Google has demonstrated the great power in internet based search engines. I'd really like to be find my own content located on my hard drive. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have all released free desktop search engines. (I'm also aware of commerical products that preceeded these systerms and which may be superior. Ones that come to mind are DTSearch and Enfish.)

I would like to read the evaluations of the various systems, pick one or two to try out. I'm hoping to find one that has a useful API which I can access to connect desktop search to the Scholar's Box and other tools I'm building.

As an avid user of Yahoo maps and yellow pages, I agreed with MIT Tech Review's identification of these local search features as strong points in Yahoo's arsenal. (The reason iI bring this specific point up is that it is this article that got me thinking about desktop search in general.) I also hope that Yahoo will open up its search engine to publicly accessible APIs as a way of competing with google.