Don't panic! If blinkx looks at one of your emails or documents and it contains a virus, your anti-virus software automatically displays a warning. Simply follow the instructions of your anti-virus software to quarantine and eliminate the virus, and carry on using blinkx as usual.
Yes, blinkx (in particular the application "iblinkx.exe") needs to access sites on the Internet in order to supply you with news and web site results. Set up a rule that allows blinkx to always access the Internet, if you don't want to have to okay firewall messages every time blinkx needs to access a website.
Note: if your machine is protected by a corporate firewall and you can access the Internet already, you should be able to use blinkx without any problems. If you can access the Internet but can't use blinkx, please contact feedback@blinkx.com.
When you first run blinkx, it needs some time to index the files and emails that you have pointed it at. Until it has finished indexing them, it may miss results and there may also be a small effect on machine performance. However, once blinkx has caught up on its indexing, your searches will produce local results.
Also, if you are using Outlook, blinkx can only return email and email attachments to you, if your Outlook is running.
blinkx indexes the files that you make available to it for local searching. Indexing means that blinkx reads the files and memorizes the concepts they contain. This allows it to later return them to you as search results because the search is based on concepts as opposed to keywords. You can use the blinkx settings dialog to specify from which folders you want blinkx to index files.
blinkx has 3 indexing modes which you can adjust by moving the slider bar on the blinkx search box:
Stopped
If you move the slider bar to the left, blinkx stops indexing your documents. This means that no new documents are added to your index, and the performance of your machine is unaffected.
Active/Inactive
If you move the slider bar to the middle, blinkx indexes your documents only when your machine is not being used. Use this as your default mode, once blinkx has completed the initial indexing process and only needs to index new files.
Fast
If you move the slider bar to the right, blinkx indexes your documents continuously. Use this mode when you have a large number of files to index. This may affect the performance of your computer, so you should use this mode if you are not using your computer for a period (for example, overnight).
If you still need help, please email our technical support team at feedback@blinkx.com