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Looks like Puffin is finally making its debut. Danny reports that Google has debuted what it’s calling Google Desktop.

The program isn’t compatible with my system here at the office, for some reason. The installer says it conflicts with various programs on my system — most of which I don’t even recognize. Anyway, can’t really comment on it until I’ve had a chance to check it out.

UPDATE: Ok, so turns out the Desktop Search is incompatible with PortMagic, which is something that comes bundled with AOL 9.0 Optimized. I was able to uninstall it, but if Google is going for a mass (AOL-using) audience, this could become a problem .

My first reactions:

The user interface is a little… strange. Sure, Google wants it to be easy and familiar, but it’s weird to search your hard drive via a browser, and I would expect the mass audience to be a bit confused. If things (like my personal files) show up in a Web browser, it would be natural to assume it’s on the Web. Yes, I know it’s not, I’m just talking about perception.

Same goes for the Desktop search results showing up when you search Google Web.

What’s with not being able to search e-mail unless Outlook is open? One of the biggest promises of desktop search, at least where I’m concerned, is the ability to search archived e-mail files. I’ve got tons of e-mails archived that I’d love to get access to, but Outlook balks when trying to load gigabytes of old e-mail.

Kudos for functions to search IM and cached HTML files. But it strikes me as sort of weird to do the Web history this way. Aren’t temporary Internet files deleted occasionally, or shouldn’t they be? (Non-techie talking here.)

Why no ads? Too sensitive? I’d imagine they’ll be coming in not too long.

I’m with Calacanis in thinking it doesn’t do as much for me — yet — as X1, which I’ve been using for a while. X1 is a bit of a memory hog, but it also allows you to search and sort by a lot of different variables — from address, subject line, etc.

UPDATE2: My buddy Tom has thoughts and links to others with thoughts.

Hearty congratulations are in order for my colleague Zach and his wife, Jean, who just added two tiny new members to their family. Hooray for the twins, and mom and dad, too!

Maybe I’m late to this, but I’ve been experimenting with the My Yahoo! Search functionality and noticed they’ve turned on visited results — a history of the search results you click on. It’s actually not “on” by default — you have to enable it — but it’s there. Previously it said something like “coming soon.”

Praise be to Craig and all he’s created. I think we’ve found a Bay Area house to live in, come mid-November. Still need to fill out applications, get together deposits, etc., but things are looking good.

Thanks to all who joined us for the free Public Relations Society of America Webinar today. Many thanks, also, to the organizers, sponsors and to Steve Rubel, who spoke, also.

If you’re looking for a copy of my presentation, you can find it here.

Am working from home recovering (hopefully) from cold, flu or something like it. Hopefully it wasn’t too obvious for those in the audience today. Technology is certainly a wonderful thing when I can talk to more than 200 people without worry of infecting anyone with the germs plaguing me!

UPDATE: Coverage of the discussion from PRWeek and iMediaConnection.

Tony Gentile at buzzhit! discovers that the ZIP code’s gotta be first for local search to work on Yahoo! because:

We have historically not supported users entering the ZIP after the query term, because the level of false positives for Query followed by ZIP is actually very high.

Interesting stuff. One side of me says they need to start training end users to put the ZIP code first, but the other side thinks they need to start working on their search technology so it can handle queries either way. I’m dying to see statistics on how much local search queries have increased (and what form they take) since Yahoo! and Google have introduced their specialized offerings.