- Ad Age, Wednesday, April 12, 2006 10:30 AM
How would you like to download the Web on your laptop before that long flight overseas? Bellevue, Wash. start-up Webaroo aims to make that a possibility. The new service, which launched on Monday,
offers a searchable snapshot of the Web users can download to their laptop or other mobile device, storing it so users can access and search it offline. But the entire Web, you might ask? According to
Ad Age, it would take 1 million gigabytes to put the entire Web on a storage device (I know, I thought it might be more). Webaroo uses an algorithm to store only the most relevant Web pages for
each user, by storing favorites and anything cached, as well as editor-compiled "Web packs," which collect content on certain subjects. The packs are automatically updated when users connect their
mobile devices back to the Internet. Later this month, Webaroo will launch a Wikipedia, which, for those of you living below ground, is a community-built encyclopedia maintained by editors that is
updatable by anyone who chooses to do so. The Wikipedia allows users to create other Web Packs on esoteric business stuff that only those in a particular field could write anyway ( i.e., Internet
advertising). Webaroo says it's ad-supported, although it's unclear exactly how that works in a legal sense: can it simply replace all the ads on the pages it stores? According to the article, the
company plans to provide sponsorships of Web packs as well as...keyword search advertising. Nevertheless, this could and should prove to be a useful tool for the industry's on-the- go execs.
Read the whole story at Ad Age »
