7 ms·

You've managed to put into words something that really bothers me about how software and devices are designed and used at present. An extension of my physical b

by Reelin 7y ago

You've managed to put into words something that really bothers me about how software and devices are designed and used at present. An extension of my physical being (which is increasingly how devices are used) should probably be as independent as possible, not a third party service. > I want to be able to review my digital actions - what was the name of the video I stupidly watched at 1am last night - let me review that each week so I can improve my behaviour - not have my behaviour controlled It's almost 2020. Forget the flying car, why does my web browser still not provide full text history search if I want it? It's text, and this isn't the 1980s! Why can't it snapshot the textual portion of the DOM for each page I visit if that's what I want? Half terabyte SSDs with 700 MB/s sustained write are $80!

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
That came, worked very nicely, then went with the first version or two of Google desktop search. Would search web history, local documents - word and excel included, and present it in an interface much like Google search at the time. Far as I remember all data was kept locally - it wasn't the Googleplex hoovering up yet another terabyte of your data trail or I wouldn't have touched it. Then it started to deprecate the useful part, gain a GUI, and morph into a second-rate widget engine. By the last couple of versions I came across it was a mostly useless, very second rate copy of Konfabulator (later Yahoo Widgets). It no longer had any local document and web indexing.
- Reelin 7y ago
  I had no idea. How is something so amazingly functional and immediately useful allowed to disappear? It just seems like such an obvious thing to build into a browser engine.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    No idea - a quick skim, and the first version was the one I liked most. It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon. With a bit of thought, the later versions did retain some local search, but made it clunky and awkward. I forget quite how, only that I liked it less and less. Course before too long it was discontinued entirely. Odd really as it, to me, is the obvious use of my computer for my web activity... Here's the original press release and a couple of screen shots: http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-desktop-search.html http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-des...
    - severine 7y ago
      > It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon For the local filesystems full-text almost instantaneous search, definitely check Recoll: http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html Recoll will index an MS-Word document stored as an attachment to an e-mail message inside a Thunderbird folder archived in a Zip file (and more...). It will also help you search for it with a friendly and powerful interface, and let you open a copy of a PDF at the right page with two clicks. There is little that will remain hidden on your disk.
    - MayeulC 7y ago
      Baloo and Milou on the KDE desktop is often decried for performance reasons, but is quite powerful. I like how it can perform full-text search in my documents (pdf, etc). It also searches your e-mails if you use Kmail (and contacts, events, etc if you use other KDE PIM tools). I only wish it was a bit less eager to extract files on underpowered laptops, and it would be nice if it could OCR pdfs and tag images (facial recognition, etc).
      - severine 7y ago
        For the PDF/OCR task I just discovered Paperwork, I think it's a Gnome project. https://openpaper.work/ https://openpaper.work/ Seems apropos.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    At a guess, it wasn't amenable to ad-monetisation and people weren't willing to pay for it. And the average person has already moved far more of their life to "the cloud" to free themselves of the burden of local system administration.
- eitland 7y ago
  Miss it an awful lot. Another seriously nifty thing it would do if you allowed it to was to collect rss feeds from sites you visited and magically sift out stuff it knew I would be interested in.
lonelappde 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511760
- Reelin 7y ago
  Most of that seems oriented at full, manual archival rather than automated (lightweight-ish) text caching for search operations. ArchiveBox (https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox) looks promising, although it isn't capturing the "live" browser feed. Readable-Web Proxy (https://github.com/fake-name/ReadableWebProxy https://github.com/fake-name/ReadableWebProxy) also looks interesting, but seems to be external as well. Maybe I just need to suck it up and roll my own.
  - richardkmichael 7y ago
    I was going to permanently save my browsering history by running all my browsers through squid. If squid's StorageManager supports it, I'd put page storage in Postgres, then use PG's FTS with a light UI around it.
severine 7y ago
Check Memex! Full-Text Search your Web History & Bookmarks https://worldbrain.io/ https://worldbrain.io/ Not affiliated.
- Reelin 7y ago
  Someone finally did it, it's completely local, and it's MIT licensed! Based on GitHub history, development only started about 3 years ago.
  - severine 7y ago
    And: It doesn't make your browser crawl, which still surprises me. I have to admit that I don't use it much (I've got it mostly hidden, there are several tweaks related to visibility), but it is amazing, as you put it, that someone finally did it, and got it mostly right! Kudos.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  thank you!
- darkwater 7y ago
  Thank you very much for this!
- zeveb 7y ago
  MIT-licensed, which means that if they have any decent ideas in there Apple and/or Google can just take them all and slap them into the latest Safari or Chrome. AGPL would really be in the best interest of their codebase.
  - adambyrtek 7y ago
    Maybe the authors don't mind if their ideas get incorporated in other projects? Maybe they are more interested in spreading their ideas than owning them?
    - 7y ago

by Reelin 7y ago

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

That came, worked very nicely, then went with the first version or two of Google desktop search. Would search web history, local documents - word and excel included, and present it in an interface much like Google search at the time. Far as I remember all data was kept locally - it wasn't the Googleplex hoovering up yet another terabyte of your data trail or I wouldn't have touched it. Then it started to deprecate the useful part, gain a GUI, and morph into a second-rate widget engine. By the last couple of versions I came across it was a mostly useless, very second rate copy of Konfabulator (later Yahoo Widgets). It no longer had any local document and web indexing.

Reelin 7y ago
I had no idea. How is something so amazingly functional and immediately useful allowed to disappear? It just seems like such an obvious thing to build into a browser engine.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  No idea - a quick skim, and the first version was the one I liked most. It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon. With a bit of thought, the later versions did retain some local search, but made it clunky and awkward. I forget quite how, only that I liked it less and less. Course before too long it was discontinued entirely. Odd really as it, to me, is the obvious use of my computer for my web activity... Here's the original press release and a couple of screen shots: http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-desktop-search.html http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-des...
  - severine 7y ago
    > It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon For the local filesystems full-text almost instantaneous search, definitely check Recoll: http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html Recoll will index an MS-Word document stored as an attachment to an e-mail message inside a Thunderbird folder archived in a Zip file (and more...). It will also help you search for it with a friendly and powerful interface, and let you open a copy of a PDF at the right page with two clicks. There is little that will remain hidden on your disk.
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    Baloo and Milou on the KDE desktop is often decried for performance reasons, but is quite powerful. I like how it can perform full-text search in my documents (pdf, etc). It also searches your e-mails if you use Kmail (and contacts, events, etc if you use other KDE PIM tools). I only wish it was a bit less eager to extract files on underpowered laptops, and it would be nice if it could OCR pdfs and tag images (facial recognition, etc).
    - severine 7y ago
      For the PDF/OCR task I just discovered Paperwork, I think it's a Gnome project. https://openpaper.work/ https://openpaper.work/ Seems apropos.
- pjc50 7y ago
  At a guess, it wasn't amenable to ad-monetisation and people weren't willing to pay for it. And the average person has already moved far more of their life to "the cloud" to free themselves of the burden of local system administration.
eitland 7y ago
Miss it an awful lot. Another seriously nifty thing it would do if you allowed it to was to collect rss feeds from sites you visited and magically sift out stuff it knew I would be interested in.

lonelappde 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511760

Reelin 7y ago
Most of that seems oriented at full, manual archival rather than automated (lightweight-ish) text caching for search operations. ArchiveBox (https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox) looks promising, although it isn't capturing the "live" browser feed. Readable-Web Proxy (https://github.com/fake-name/ReadableWebProxy https://github.com/fake-name/ReadableWebProxy) also looks interesting, but seems to be external as well. Maybe I just need to suck it up and roll my own.
- richardkmichael 7y ago
  I was going to permanently save my browsering history by running all my browsers through squid. If squid's StorageManager supports it, I'd put page storage in Postgres, then use PG's FTS with a light UI around it.

severine 7y ago

Check Memex! Full-Text Search your Web History & Bookmarks https://worldbrain.io/ https://worldbrain.io/ Not affiliated.

Reelin 7y ago
Someone finally did it, it's completely local, and it's MIT licensed! Based on GitHub history, development only started about 3 years ago.
- severine 7y ago
  And: It doesn't make your browser crawl, which still surprises me. I have to admit that I don't use it much (I've got it mostly hidden, there are several tweaks related to visibility), but it is amazing, as you put it, that someone finally did it, and got it mostly right! Kudos.
jacquesm 7y ago
thank you!
darkwater 7y ago
Thank you very much for this!
zeveb 7y ago
MIT-licensed, which means that if they have any decent ideas in there Apple and/or Google can just take them all and slap them into the latest Safari or Chrome. AGPL would really be in the best interest of their codebase.
- adambyrtek 7y ago
  Maybe the authors don't mind if their ideas get incorporated in other projects? Maybe they are more interested in spreading their ideas than owning them?
  - 7y ago