True! I usually write posts when I am busy with loads of work and the only reason is to escape from work. (lazy b**T you see)
(coming back to the topic)... I work for an MNC where my team members (unfortunately I am not excluded!) need to do a lot of "studying the technology", "understanding the systems", "reading related documents and presentations", "referring the spec" etc..etc in our day today work. Initially it was easy to maintain a shared network space where a clean folder structure was maintained to store relevant documents and information. Over a period of time the collection of information piled up to mammoth size and searching a piece of information was a real "finding needle in a haystack" task.
Though I may not be good at solving problems I am at least not too dumb to not recognize a problem. Immediately I could pretended an "Einstein like" expression and show people that I am working on a solution...
[Internal Conversation]
Me the Smart (Pretentious) : "I think something like an indexing algorithm and web interface can be used"
Me the Stupid (secluded as always): "What? Indexing Algo and Web Interface? Do you even know ABC of it?"
Me the Smart : "No.. but I can.. yeah....hmmm... what else do I do..? "
Me the Stupid : "You think you work for Google ah? he he he"
(for the sake of simplicity let me call them Jaga.. and ..dish)
Jaga.. : "Google! Google! Eureka! Wouldn't it be great to have a system in place which lets me google on all the documents we have?"
..dish: "Jags! How can you google on your private stuff? I bet you are not upto an idea of putting them on a web page to use google's www search engine."
Jaga..: "Dude, I have heard of Google Desktop. Guess it can help us"
..dish : "hmmm... Google Desktop. The problem with it is you cannot centralize it for a group of people. It is made for a single user per installation"
(There he wakes up.. the programmer DJ.. what do i call him? DJ++?)
DJ++: "Google provides APIs to Google Desktop. I can use them and make an app. I can... I can.. believe me... Please!"
..dish: "I can see some idea framing up. The best part of you guys is, the moment you guys can think of a solution to a problem and are sure about its implementation I am sure the solution must exist already. Why do it yourself... just Google man!"
{There they unite.... Tish...}
I am back...
Well, scrapping the idea of implementing something on my own, a simple search on our own godly google (no blasphemy meant) led to a plug in named DNKA. God! Never realized there is a huge developer community working on this idea and have made successful public releases.
DNKA can be Downloaded from here
All you need to do is just install Google Desktop and DNKA (In the same order) on a central system (server may be) and configure Google Desktop to index the preferred locations.
DNKA has all the server options which can be configure to provide/restrict access to users.
DNKA is a Google Desktop Plug in which acts as a proxy web server between Google Desktop and the user's computer. Henceforth, any user on the network (with access permissions) can http:// connect to the system on the port 4664 (default) and start performing a google (desktop) search on any huge content of information.
Link template: http://<
Next big question is about the security risks. Google Desktop has certain settings (use Desktop Preferences) which should be disabled to ensure security of the private content. Options like "allow search on other computers", "Allow Google to index it online" etc should be disabled.
Now you and your team members can google on the shared content.
I Love you Rasna...err... Google.
(I am tired.. after all typing so much after a long time... see you in next post.)
