Startup Webaroo to put the 'Web on a Hard Drive'? 340
An anonymous reader writes "A new startup called Webaroo is launching Monday with an audacious proposition: You can search the Web without a net connection of any kind. Initial release consists of 'Web packs' on specific topics such as news, city guides or Wikipedia. Later this year they're promising a full-Web version that you can carry on a laptop -- provided you're willing to devote something in the neighborhood of 80 gig."
sounds great (Score:5, Funny)
Hm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Though, my vaguely disturbing ramblings do raise an interesting point, maybe - what's their stance on the indecent materials that make up a good deal of teh webernet? When they say the "whole internet," do they MEAN goatse too?
Re:Hm.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:sounds great (Score:5, Funny)
Re:sounds great (Score:5, Funny)
And yesterday I installed broadband... (Score:2)
Dotcom v3.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone doubted the next dotcom boom is upon us, this should put that doubt to rest.
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
1) the web is growing at a phenomenal rate. in a few years, the only thing that you'll be able to fit on even high-density media is very narrow, specific content. is there really such a huge market for that?
2) wifi is nearly ubiquitous. why pay for a static snapshot of the web that will be obsolete in a few days when you can walk into a starbucks with you laptop and get the fresh stuff almost for free??
I'm sure the guys who want to put the web on a disk have thought these points through, but me...I just really want to sigh. and buy some short-term stocks.
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:2)
Welcome to 10 years ago.
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
in a few years, the only thing that you'll be able to fit on even high-density media is very narrow, specific content.
The thing is that Wikipedia, with all its imperfections and gaps, is still a surprisingly good start.
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're way off on this one. On the other hand, I have a suitable substitute:
2. What the hell are they going to do about the copyright issues?
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoted for truth. I know I'm not the only one who thought "Hey, this would be cool... but the target websites are going to be pissed about losing their ad revenue."
For sites like Wikipedia and others whose goal is the distribution of their content, this isn't as much of a big deal (unless, in the case of Wikipedia, they snapshot a vandalized site...), but a lot of content providers won't be happy about getting their ad revenue stolen.
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:4, Funny)
In related news, NewsCorp bought Myspace.com for 580 million.
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:2)
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:2)
Re:skewed world (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hate to Parade on y'all's rain, but... (Score:2)
If you scribble something on a napkin in a restaurant, the scribble is immediately copyrighted.
Re:Hate to Parade on y'all's rain, but... (Score:2)
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:2)
Plus, I hope you're right. I'm starting my graduate IT job in July. I'm gonna start earning loads of money!
The Net on a disk is not a net (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if this is doable and legal, it runs entirely counter to the spirit of the Internet. The Internet on a hard disk is no longer a network, it becomes a passive entity with no possibility of interaction.
At the moment, we are seeing a return to the interactive origins of the Internet, prime examples being blogging, Wikipedia, and even Slashdot! If this projects takes off it will be harmful to interaction and will turn the Net into a glorified television.
However, I find it unlikely that Webaroo will g
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically what he said was that venture capitalists raised a whole bunch of money that they didn't spend during the last boom. This money is raised from investors and is given to the VCs for a limited time. The VCs make money from the management fees they collect for dealing with this money, usually 1 or 2% of the total amount. But, if they don't invest, then the money AND the fees get sent back to the original investors.
The time limit on investment is usually about 10 years. So if we say that the boom started around '96, then some of these limits have already expired, and the rest of them will expire within the next 4 years.
Use it or lose it. And the VCs will definitely use it.
A different dot.bomb? (Score:2)
Dot bombs are not about technically feasible ideas. They are not even about technology. They are all about putting together something that will appeal to venture capitalists. What really drove dot.bomb was that the VCs got into a feeding frenzy and all rational business plan/idea vetting went out of the window. For that to happen again means that a whole lo
Sounds like a cache to me (Score:5, Informative)
Additionally what if I decide to follow site links that leave the cache?
Yeah I can't really see this picking up.
Could just work... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like a cache to me (Score:2)
a nice service is possible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Archives are good and this can be a useful service. Providing 80 select gigs on a hard drive to libraries and schools is a useful until US networks get where they should be. Their software can keep those 80 GB up to snuff at night. When you leave the cache, you ... gasp ... get the new content. In the mean time, things are much faster when it matters. Mirrored content will always be a good idea. Look at the debian distribution system, for example.
Good luck to the people at Webaroo. So long as they don't apply for stupid patents that give them an exclusive franchise to distribution systems, they are AOK.
The road warrior thing will flop, though. People are going to stay where there's a network or pay the $10. It's the one piece of live information that requires the hook up. The speed of the rest is gravy for those people.
Re:Sounds like a cache to me (Score:2, Interesting)
Most likely, the reason behind this awesomely silly "feature" is getting people to pay more for laptops with larger hard drives, with marketing promising "search the web without an internet connection!"
And, of course, selling a subscription service that lets you download updates of your favorite internet content to your laptop... a technology form
Internet on a disk (Score:2)
Re:Transoceanic flights? (Score:3, Insightful)
wget (while they're waiting in the airport).
Re:Transoceanic flights? (Score:2)
Re:Transoceanic flights? (Score:4, Informative)
For shorter flights within the UK and Europe, it's safe to say I can cope without internet access for two hours.
Re:Price competition (Score:2)
the beauty of the web is a huge ammount of interlinked content including the experiances of others who actually attempt similar things to you.
ah yes remember the day (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ah yes remember the day (Score:4, Funny)
One day our internet connection was down and we went up to him asking: "the net connection is down, could we use your internet backup instead?" He was not amused, we were
Come to think of it, I'm not sure what he's up to nowadays...
Re:ah yes remember the day (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:ah yes remember the day (Score:2)
Re:ah yes remember the day (Score:4, Funny)
Mind you I think I was 7 years old at the time.
Re:ah yes remember the day (Score:2)
Forget the internet. If I win the lottery, I'm planning on buying USENET.
Internet compressed to one-liner (Score:2)
Hell, I compressed it down to an sh one-liner:
yes 'Blah blah blah.'
Copyright infringment. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Copyright infringment. (Score:5, Informative)
How soon till the first lawsuit is filed.
US copyright law, 17 USC 512 [cornell.edu], excuses operators of automated caches that conform to established cache control protocols (meta elements, /robots.txt, etc.) from copyright infringement liability.
Re:Copyright infringment. (Score:2)
Webaroo has gone far beyond being a cache, they are aggregating others content into a downloadable product they sell for money. This is no different than Napster 1.0 or a $10 per download warez site - the key difference being this is web content.
Is this really the right time? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this really the right time? (Score:2, Funny)
If it didn't happen i would be like the guy who loses his glasses in that old story and can't read even though he has eternity "but there was time now..." or whatever.
Not just access (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not just access (Score:2)
ownership (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ownership (Score:2)
Re:ownership (Score:2)
Cache exemption (Score:4, Informative)
Technically, they make a copy and the ISP doesn't.
Isn't the ephemeral copy in the RAM of a router still a copy? And don't operators of automated caches have a fairly broad exemption under United States copyright law, 17 USC 512(b) [bitlaw.com]?
Re:Cache exemption (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ownership (Score:2)
I thought of a better way (Score:2)
Copyright? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Copyright? (Score:2)
Re:Copyright? (Score:2)
The combination of willful copyright infringement and a profit
I won't be doing that one... (Score:2)
Re:I won't be doing that one... (Score:2, Funny)
What about important updates? (Score:5, Funny)
Downloading Wikipedia Is Nothing New (Score:3, Funny)
How are they going to handle dynamic things.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How are they going to handle dynamic things.. (Score:2)
Besides, great thing about Wikipedia is you don't need to search it. You just look up the topic you want, and there's your information, already organized. (And yeah, I know books have been doing just that since the invention of the printing press. But I could never afford a copy of Britannica, could you?)
Re:How are they going to handle dynamic things.. (Score:2)
Not true. [wikipedia.org]
Re:How are they going to handle dynamic things.. (Score:2)
Screw the web searching business (Score:3, Funny)
80 gig web? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:80 gig web? (Score:2)
Re:80 gig web? (Score:2)
Re:80 gig web? (Score:2)
It's more like 0.15%, if they use the same compression and content selection criteria as the Internet Archive. If they eschewed with all non-html content (graphics files, pdf's, etc) that would go up quite a bit. If they used better compression (the Archive uses gzip) it would go up some more.
An average crawl of the public web, minus files which are "too large" (not sure what the threshold is for that), makes about 55TB of gzipped archive. 80GB / 55000GB = 0.0014545, or about 0.15%.
-- TTK
Re:80 gig web? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not enough so's you'd notice. What's the difference between one thimbleful of ocean and 100 thimblefuls of ocean? Besides trying to solve the wrong problem to begin with?
Re:80 gig web? (Score:3, Insightful)
Compression, for one. Force people to use some proprietary browser (or a FireFox extension) and compress html files > xx KB so that the browser opens the archives on the fly. Zip up executables, pdf's, word documents, etc etc etc. Webservers & browsers use gzip to save bandwidth, why can't this archive use it to save space?
Convert
All of the Web on a laptop? (Score:5, Informative)
Internet Archive Frequently Asked Questions [archive.org]
Google Local (Score:2)
Re:Google Local (Score:2)
Especially since there's considerable redundancy; they can't search all that data that quickly without throwing multiple computers at it. Even if you could have a local Google copy, it would run very sl
Pr0n? (Score:4, Funny)
Er, I'm asking this in order to, er, protect my girlfriend's sensibilities. Can't have her unwittingly downloading such naughty stuff you know. =)
Re:Pr0n? (Score:2, Insightful)
if(girlfriend.has_sensibilities)
chance_of_lying = VERY_HIGH;
else
chance of lying = HIGH;
what about copyright issues (Score:2)
Damn! Honey, (Score:2)
Oh my good god (plus bonus Dr Who joke)... (Score:3, Funny)
Anyway, more importantly - Dr Who is due back on UK TV soon I think (slightly disappointing end to last series - shame to to see Chris E leave) so here's a joke that Webaroo might like to to 'cache'
Dalek bread..." geddit? (thanks to a kids radio show for that one).
Wow! I'd be MORE impressed if they.... (Score:2)
html has never cared where data comes from (Score:3, Informative)
If you've ever written or read html, you know that html doesn't care if links start file:// or if they start html://. HTML has always been quite neutral on whether it was linking to a local file system or getting something over the internet. Of course, most people don't use html extensively for local content. So in theory, this isn't a new idea at all.
In practice, I don't see a lot of points for it. I can imagine that some people might want a map of a new city, with clickable pictures and informations about various services there. Most features of a city map are going to stay the same for at least six months, so this is the type of thing that could be done staticly. But even with this, internet access is so widespread, that it seems like a solution for a minor problem. Also, if you want a handy city guide, it would make more sense to me to write it from scratch rather than use a cludge of cached web pages.
There's nothing new here (Score:2)
Is this even legal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mod parent down (Score:2)
Internet access, like electricity or water, is a utility.
So how is Webaroo's product not a form of (indirect) Internet access?
Finally! (Score:2)
Gibson? (Score:2)
Rails? (Score:2)
Reminds me of a boss I once had... (Score:2)
This project was a highschool biology series of CD-ROMs, which used html/javascript on a CD (worked in all browsers, all platforms). It was a great project, except that moron gave
feh (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, if I know I won't be online for a week, what stops me from just CURLing or WGETing whatever I plan on reading for the next couple of weeks? And that goes only for static content like books and articles. Everything else is cannot be simply cached.
Can be useful ... (Score:2)
For most of North America, where high speed is fairly common and unmetered, this is not a good idea.
For some other parts of the world, the internet is only available in dialup, and is metered. Spending hours surfing can be very cost prohibitive.
So, if large parts of the net is available offline, I can see a market for those geographical areas, provided the cost is not prohibitive
Wikipedia (Score:2)
80GB Huh (Score:2)
Damn you! (Score:2)
Bastards.
-Charles
Re:Airport Example (Score:2)
Re:Surfing is only part of the web... (Score:3, Insightful)
When your argument is based exclusively on your opinions and personal experience, global absolutes like "this idea is bad" come off as arrogance. Phrases like "this is useless to me" are more accurate.
Re:AaAAAAaaHH!!!eleventy1 Big brother attacks! (Score:2)
Not saying Webaroo is a good idea, but censoring can be done by current search engines, too (at least, it's easy to hide content from less ambitious users)
Re:Webaroo (Score:2)