Thursday, January 12, 2006

Using AIM Triton with Google Desktop Search

Google Desktop Search is a nice utility, and its support for indexing AIM conversations has saved me many times when I have had to remember some obscure detail that someone metioned to me in an IM several weeks before. Unfortunately, it doesn't  support AIM Triton yet, but getting it working is not too difficult. If you're handy with a hex editor, you can follow the steps below. Otherwise, you can skip to the end and just download the file you need.

1. Shut down GDS, from the tray icon.
2. Find GoogleDesktopNetwork2.dll; for me, this file was in the "C:\Program Files\Google\Google Desktop Search" folder.
3. Make a backup of this file, in case you make a mistake.
4. Open GoogleDesktopNetwork2.dll in your favorite hex editor.
5. Scroll down to approximately offset 0x1A000, or search for "aim.exe"
6. You will see a list of EXEs such as waol.exe, opera.exe, netscape.exe, msn6.exe. Each name will be in Unicode format, meaning each character is 2 bytes, with the first character being a NUL (00).
7. Pick one of the EXEs that you do not use; "msn6.exe" is a good choice because it is the same size as "aim6.exe". (To be fair, I will note that "waol.exe" is also a good choice.)
8. Replace the EXE name that you have chosen with aim6.exe. If you chose a name that was longer than 4 characters, you will need to replace the remaining characters with NUL bytes.
9. Save your changes.
10. Restart GDS.
11. Restart AIM Triton.

If you don't want to go through all this trouble yourself, and you are using the version "Google Desktop 20050818-en", you can use the GoogleDesktopNetwork2.dll that I modified and skip steps 4-8.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What needs to be done is to make sure AOL Desktop Search 2.0 supports this feature.  Its currently in beta and works quite well.  If you take Triton, a good product getting better, and "wrap" more AOL apps into it you can make those aps more useful.

Currently it says :

Q: What kind of files can I search with Desktop Search?
A: At present, AOL Desktop Search 2.0 allows you to index and search:

   * Common file types on your hard drive
   * Outlook and Outlook Express Mail
   * File names and content within document files
   * Common video and audio file types
   * AOL Mail saved on your PC
   * With more features to come!

Anonymous said...

A Question I can't find the answer to because AOL dosn't have e-mail help or Live Help,  and I can't figure it out myself:  

When I get a forward that has several people's e-mail addresses at the top, a typical forwarding,  I am the only one that has that Runing Man logo displayed.  I guess it means that I have I.M. I recall setting it up so the running man logo would be displayed with my adress, but how do I get it off now?

Thanks

Kari