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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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| Google Desktop | |
|---|---|
 | |
 The GDS Sidebar sat on the user's desktop and displayed relevant information (Google Desktop on Microsoft Windows Vista) | |
| Developer | |
| Release | October 14, 2004 |
| Final release | 5.9.1005.12335
/ 14 September 2011 |
| Written in | C++[1] |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Desktop search |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | desktop.google.com |
Google Desktop was a computer program with desktop search capabilities, created by Google for Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows systems. It allowed text searches of a user's email messages, computer files, music, photos, chats, web pages viewed, and the ability to display "Google Gadgets" on the user's desktop in a sidebar.
In September 2011, Google announced it would discontinue a number of its products, including Google Desktop. The reason given was that "In the last few years, there's been a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as the integration of search and gadget functionality into most modern operating systems. People now have instant access to their data, whether online or offline. As this was the goal of Google Desktop, the product will be discontinued."[2]
As of January 2008, Google Desktop featured the following functionality:
A prominent feature of Google Desktop was the Sidebar, which held several common Gadgets and resided off to one side of the desktop. The Sidebar was available on the Windows and Linux versions of Google Desktop. The Sidebar came pre-installed with the following gadgets:
Like the Windows Taskbar, the Google Desktop sidebar could be set to Auto-Hide mode, where it would only appear once the user moved the mouse cursor towards the side where it resided. If not on auto-hide, by default the sidebar would always take up about 1/6 – 1/9 of the screen (depending on the screen resolution), and other windows were forced to resize. However, the sidebar could be resized to take less space, and users could disable the "always on top" feature in the options. With the auto-hide feature on, the sidebar temporarily overlapped maximized windows.
Another feature that came with the Sidebar was alerts. When the Sidebar was minimized, new email and news could be displayed in a pop-up window above the Windows Taskbar.
When searching in the sidebar, deskbar or floating deskbar, Google Desktop displayed a "Quick Find" window. This window was filled with six (by default) of the most relevant results from the user's computer. These results updated as the user typed, and allowed use without having to open another browser window.
Deskbars were boxes which enabled searching directly from the desktop. Web results would open in a browser window, and selected computer results would be displayed in the "Quick Find" box (see above). A Deskbar could either be a fixed deskbar, which sat in the Windows Taskbar, or a Floating Deskbar which might be positioned anywhere on the desktop.
Google Desktop included plugins that allowed indexing and searching the contents of local Microsoft Outlook, IBM Lotus Notes, and Mozilla Thunderbird email databases, outside of the client applications' built-in search functions. For Lotus Notes, only local databases were indexed for searching. Google Desktop's email indexing feature was also integrated with Google's web-based email service, Gmail; it could index and search the email messages in Gmail accounts.
Desktop gadgets were interactive mini-applications that could be placed anywhere on the user's desktop – or docked in the Sidebar – to show new email, weather, photos, and personalized news. Google offered a gallery of pre-built gadgets for download on the official website. For developers, Google offered an SDK and an official blog for anyone who wanted to write gadgets or plug-ins for Google Desktop. An automated system created a developer hierarchy called the "Google Desktop Hall of Fame", where programmers could advance based on their gadgets' number and popularity.
The SDK also allowed third-party applications to make use of the search facilities provided by Google Desktop Search. For example, the file manager Directory Opus offered integrated Google Desktop Search support.
|
Google Desktop's search results included a title field whose value varied according to the type of result. For files, the title was the filename; for web pages, it was the page title; and for email, it was the message subject.[3]
The use of the "title" tag gave a significantly better user experience, since metadata titles (when present) are written in ordinary language, while file names are less communicative.
When the title metadata was missing from a file, Google Desktop reverted to use its filename.
Google Desktop was originally developed to bring Google search technology to the desktop. Google Desktop received attention from researchers because it may have allowed reverse engineering of Google's proprietary search algorithm.[4]
A centrally administered version,[5] which integrated the user experience with the vendor's appliance, existed as well. Google Desktop was officially discontinued on September 14, 2011.[6]
Google Desktop was discontinued entirely on September 14, 2011.[2]
In February 2007, Yair Amit, of Watchfire, found a series of vulnerabilities[18] in Google Desktop that could allow a malicious individual to achieve not only remote, persistent access to sensitive data, but in some cases full system control as well. The significant impact and the ease of exploitation forced Google to change some of Google Desktop's logic in Google Desktop version 5.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) had concerns that personal information on people's computers could readily be copied from their hard drives when using Google Desktop.[19]
Google Desktop version 3 contained certain features that raised serious security and privacy concerns. Specifically the share across computers feature introduced the ability to search content from desktop to desktop. This would greatly increase the risk to users' privacy, as if this feature was enabled, files on an indexed computer would be copied to Google's servers. The EFF advised against using this feature.[19]
Other more far reaching concerns arose around the packaging and end user license agreement – specifically the level of intrusion on the local machine and the disclaimers that users implicitly agree to future changes in the license agreement without actually being able to see them immediately.[20][21]
During the first half of 2009, a large number of Google Desktop users reported that the product stopped indexing suddenly, when the index file reached approximately 4GB in size. A full uninstall (including manually deleting the indexes) and then reinstall would fix the problem temporarily, but the problem would recur when the index file reached 4GB again. The problem was resolved as of Google Desktop Search version 5.9.[22] Google Desktop did not index email or contacts in Outlook 2010.
By default, Google Desktop did not index email in Thunderbird 3.[23]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
| Modes |  | ||||||
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| Engines (free) |
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| Engines (proprietary) | |||||||
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The sidebar is a graphical control element that displays various forms of information to the right or left side of an application window or operating system desktop. Examples of the sidebar can be seen in the Opera web browser, Apache web OpenOffice, LibreOffice, SoftMaker Presentations and File Explorer; in each case, the app exposes various functionalities via the sidebar.
Sidebar may refer to: Sidebar (publishing) Sidebar (law) Sidebar (computing), a type of graphical user interface element Windows Sidebar, in Windows Vista (rename Windows Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7) Bing Sidebar, a section of the search engine results display screen for social networking Sidebars, longitudinal wooden bars on some carriages as part of a suspension system Sidebars, a Grammy-winning album by Eartha
The Shelf is an interface feature in NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, and is used as a repository to store links to commonly used files, directories and programs, and as a temporary "holding" place to move/copy files and directories around in the file system hierarchy. In macOS, items may be dragged onto the sidebar area of the Finder, but these do not behave as placeholders and cannot be manipulated in the below manner. The dynamics of the Shelf in file system operations can be illustrated by comparison with the metaphor used in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. In order to move a file the following steps may be taken: the window containing the source folder is opened the window containing the destination folder is opened the desired file in the source directory is dragged to the destination folder With the NeXT operating systems, in addition to moving files by dragging them from window to window, the following method can be used: the user navigates to the source directory the file is dragged to the Shelf the user navigates to the destination directory the file is dragged from the Shelf to the destination directory Note that the file, when dragged to the Shelf, has not moved anywhere and is not changed in any way. The Shelf icon is merely a placeholder for the file. In moving the placeholder off the shelf, the actual action occurs. The NeXT functionality builds upon this concept by allowing the destination directory to be put on the Shelf as well, and the file can be merely dragged to the destination directory icon. The process is similar to the Microsoft Windows functionality of copying or cutting file system objects (a file or files, a folder or folders, or a combination of both) to the clipboard; the objects are not copied or removed from their original location until the paste operation to the new location is completed. The Shelf concept, though older, is more powerful in that the file system objects, their sources and destinations are persistent and available as long as they are on the Shelf (in the Windows cut, copy, and paste metaphor the objects and locations persist until one copy/move operation is complete or until something else is placed in the clipboard). Since Shelf icons are 'placeholders' of sorts, icons can be put on the Shelf representing commonly used directories, and commonly used programs can be put on the Shelf as well. The NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP file management application (called FileViewer and run by the Workspace Manager) also allowed users to have different shelves associated with particular directories. Users simply opened a new browser rooted in a particular subdirectory, and that browser window would show the corresponding shelf, allowing users to have many different shelves based on whatever folder hierarchy they happened to be using to organize their files.
Google Desktop was a computer program with desktop search capabilities, created by Google for Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows systems. It allowed text searches of a user's email messages, computer files, music, photos, chats, web pages viewed, and the ability to display "Google Gadgets" on the user's desktop in a sidebar. In September 2011, Google announced it would discontinue a number of its products, including Google Desktop. The reason given was that "In the last few years, there's been a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as the integration of search and gadget functionality into most modern operating systems. People now have instant access to their data, whether online or offline. As this was the goal of Google Desktop, the product will be discontinued."
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
