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Startup Webaroo to put the 'Web on a Hard Drive'?
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."
A new startup called Webaroo is launching Monday with an audacious proposition: You can search the Web without a net connection of any kind.
If anyone doubted the next dotcom boom is upon us, this should put that doubt to rest.
How soon till the first lawsuit is filed.
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Is this really the right to to try this? when wi-fi connections are popping up all over the place and the internet's bigger than it ever has been before?
Considering the fact that companies are suing google for putting the first paragraph of their news tidbits on google news, how long will it be before someone sues webaroo for copyright infringement? Whether the claim is valid or reasonable or not is a moot point - someone is gonna see this as infringement and call out their pack of rabid lawyers.
wireless broadband access.. why would I want to download the web on my harddrive, when I will have (if not already) access to it from virtually anywhere ?
I see potential educational uses, but not wide spread adoption.
e.g. searching? Having Wikipedia on your hdd is all well and good, but if you can't easily search it, what's the point?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
This is the single dumbest thing I've seen on Slashdot recently. As someone has already posted, why carry the internet as hard copy when wifi is becoming ubiquitous? In any case, is it just my tin-foil-hat nature that sees this as a great way of hiding/censoring parts of the internet? I mean, if this were to actually take off we'd be trusting a single source of info, with little or no culpability to the public. Granted if this became popular we'd see other sources come in, but....oh to hell with it.
I'm not going to waste any more time on this. It's just an exercise in paranoia. Nothing to see here, move along.
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
That would cover about 0.0000000001% of the web, give or take a few dozen orders of magitude.
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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.
How are they to justify selling other peoples' websites? What about the sites' lost ad revenues?
You raise excellent points which warrant discussion.
As many have said, the "point" of the Interent (as I see it) is LIVE contact with (just about) everything.
As many of us understand, 99% of traditional media is owned by the major corps like Disney, Viacom, News Corp, etc. If this is conspiracy theory, then Jon Stewart is a tinfoil hat nut because this is all spelled out in the Daily Show's "America: the book."
Like many of you, I was attracted to the Interent because I assumed it escaped this sort of control paradaigm. I figured, heck, who would even *try* to control this much info?
These days, when I browse the top sites on Alexa for example, I see the same sort of "media mafia" tactic has overrun the web in 2006.
So what? IMO: we are all wrong. My extreme views are just as stupid as yours, however, as my grand-pappy used to say: "somewhere in the middle lies the truth". I feel that the "wackos" on all sides are CRITICAL, and that this "societal average" is the closest we will ever come to "truth". I find anything which threatens this function of the Internet as detrememntal to me, my country, and my fellow man.
Someone around here has a great sig (sorry, but I am terrible with names), something like: "the problem with wikipedia is that it only works in practice, in theory, it can't possibly work." To whomever shared this with me: right on. This is exactly how I felt about the Internet circa 1996, and the reason I am so hurt to se where it is 10 years later.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
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 gain currency, precisely because we have become dependent on an interactive and living Internet. When I use the Net, I want to be able to read and respond to my emails, to check my bank balance, shop online, and read the latest news. Why on earth would I want to have a static Internet on my laptop?
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
wget (while they're waiting in the airport).
All's true that is mistrusted
It doesn't seem likely to me that those Webaroo guys will be able to fullfill the conditions of (2), especially (C) and (E). The cache exemption is obviously targeted towards _online_ caches. This makes sense, IMO.
if(posts_to_slashdot && has_girlfriend)
if(girlfriend.has_sensibilities)
chance_of_lying = VERY_HIGH;
else
chance of lying = HIGH;
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Invalid comparison. Internet access, like electricity or water, is a utility. Providers put a large amount of resources in developing their infrastructure, and need a way to recoup those costs. Basic economics.
The development of the Internet would've been set back a couple decades if ISPs weren't allowed to charge for their services.
The only way one can store the "whole internet" in a 80GB drive is to drop off the pr0n. I mean... besides the pr0n, everything else should fit in a 80GB drive, right?
Are you trying to be funny? 80 GB of PDF's out there? Buddy, there are departments of companies, not the whole company, that have more than 80 GB of PDFs available to the public on servers.... (sometimes limited public, i.e. customers, for owners manulas, docs etc....)
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