For those of us who are still offline sometimes and want access to at least some web content (me) and running a Windows machine (not me), Santa Clara based Webaroo will be a useful service. It launched today.
Webaroo indexes the “highest quality” websites for content and creates topic based web packs for download. The content in those webpacks is stored offline on your computer and updated periodically. To test it, I fired up my old PC, installed the 5 MB application, and downloaded the World News and San Francisco web packs. You can also ask Webaroo to index specific websites for offline viewing. I added TechCrunch.
Then I unplugged from the net and tried it out. The webpacks were great, allowing me to search or browse content. I would love this on a plane. The specific website index didn’t work out so well – all formatting and CSS was stripped from the page and the site looked horrible. Still, the content was there.
Webaroo also allowed me to choose to index the content linked to from the site, so links from TechCrunch were also viewable. Great feature.
Webaroo is also available for mobile devices running the Windows Pocket PC operating system. And they announced their first deal with a PC manufacturer, Acer, to pre install Webaroo on new Acer laptops. More on Memeorandum.
Interesting concept, are the ads stripped out as well?
Only one link level depth? Frontpage & Adobe do a better job at this and they don’t even try. How hard can it be to implement a couple of link filters (perhaps with user-friendly regexp) and unlimited link depth!! I like how the program makes everything user-friedly, but the technology needs to be up-to-date as well. All been said, I will start using the program when those things change.
This is such a niche market (if it is a market at all) that I just can’t see how this company will make money. If travellers are the key demographic, then WiFi gaining traction in urban areas, airlines and commuter train services both starting to offer net connectivity, are leaving webaroo almost no room to breath. I just don’t see who this could benefit.
I think this shows the first movement to a synchronization of the online and offline experiences. As we move to being always online, the disintegrative technologies, like Webaroo will make a play, until we’re completely always online.
Saul,
My thoughts exactly. With the proliferation of wifi and ever- increasing coverage, the necessity of a service like this will have a short life span. However, at the moment it has some utility.
I think the market for this is relatively small, and will continue to diminish. However, partnerships are the way they will gain presence, so it looks like they are starting in the right direction with Acer. It’s also not too impressive if they are having CSS issues, as this is the only reason why this would beat downloading a webpage on your own (or as someone said, through Frontpage). If webaroo could be an “instant” server and recognize dynamic content that you could interact with, that might be the first selling point, but of course you’re still left with the fact that we’re always connected to the internet.
Jake, I agree. The partnership angle can play very well especially for mobile devices. Think of a lot of people who don’t want to play $40/mo to Verizon or Sprint for unlimited web browsing. So there is a definite need here, but it may be somewhat short lived as the price points go lower and connectivity is ubiquitous. Another angle could be its usefulness in developing nations where connectivity is not as wide spread. The Acer partnership makes a lot more sense from this perspective.
Eric, you’re right. And many companies made plenty of money in the moment. Look at Verbdate.
This seemed cool at first then the more I thought about it, it just doesn’t make much sense. I understand that not everyone wants to pay the $40/month for verizon/sprint web browsing, but how long until that $40 becomes $10…or better yet, how long until we have wi-fi in every major city…five years? It will be interesting to see what they do as a company a few years down the road.
“Requires Windows® XP or 2000 SP4″
Windows only. No Mac support. No Linux support. How lame is that.
It fits a certain niche – I could see it being useful as an easy way to maintain reference content like wikipedia. For recent news, though, savvy users might be happier with an offline RSS reader.
Um, Windows/IE already does this for free – http://www.micr...ineviewing.mspx
Well stated Nathan
+1 For RSS.
Why download tons of information and consume my bandwith?
Secondly, I use Teleport pro for mirroring web sites and it is far better than this one I suppose.
However, I agree that the potential users of this program constitute a different niche (than RSS readers and teleport pro users).
Hello? I thought the web was a)live and b)interactive. So this says, hey, we’ll take a pot-shot at getting exactly what you might need at some point in the future. So anything that works has to be 1.on your machine 2.up to date 3.relevant. And if only one link is missing, whoof, the point goes up in smoke. I H-A-T-E the very idea of it.
Drawbacks:
Windows only
.Net
Pocket PC only as PDA device
If they really want a market they have to be open.
This is kind of product that I DO NOT want to see even implemented. This is why someone with a real product will not even get a chance because people with ideas like this have given people a bad taste.
Oh well.. life goes on..
Back in 1995, I started a company called Milktruck that had a Web utility that cached the web sites of your choice. For the best web sites, we were pretty smart about what we got. For instance, for the NYTimes, we knew where all the day’s stories were located and got them (rather than the about or search pages).
We were bought by Traveling Software (makers of LapLink and interested in all things mobile). The product won all sorts of awards; we tried to sell it at $40 a piece (this was still early in Web development, so selling thru CompUSA seemed reasonable). But people wouldn’t buy.
Since then, I’ve seen offline-browsing utilities come and go (some mentioned by others in the comments above) and none has stuck. While I really want someone to solve this problem well, I don’t think enough people need it. This may be the classic problem of a nice-to-have.
we need to know more about the webaroo servers.where it will be and it works in the offline.how it fetches the search content from the library
I would like to see unlimited link depth..
I download the program thinking it was unlimited link depth but was disappointed when I found that it was only 1 link deep :S
Programs similar to Webaroo exist for at least 10 years now. Examples: Offline Explorer Pro, Teleport Pro, WebZip, WGET, etc. I’m quoting from memory from a review I read about 10 years ago.
So, what is so cool and new about Webaroo? Such program existed .
Take WGET and Google Desktop, add a few batch files (and sprinkle with a bit of Windows Scheduler), and you can create a very good Webaroo replacement!
On a side note, the dotMobi mTLD (mobile top level domain) has just been released and is in the sunrise registration period…the promise of dotMobi is to ensure that those sites with dotMobi extension will be tuned to mobile browsing…it is thus expected to make mobile browsing a far more enriching experience.
One can expect a number of .mobi web sites – those that conform with standards for mobile browsing – to be online starting Oct 2006…while opinion is divided whether dotMobi will revolutionise mobile browsing or would be just another flash in the pan, when one considers that there are four mobile phones for every PC on earth, it certainly appears worth trying out a separate TLD
More info on dotMobi can be found at Mobinomy.com @ http://www.mobinomy.com , this site also plans to start a dotMobi directory soon
Ec from IT, Software Database @ http://www.eit.in
the local phone company here in the UAE has recently blocked skype. Is there a way to break this blocking?