I have become a big fan of Google Desktop but I really wanted to index all my security reference documents on my file server and access from my desktop.

Google Desktop was built with (some) security in mind and only binds to the loopback interface (127.0.0.1). No problem I thought, port redirection will fix this! So I installed a port redirector, bound it to the external interface and with a little fiddling of the URL (i.e. copying the parameters from the servers Google search URL) and voila! - searchable file server.

Searching worked fine but nothing happened when I clicked on the document links. I went and had a look at the server and all the documets had been opened on the server. Anyway a quick Google search (hmmmm.... irony) showed that other people had been down this path and there were some nice proxies for accessing Google Desktop on another server.

Project Computing Google Proxy http://www.projectcomputing.com/resources/desktopProxy/

While the proxy is not perfect, like every document being called redir.xxx, the result is good enough for me.