May 19, 2006
Spotlight and Associates
Spotlight is the content indexing program built into Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) by Apple. It’s real breakthrough is that it’s part of the operating system, and updated in real time.
The built-in search feature in the upper right hand corner is fast, but has some drawbacks.
Which has generated a robust third party marketplace, that replace the search GUI, while using the Spotlight indexes in the background.
NotLight is one very useful program, and it’s free. It also has a very nice help page that explains how Spotlight works, and how Notlight works around Spotlight’s drawbacks.
MoRU is shareware for $10, and has a nice front end that will appeal to programmers and people comfortable with boolean logic.
HoudahSpot is shareware for $15 and provides a GUI that allows boolean logic, although I could not figure this program out. I’m very happy with MoRU, but maybe non techies would prefer the logic that HoudahSpot brings to Spotlight.
Spotless is also shareware for $10, and simply turns the Spotlight indexing on and off. Useful if you have backup volumes attached to your computer, as you don’t want Spotlight indexing multiple copies of your same data.
And VersionTracker lists plenty of other add-ons and replacements for Spotlight, so dive right in.
Pierre Bernard said,
August 31, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Hi!
I am the developer of HoudahSpot.
I would love to hear about the problems you had with HoudahSpot. It is designed to serve both novice and expert users with an equally easy to understand interface. Where did I fail?
Best,
Pierre Bernard