There's been lots of interesting action in the world of search lately, and one of the coolest ideas being bantered about is to give users the ability to search through web pages they've already viewed. This idea is so brilliant, I can't believe I didn't think of it! Google and Microsoft are among many working on the idea. If you're like me, one day you have a need to find some information you saw on the internet several days, weeks, or months ago. I can't even guess how much time I've spent over the years looking for a non-existent bookmark, or wading though a seemingly endless history folder in vain.
Last week Dan Grigsby released a beta version of his new creation, the Recall Toolbar.
Once installed, the toolbar consists of a only single red button added to the standard IE toolbar. Clicking it brings to to a local search page where you can enter a search term. The subsequent result page displays links to matching results from web pages you've already looked at.
The way the toolbar works is that while it's active, any web page displayed by IE has its content added to the Recall Toolbar's search index. All searches are performed against that index -- not against you IE history folder (it only contains bookmarks, nit actual page content). This is important to note because once you install the toolbar, if you immediately do a search, no results will be found. You can only search through pages you've looked at since loading the toolbar.
It'll be interesting to see how it evolves the Googles and Microsofts of the world roll out their answers sometime down the road.
Nice job Dan.