Webaroo is a new search and caching service which aims to bring the Internet to mobile devices even when there's no Internet connection. The first public beta of the Webaroo software has launched today (10th April) and so we've had a little play around with it.
Webaroo works by applying what appear to be a number of web-related operations that have been around for a while, yet, never combined in quite this way. First, is the WebarooBot, which, much like any other webbot, crawls websites retreiving information from the pages crawled. A number of "web packs" have been defined, into which a crawled page will be added, if its content is relevant. Web sites are crawled regularly, thus web packs should remain up to date.
On a desktop or laptop computer, Webaroo's software must be installed. This software acts as a caching service and search engine for the cache. Users select which web packs they want and these are downloaded to the cache. When offline, webaroo's cache can be searched and browsed in the user's regular browser. Further, custom websites can be specified, should the user want to view something offline that isn't in a pack.
The software version we downloaded (1.0.1337 - heh), created a web server running on port 1000 and a small application sits in the system tray. Opening Webaroo opens the user's browser and connects to the local server. Browsing of cached sites is easy and fast, although some site features may be missing depending on how they are scripted. Images are quite heavily compressed, so jpegs don't look too good, but it's better than having no images at all.
Our webmaster and guru of all things that traverse the hypertext transfer protocol, saw opportunity for a marriage between Webaroo and another useful web service, del.icio.us. Del.icio.us allows a user's favourite websites to be tagged and listed in a single place. Configuring Webaroo to crawl that list, and follow the links on the page (only a link depth of 1 is possible at the moment) will cache all pages in the del.icio.us profile... a little like making your own web pack.
Webaroo caches can be synched to smaller mobile devices, such as PDAs and phones, however, only Windows Smartphones are supported at the moment, and then only Windows Pocket PC 2003 Second Edition, with Mobile 5.0 support on the way, but no sign of anything for Symbian. The desktop/laptop running the caching service must also run on Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 or XP, so no Linux or OS X support.
So just how useful is such a service? It probably depends on how desperate you are to surf the net. Webaroo's creators have certainly found uses for it:
We all travel a lot and its great to be able to catch up on news and blogs in all the downtime in planes, airports, taxis etc. After a two-week international trip, Rakesh found himself in a Vegas casino watching a Cleveland basketball game without its star player, a quick Webaroo search told him of the ankle injury and saved him from making the wrong bet.
While the current web packs seem a little limited in scope, we think Webaroo will probably add more over time. Hopefully the service will update regularly enough to ensure that it's useful. If you have an urge to surf, even when disconnected then we suggest you take Webaroo for a spin and let us know what you make of it.
