HoudahSport - Spotlight on Dope

There's one thing about Spotlight that seems to bug everyone who can in the one or other way falls into the category of 'Pro' or 'Above normale' users. It's the fact that the actual Spotlight interface is rather limitless if it comes to tracking down a specific file fast. There's so much meta-information connected with each file that additional search criteria like for example 'Type of the file', 'Modification Date', 'Size of the File' could really help in identifying the wanted file quickly. Sadly, most of this comfort is only available via the normal 'Finder Search' Dialog, and even there it's rather awkward to use.

Enter HoudahSpot, a new Application from Houdah Software, which serves just the purpose of enhacing the Spotlight-Interface. I just tried it and I've to admit that I'm pleasantly surprised, the interface is quite easy to understand, and offers some nice features like for example a meta-inspector or a preview-pane for the result-list. HoudahSpot allows to set up quite complex queries through a simple interface, where complex queries refers to cascaded And/Not/Or logical conditions (example: (if a and not (b or (c and d) ) ) ). They offer a free demo which is limited to 30 queries, so if you think that you could benefit from an enhanced Spotlight-Interface (thus leading to even faster search results) you should really try this application.

NOTE: If you’re seeing this on June 16, 2006 head over to MacZOT, you might be able to get a Free copy of HoudahSpot