How to track many pieces of information in a searchable database?

Question

I need to track many discrete pieces of information in a searchable manner. These could be web addresses, quotes, reference sources, etc.I would prefer if it would integrate with Google desktop, but some lightweight software that allowed some sort of hot key entering and searching would be ideal. Is there some software out there that would accomplish this task?

Answer 1

If you want something free, try the tools at openoffice.org.  They are very reliable and best of all, free!  

If you can spend a little money, the person above is right, MS Access is a good solution.

Answer 2

Have you looked into MS Access?  It'll let you structure your data and search through it. You've got to give it a set of tables for each type of data, so it's not exactly free-form.

Otherwise, you mentioned Google desktop - it's whole purpose is to let you search through all of your files. I'm pretty sure you can't write better search & index algorithms than Google.

Or perhaps look into setting up a personal wiki.  Most have search built-in and many have tags.