gmail online harddrive...
 

If you have a gmail account and you want to turn that 1gb into an online harddrive, this utility comes in very handy. Also if you scroll the bottom, you'll find even more really cool stuff.

I also LOVE the google desktop utility that lets you search your own computer. It indexes everything and works very quickly.

http://www.aimlesswords.com/archives...07/gmail_drive

http://desktop.google.com/

I read some speculation on other web sites that Google is using the hard drive indexing program as the first step in a new approach to file sharing. Pure speculation.

Back in reality, I'm not so sure about the hard drive indexing. The required free disk space is really pretty significant. Plus, I know where most everything is anyway. Maybe I don't collect enough crap from the web.

The program is only 227k and it works very quickly. Must faster than trying to search with windows.

Do you know how much, if any, the Google Desktop communicates with Google.com?

Yes, but it requires 500MB (half a gigabyte) of free hard drive space so it can create an index of your files. It's a monster.

None if you tell it not to when you do the install.

Read the EULA and their Privacy Policy and say that again.

Gmail already reads your emails for contextual advertising purposes, there is no doubt in my mind that the desktop indexer will at some point, as well.


And there's a difference between opting out of their information-collection service, and having your desktop indexer compromised by an intruder who then sees all your credit card numbers, passwords, photos, emails, mp3s...

The desktop utility would be a pretty nifty tool if it wasn't so Microsofty. According to the info I've read, it indexes your Internet Explorer cache, but not other browsers, such as Mozilla. It indexes your Outlook e-mail, but not other mail clients. It indexes MS Word and MS Excel files, but not OpenOffice.org, WordPerfect, etc. And, it is Win32-only app. It might as well have been written by Microsoft. It strays from it's Microsoft focus in one area, though... it indexes AOL Instant Messanger logs, but not MSN (nor Yahoo, ICQ, etc).

Everything else gets indexed by filename only. The Microsoft stuff gets indexed by content.

It also has a big security concern in a multiple-user environment... the desktop utility has no respect for user account limitations, and any user on a computer can search the other users' files.

The GMail drive is kinda cool though... while 1GB doesn't seem like much for storage, and it's a bit slow, it is handy for sharing data between computers. If it weren't for my USB Thumbdrive, I'd probably use the GMail drive quite a bit.

Speaking of GMail, I have 6 GMail invites if anybody wants one.

Over here, please...please? I'd like to give it a look-see.

If you referring to the GMail invite, just PM me the e-mail address to send it to.

Google search tool a privacy risk
 

This was just sent to me:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/1....ap/index.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and Web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google's free new tool that indexes a PC's contents for quickly locating data.

If it's installed on computers at libraries and Internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they've exchanged. That could mean revealed passwords, conversations with doctors, or viewed Web pages detailing online purchases.

"It's clearly a very powerful tool for locating information on the computer," said Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "On the flip side of things, it's a perfect spy program."

Google Desktop Search, publicly released Thursday in a "beta" test phase for computers running the latest Windows operating systems, automatically records e-mail you read through Outlook, Outlook Express or the Internet Explorer browser. It also saves copies of Web pages you view through IE and chat conversations using America Online Inc.'s instant-messaging software. And it finds Word, Excel and PowerPoint files stored on the computer.

How many of you share your computer? I don't. I am the only one who gets on it from inside or outside.

Also google doesn't "read" your email, they have software that tries to pull words out and give links to things. It's not like some person is sitting around perusing your email.

I got one Gmail account.I like the simple page and large size. But I don't know why it is very slow to download the pages and sometimes not enter.

Computer security is such that you don't always know who is getting on it from the outside. (Which, when you think about it too much leads to computer insecurity).

No, Google doesn't have anyone reading every piece of your mail. Most people have enough frustration reading their own copies of "Happy Good Luck Angel (FWD) (FWD) (FWD) (FWD) (FWD) (FWD). But the point is that they COULD.

Think of it as being kind of like Carnivore Lite.