# Tuesday, December 14, 2004
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Three different toolbars with their locations highlightedI've been playing with the new MSN Toolbar Suite (Beta) now for the last few days and color me impressed. Check out the video demo at Channel 9. Now, I'm not the kind of person who loses track of my files on my PC but I often need to find something quick such as a photo or email. MSN takes the hassle out of finding photos, email, and documents. Across your PC, in Outlook and Outlook Express. In particular the Desktop Search feature is essential for any mainstream user (my parents- read up now!).

Also, Scoble has a round up of comments on the toolbar from across the blogosphere here. Here are a few real-world scenarios where I think others I know will benefit:

  • Dad - Dad is big into geneology and has traced our lineage back to Scotland in the 17th centrury (and still going). He has a ton of research in email documents and photos as well as word documents and excel spreadsheets. If he's looking for all details related to a particular member of our family, he can pull that quickly. If he wants details from the Web on the village our family came from, he can do that to, all in the same toolbar.
  • Mom - Mom has a lot of medical information on her PC and it's often hard to sort through. MSN Desktop Search will help her find everything she's looking for in short order.

One feature I think would be neat is if the system over time tagged files you searched for with ratings based on level of interest (similar to Auto Ratings in Windows Media Player 10 which rate up based on the # of times a song is played). Then backup software could take advantage of those ratings and back up your most important documents based on # of times accessed as well as searched for. Bubba, you listening?

The Acrobat plug-in is a bit of a hassle, but hey, what is one more download.

Good job MSN Toolbar Team

posted on Tuesday, December 14, 2004 7:58:56 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [1] Trackback
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