Cool Tools

Thought I’d mention a few tools that I’ve started using over the past three weeks. I was reading Israel Gat’s internal BMC blog where he mentions how handy Google Desktop Search has become for him. It does indexing of local files and folders so you can do quick searching (and finding!) of files that are buried on your harddrive. BTW, Israel is the VP of the PATROL team now known as BMC Performance Manager. Anyway, I did some quick research on desktop search tools and decided to go with Yahoo! Desktop Search. I went with YDS because it indexes offline Outlook folders and attachments while currently GDS doesn’t. I’ve been with BMC nearly 10 years, and over that time I’ve accumulated literally thousands of files. I try to cull out files over 3 years old, but even so they still build up through evolution. I find I use YDS several times a day on both e-mail and folder searches and it’s worked like a champ – saving me a lot of time. For example, back in December 2004, I ordered an external 250GB USB hard drive for backup purposes. This way I can directly save/duplicate folders from my PC to the external, yet very quickly recover those files if my PC goes south. Well my admin, Linda, was asked to order a similar device for someone else – I typed, “external USB hard drive” in YDS, and immediately I found all e-mails related to the order as well as a ZDNet article titled, “What killed HP’s Utility Data Center?” from September 2004. I sent the relevant e-mails to Linda and it saved us both a lot of time. Powerful stuff.

Other knicknacks include getting Microsoft OneNote which is great for taking online notes and putting bullets on Outlook tasks, classifying the notes, etc. I also got a Linksys (Cisco) wireless travel router that supports G networks and also has four hardwired ethernet ports. Real handy in hotels or conference rooms with only one ethernet port for 10 people…