PeakSoft NetMagnet Organizes the Web
ambra.psgroup.com
Make the Web Work for You
By Michael A. Goulde
Finding information on the Web is getting somewhat easier with more sophisticated search capabilities, but how do you organize what you've found, share it with others, keep it up-to-date, and create distributable collections? PeakSoft's NetMagnet is designed to help users organize and manage the information they research on the Web.
NetMagnet is a Java application that works with any Web browser. It keeps track of each browsing session, allowing session lists to be saved and organized. Sites and URLs can easily be returned to by just clicking on the list. Session histories can be named and edited to organize them in ways that make the most sense, and pages can be combined from different sites. NetMagnet is also an easy way to eliminate the problem of forgetting which browser you bookmarked something in-an important capability, as more people use both Netscape and Internet Explorer to deal with incompatibilities.
Communicating Research Results. Any session history or catalog can be published on a Web page as a Java applet or transmitted to other users by e-mail. Sessions can be sent as a presentation comprising links and played back live by the recipient. Notes can be included with the presentation. This essentially lets individual users create their own channels. As valuable as this capability is for sharing Internet research, it is also an easy way to create and distribute content on an intranet.
Pages can be saved as-is for future viewing, or a page can be updated at any interval the user chooses. NetMagnet also includes technology to speed up browsing through intelligent cache management and look-ahead and freshening agents. Intelligent caching learns about which sites a user tends to prefer and browse the most, and it maintains these sites up-to-date in the cache. The look-ahead feature takes advantage of idle network link time to freshen pages and download links from a page into cache.
Creating Folios of Visited Pages. Without having to rely on channels, the PageFolio feature of NetMagnet allows the user to create folios of sites and pages and keep them up-to-date. Rather than requiring the user to maintain an entire channel, custom channels can be created made of pages from different sites.
The next step that PeakSoft will take for this capability is called Collage. This will enable users to drag and drop elements from the Internet onto their own pages or hard disks or into a document. Using automatic refreshing, these collages can be kept up-to-date without intervention by the user or any collaboration with the site providing the information.
Pricing and Availability. NetMagnet will have a list price of $79. Corporate site licenses are expected to bring the cost down to as little as $25 per user for 1,000 users. The product will be in retail channels in January.
Contact:
PeakSoft Corporation
3614 Meridian
Suite 100
Bellingham, WA 98225
Claudia Temple
Marketing Director
Phone: 360.752.1100
Fax: 360.752.1110
E-mail: claudia@peak.com
Internet: peak.com
SnapShots, January 1998 |
