-related wikis on Seedwiki. I’ve been dabbling with CoComment, Flickr, MySpace, and Google Calendar. And I participate in several web-based forums, too.
Alas, my Spotlight doesn’t shine on any of that.
I would really love it if, as Apple creates the next generation of OS X (Leopard), they would build in the ability to connect Spotlight to my account on any online service I’d like to index.
Right now there are some hacked-together patchwork solutions, like delimport (which I couldn’t get to install, unfortunately). Now, I’m all for creative independently-produced tools, but for something as basic as being able to search all of my data and content, I’d prefer that to be handled from one place. And I don’t want to install a separate tool or extension for each service.
I’d think Spotlight should be able to do that. Does anyone know if Apple is working on that?
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