File Details |
|
| File Size | 6.6 MB |
|---|---|
| License | Freeware |
| Operating System | Windows 2000/XP |
| Date Added | August 4, 2006 |
| Total Downloads | 845 |
| Publisher | Webaroo Inc. |
| Homepage | Webaroo |
Publisher's Description
Webaroo is a free software program and service that lets you search and browse real web pages without a connection. Its advanced technology makes it simple for you to take the web with you -- and find what you are looking for anywhere, anytime. It's easy -- Webaroo stores searchable web content on your laptop, PDA or smart phone. It's fast -- searches run and pages load instantly at memory speed.
Latest Reviews
spiked reviewed v1.2 Beta on Aug 5, 2006
The technology is a little like AvantGo but with search capability. Also, whereas AvantGo's content was provided and branded by independent publishers targeting AvantGo, Webaroo is basically scraping the open web and repackaging content of their choosing for you to "sync". You choose topic areas and download "packs" which can easily be hundreds of MB each. Obviously, this would still be a super-tiny subset of the web, so the quality of your search results will depend on Webaroo choosing a good subset. The gotcha is that they are walking a thin line legally. In order to claim that they are merely acting like a search engine and not "republishing" or "distributing" copyrighted content, their process of generating and updating the "packs" is totally automated and does not have any subjective involvement by humans (other than the fact that humans obviously programmed the process at some point). In their words, "Webaroo servers scour the web, analyze web pages, and automatically select the subset of pages with the most content value in the least storage size." Well, maybe not the "most" value, because again they must act like a search engine and provide a way for site owners to opt out. In this case, sites can block the user-agent WebarooBot using robots.txt or META tags. If Webaroo ever gets popular, I have no doubt that major news, entertainment, and other portal/media sites will block Webaroo. They will really be forced to, because even if Webaroo faithfully includes all ads when packaging pages, the sites won't be able to track offline access to ads, which would understate the hit counts they need for justifying advertising rates.
So play with Webaroo and enjoy it while you can, but don't get used to it. This idea is doomed from the start.
One last thing: I rated this a 1 because Webaroo secretly runs a BitTorrent client on your computer. I've read all the license agreement and terms of service, privacy policy, FAQ, and everything else in the software and on the web site, and NOWHERE do they disclose that you will be contributing your upload bandwidth while downloading.
spiked reviewed v1.2 Beta on Aug 5, 2006
The technology is a little like AvantGo but with search capability. Also, whereas AvantGo's content was provided and branded by independent publishers targeting AvantGo, Webaroo is basically scraping the open web and repackaging content of their choosing for you to "sync". You choose topic areas and download "packs" which can easily be hundreds of MB each. Obviously, this would still be a super-tiny subset of the web, so the quality of your search results will depend on Webaroo choosing a good subset. The gotcha is that they are walking a thin line legally. In order to claim that they are merely acting like a search engine and not "republishing" or "distributing" copyrighted content, their process of generating and updating the "packs" is totally automated and does not have any subjective involvement by humans (other than the fact that humans obviously programmed the process at some point). In their words, "Webaroo servers scour the web, analyze web pages, and automatically select the subset of pages with the most content value in the least storage size." Well, maybe not the "most" value, because again they must act like a search engine and provide a way for site owners to opt out. In this case, sites can block the user-agent WebarooBot using robots.txt or META tags. If Webaroo ever gets popular, I have no doubt that major news, entertainment, and other portal/media sites will block Webaroo. They will really be forced to, because even if Webaroo faithfully includes all ads when packaging pages, the sites won't be able to track offline access to ads, which would understate the hit counts they need for justifying advertising rates.
So play with Webaroo and enjoy it while you can, but don't get used to it. This idea is doomed from the start.
One last thing: I rated this a 1 because Webaroo secretly runs a BitTorrent client on your computer. I've read all the license agreement and terms of service, privacy policy, FAQ, and everything else in the software and on the web site, and NOWHERE do they disclose that you will be contributing your upload bandwidth while downloading.