New Gaviri PocketSearch Beta for WM Reviewed!

Gaviri PocketSearch displaying my web pix...

Try finding something on your Windows XP PC or WM device using the native search tools... Think of a filename, any file or embedded text string...Did you find it yet? No? If you've used Windows search tools, you probably know the deal. You may not find what you're looking for, and even if you did find the specific file or text, XP/WM search doesn't help much to sift through the results. Try searching through your e-mail--for a text string embedded in a document you sent a colleague last year, for example--using Outlook's built-in find feature. Good luck with that one... If you have the gigantic archive of mail that I have tucked away, there's a good chance you could end up catatonic after that experience. There are some excellent alternatives: for instance, a free plug-in offered by MS called "Lookout" that enhances searching your Outlook mail, and of course Google Desktop. But, let's face it--using Windows native search in general is often an exercise in futility (although I understand Vista is much better). This is where Gaviri PocketSearch comes in, what with all it's flexible indexing and search options, you may never lose another file! I gave the product suite a spin, which not only will index your computer hard drives, portable storage media, Pocket PC or Smartphone but also your fingers if they get too close, stuff laying around on the counter, your stamp collection...okay not that other stuff, but if it's digital in nature and PocketSearch can get to it, it's gettin indexed dudes/dudettes and make no mistake about it! This product looks promising as a universal search tool for your Windows computer, memory sticks, storage devices, and your handhelds.

PocketSearch WM and Desktop (Windows search in the background)

Like with all my reviews, it is important to be forthright about journaling my experience, so I must admit to having problems with this application on my HP iPAQ hx2495 (it wouldn't run without crashing), and even on the WM5 device emulator running on my computer (it ran, but the index got banged up and wouldn't return stable results). The vendor was very responsive in helping me to work around these problems, and in the end sent me one of their own testing devices (a sweet XV6700 WM Phone to play with) to complete all aspects of the review, which worked quite well. They have designed and tested this app on specific hardware types, and are going to investigate the issues I had, as well as other mobile hardware. Of course, I made it clear that they need to indicate the list of supported devices for this product, which I'm sure they will do. I will focus mainly on the WM5 version of the product, but I also tried out the desktop version, and could easily tell it was much more mature. I have not used Google Desktop or similar tools, but found the Gaviri search tools helped me to quickly peruse and find documents/files buried deep throughout the myriad nooks and crannies of my system. I had an initial issue after tweaking the file setup (i.e. what file paths I wanted it to index) and subsequently restarting my index, but exiting and restarting the application fixed that. Whatever search tool you use, you have to let the indexing part of the application crawl through your files, and that will take up resources and slow your system performance, especially during the initial index creation period. So, I recommend you let this kind of operation run overnight, when it won't impact your work. I also recommend you tweak the settings of the application to restrict it to only specific file types and paths you really need to search on a regular basis.

Launch, stop or restart PocketSearch from the system tray

When you first install PocketSearch on your handheld, it will go through a brief language setup and then run itself in the system tray thereafter indexing quietly away in the background. The program adds an icon in the tray, which tapping presents a menu of options to allow you to stop/start the index, open the application, or exit the process completely. The main search interface is simple to use and intuitive, with a search input field that includes a pulldown of cached search strings you have previously entered. Hitting the little eraser icon next to it erases your input, and the cache. The hourglass icon executes a search. As you type in a search string PocketSearch will start filtering your input per each added keystroke (or stylus-stroke as it were). The buttons below the search string are quick filters for the common file-type categories, and will not be displayed if no files of a certain category are available in the index.

Pocket Search Category icons (left-right):

• All Files
• HTML
• Audio Files
• Images
• Office Documents
• Text Files
• PDF Files

PocketSearch results

The search results are shown in the large pane below the filter category icons. The check blocks next to the files are used for selecting and performing actions on multiple files. Double tapping a file opens in it's native application. You can extract from zip files here, move, delete or send files as well.

PocketSearch offers image and document slide and preview features

Along the bottom panel are buttons and menus for manipulating the search settings and results, including:

• Menu-Many features here covered in the next section
• Exit PocketSearch-closes the search window
• Preview-Provides a preview of documents
• Previous/Next-go back and forth between previews
• Image Slideshow-Quickly peruse your images
• Zoom Images-Zoom in/out on images
• Standard SIP-System input panel

PocketSearch menu options

The menu selection includes shortcuts to several of the button features already mentioned above, but also some power features and options which are really unique. Say you go on vacation with the family and snap off like several hundred pictures, all code-named by your camera as IMG2TGY1.JPG and numbered up (or something equally cryptic), which when mixed in with the shots of your buddies at Mardi Gras becomes a real mess. PocketSearch allows you to batch rename the whole lot to something more meaningful, and re-increments them using the new name. How about uploading/downloading your images to FLICKR? Yep, you can do that from PocketSearch too. You can even tweak the document category file types you want to index. If you're a geek like me, you store your web site home pages on your device along with an FTP client to remotely tweak and update your web page from your handheld. Maybe you want to index your html files including ".htm", ".html" or ".css" files for quick searches (anyone whose edited html knows you usually have to make changes in several places). You can do that quickly using PocketSearch. You can also index specific file stores, both internal and storage card paths for instance, add your own custom filters (restrict certain files types from getting in there) and set how often to perform content re-scans.

More Options

All-in-all I was quite impressed with the desktop and WM versions of this product. The desktop worked darn-near flawlessly, and maybe was too good at finding stuff, and so I had to tweak down the range of stuff it was dredging up. As mentioned above I did have some trouble with WM until they sent me one of their supported device types, but thereafter found the application worked quite well. It should be noted that PocketSearch for WM and Smartphone is still in beta. The desktop version is at release 2.1 and available for purchase at Gaviri. Since this application is breaking new territory in portable search and Window's Mobile application spaces, and I'm excited to see it prosper, I asked the folks at Gaviri to give me a short list of the advantages of their product, so anyone considering it would have the high-points of what makes it better:

1. Gaviri PocketSearch was designed from the ground up to address the modern concept of search -- multiple devices, on-the-go with the same user interface and same functionality across devices.

2. Gaviri PocketSearch is the only search engine that addresses the way people work today: with many devices, on-the-go, at home, in the office.

3. Gaviri Technologies differs dramatically from the other search engines in concept because it is conceived as a universal search platform. U3, Ceedo, PortableApps, Standard USB, networks, FireWire, MP3, SD cards, CompactFlash, desktops, etc. We are writing a layer that will allow Gaviri PocketSearch to automatically identify WM, RIM OS, Symbian and embedded Linux as well.

Gaviri PocketSearch is indeed a powerful search tool for the handheld and desktop. I hope the WM version gets out of beta (after the bugs are worked out) and onto handhelds at large. The native WM search definitely needs the boost PocketSearch can offer.