• Live search (I think I made this one up)
• Find-as-you-type
• Search-as-you-type
• Lighting fast searching (I noticed that a couple of programs use "lighting fast" to distinguish this feature as opposed to "quick search" or "fast find" which usually just means a regular searching mechanism)
• Incremental search
• Real time filter

Addza	(9/10)
Addza is a brand new player in the addressbook (contact manager) field.  Incidentally, one of my other software fetishes is good addressbook software (see my posts on the subject).  Addza was on Bits du Jour one day and even though I don't think it's the best addressbook software, I bought it simply because it included the live search feature.  That, and it is also one of the very few strictly addressbook applications that is still being actively developed.  I have a lot of hope for Addza. Now, as far it's live search feature, it's actually pretty excellent.  I took off one point for it only because it's still in the beginning stages and not a lot of options are available.  For example, it would be nice to be able to pick which fields are searched (All fields, just names, just numbers, or some combo of a bunch of different fields).  Other than that, the searching is awesome.  It even highlights (in real-time!) the matching characters as you type.  Of all addressbook or contact manager applications, Addza has the best implementation of the live search feature.

The Bat!	(4/10)
The Bat!, one of DC's favorite applications, has a pseudo-live search feature called "Quick Search".  It resides on the main toolbar and it functions both as a sort of live search and a filter simultaneously.  It's actually a terrible implementation of the live search feature; it should just be called "live jump".  When you type something in it and DON'T press "Enter", it will just jump to the first match.  If you do press "Enter", it acts like a filter and will remove anything from the window that doesn't match.  During the "jump" there is no filtering, it just goes to the first match.  Also, it doesn't really react "as-you-type", it just waits until you stop typing before it jumps to the match.  Kind of useless for the most part.  It's basically just a conveniently placed filter/search, so calling it "Quick Search" is actually very accurate.

CardScan	(8/10)
CardScan is another addressbook program.  Most of you won't be able to try it out because you can only use the software if you buy their card scanning hardware, which is pretty expensive.  But I've used it and it has a nifty live search box.  Like Addza, it searches every single field in the contacts (names, phone numbers, zip codes,...anything).  Unfortunately, like Addza, you can't set or customize which fields to limit the search to, but that's not a big deal.  Personally, I prefer these live searches to just search everything, anyway, so it's fine with me if you can't fiddle with it.  But I'm sure some people will just want to limit it to names only, or something along those lines.  I would give it a 9, but Addza's live search is better because it highlights the matching results, so I couldn't make them exactly equal.

Directory Opus	(10/10)
Directory Opus is a file manager and Windows Explorer replacement (the best one at that!).  In one of it's more recent updates to its v8 line, it introduced a feature it calls a "Filter".  The filter will filter a window showing files down to just the files matching whatever is in the filter.  The filter is lighting fast and is true search-as-you-type (i.e. no pause like in the Bat!).  Like anything else in DOpus, you can customize the filter to your heart's desire, and it accepts certain regex commands, for those that like that sort of thing.  This gets perfect scores because it made a great program even better and should satisfy the entire range of its userbase.

EssentialPIM	(6/10)
EssentialPIM is a typical do-it-all PIM software.  It includes a live search feature in the addressbook portion of the application.  Like Addza and Cardscan, it searches as-you-type, except the response isn't as fast as the really good live search implementations.  Like the Bat!, there seems to be a pause before the results list actually responds to each character typed.  Ideally, you want to see the list shorten immediately after pressing each key.  So, that's the main complaint for EssentialPIM.  I will give it bonus points for including a drop-down box to customize which field the live search will use (All Fields is the default and best option).

EverNote	(10/10)
EverNote is a great notetaking program.  One of its more prominent features is a live search box in the upper right-hand corner of the application.  It works wonderfully well, I can't think of one complaint about it.  It's lightning fast, it's well-integrated with the rest of the program, and it is vital to the program's function.  For those that aren't familiar with EverNote, it doesn't use a heirarchy to organize the notes, but a long chronological toilet-paper-like scroll.  The live search is crucial to finding the right note in that big scroll.  So, it's not just a nice, fancy feature, but one of the few live searches that is essential to the program's task.  As an added bonus, the matching terms get highlighted in real-time as you type in the live search box.  Perfect!

FindAndRunRobot	(10/10)
FindAndRunRobot (FARR) is a product of DC and it's gracious owner, mouser.  It's the best program launching program in the history of software, and if I'm not mistaken, the most popular DC appplication.  The live search feature is essentially the entire program, making it one of the few programs that make the live search the focal point of the software (even more so than EverNote).  In FARR, you use the live search to find the program you want to launch, and with the upcoming v2, you will be able to do all sorts of fancy things, like search through directories using certain special tags and expressions.  It is probably the most advanced and sophisticated implementation of the live search that is currently available in the software world right now.  If it seems like I am saying this tongue-in-cheek, I'm not.  It's actually true.  I would actually like to give it an 11/10, but I hate it when people do that.

MP3rat	(10/10)
MP3rat is a mp3 cataloging program.  Its live search is also the central feature of it.  MP3rat is unique in that it doesn't organize your mp3 collection using album, artist, or some kind of folder structure.  Everything is dumped into one big list, and you use the live search box to filter the list down to whatever you are trying to find.  The search is lightning fast and doesn't leave much to be desired.  It can also be tweaked so that it searches only the fields you want (all fields, or only certain fields); it is probably the best implementation of this of all the programs because you can pick all fields, or individually check off the fields you want.  Unfortunately, it seems like the program hasn't been actively developed for a while, but it still works great.

myBase	(7/10)
myBase is another great notetaking program.  In it's latest v5, it introduced what it calls "Find As-you-type".  It functions as a live search box that will search through the notes and return a list of matching notes.  I was excited when I learned that this feature was being implemented in one of my favorite notetaking applications.  Unfortunately, the implementation of it isn't all that great.  For one thing, it's not a "true" live search.  Like the Bat! and EssentialPIM, it doesn't search as each character is typed, but, instead, it waits for the typing to end, and after a short pause, a list appears of the resulting matches.  What's worse is that the new results window that appears scrunches down the current active window, and after you close the results window, the current window remains scrunched.  So, after using the search, you always have to maximize the current window to get it back the way it was.  The whole thing is just a little klunky.  On the positive side, the results window gives some good detailed information about the results, such as how many times the term appears in that specific note.  But it doesn't highlight the matches like in EverNote and Addza.  Overall, it's a decent feature but in the end, I didn't like using much at all.  Live searching is supposed to make searching faster, easier, and cooler, but in this case, they're both sort of the same.

Powermarks	(10/10)
Powermarks is an alternative bookmarking application for IE or Firefox.  It is made by the same author as MP3rat, and the two programs are essentially identical except for the different purpose that they serve.  The keyword, live search, basic interface, and most everything else is exactly the same.  What I like about this author is that he's basically created a live search engine, and built two applications around it.  As a sidenote, for those of you who can't seem to figure out a way to effectively organize your internet bookmarks, I highly recommend Powermarks.  [For more details about the live search features, please read the MP3rat section above, it works the same way.]

Zoot	(9.5/10)
Zoot is yet another notetaking application (notice a trend here?).  Zoot is a program that some can say was ahead of its time.  It used the live search feature long before EverNote did.  Unfortunately, development on the program has stalled and all we are left with is a severely outdated 16-bit notetaking program.  However, this is about it's live search engine, and it's pretty darn good.  The searching is lighting fast, as with all of the other top scorers, and you have the ability to customize what is and what isn't searched.  Also, in a very old-fashioned kind of way, the matching terms are highlighted once you choose a matching result and jump to that particular note.  I took off a half-point because it only highlights the first match and not all of the matches (if there are multiple ones).  No big deal.

In case you were wondering...

...where my avatar picture came from.

After writing that last post damning Apple's lack of transparency, I thought it might be a good idea to actually come of with a list of questions with which we might identify an open software company. I don't think it's necessary that a company meet all of these criteria, but the more the better.
   1. Open Sourcecode: Do you have access to the sourcecode? True open source is great, but simple access to the source code, even if it's not under an open source license, is often enough.
   2. Open Data: Can you easily get your data into or out of the application, should the need arise?
   3. Open APIs: Can your other software interact with the application? The best applications provide different means of access: GUI, command-line, RSS, SOAP or REST, for example...

Yesterday Microsoft released the pre-release of DreamScene as part of the Ultimate Extras that Vista Ultimate users have the capability to use. It’s one of those “wow” factors that a lot of people will probably be impressed with. You could take it and use it for it’s face value, or you could dive in and try out DeskScapes which extends the Windows DreamScene and adds more capability.
DeskScapes was created by Stardock who was contracted by Microsoft to work with them on the animated wallpaper feature. Stardock were actually the ones that created the default wallpapers that you’ll find with the DreamScene. While they were at it, they created the program DreamScapes which is free, and supports the new .DREAM format (which supports dynamic content instead of video, generated dynamically). According to the official news release, the program extends the DreamScene to include dynamic/live content, and triggers...

Green Beret, Wings of Fury and Ghouls and Ghosts - if those names ring a bell you have come to the right place. Everyone else join us as we delve into a time where some of the greatest games of all time were produced. The motto of the 2006 Retro Remakes competition is “Good remakes of good games that anyone can play, regardless of their ability”. I think this is indeed a great opportunity for old folks like us to enjoy those games we played when we were young once again and for  young folks to play games that we probably never heard about before...

Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes.

In Windows, when screen resolution changes, the order of the desktop icons very often gets mixed up. With DeskSave it is quite easy to recover a previously saved icon layout either manually or automatically. Software developers are given the opportunity to test their applications in different screen resolutions without disarranging the desktop icons...