Tool lets users keep track of online information
- — 13 July, 1999 21:49
Cyberspace: it has developed from a small-scale, manageable Arpanet into a worldwide, infinite network of computers delivering endless amounts of information. Search engines return old data, dead links, or simply have too much noise and too little signal. Try to retrieve information and results end up being so broad, they leave you drowning in data.
Enter iHarvest One, a Web organiser that helps you cut through the clutter and easily share online information with others. What's more -- it's free.
Capture any piece of information -- anything from a single image to an entire Web page -- and add it to iHarvest's folder-like structure. All it takes is a click and a drag. iHarvest makes retrieving, managing and integrating Web information a cinch.
How does it work?
Say you need to translate an article from an Italian newspaper into English. With iHarvest, you can save the news article, a translation program, and a spell checker all in one folder. When you go back to check out the results, you can view the article in one streaming document, or you can opt to flip through it page by page.
"We've focused on a complete solution right from the beginning," says Dennis Buchheim, iHarvest's cofounder and vice president of product management and operations. "The product is integrated directly onto your browser, which you won't see anywhere else."
Not only are you no longer forced to work from a single Web page, you also can wave farewell to that endless string of bookmarks on your browser. Sites, databases and applications are automatically combined with other text and data and organised into a basic, easy-to-read format. You can store data that you've gathered yourself, or simply let iHarvest find complementary information to update your text based on key words that the system has gathered from your search.
"iHarvest has the ability to automatically find the most interesting content and promotions. As you put more and more information into the product, your searches will get better and better," Buchheim says. "We're also very committed to privacy."
Of course, the promotions can at times be distracting. But at least they're targeted towards your specific tastes.
For those who have an irrational hatred of Microsoft, you'll have to wait a few months to try iHarvest on Netscape browsers. Currently it's compatible only with Internet Explorer. iharvest Onehttp://www.iharvest.com
