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Organize Your Web Research

SurfSaver and Webforia Organizer help you exploit all the valuable Web resources you collect.

By Stan Miastkowski, PCWorld   

But two companies have come up with tools designed to help you store and organize data from the Web. I looked at SurfSaver 1.5 from askSam System ($29.95 for individual users; $49.95 per user for a network version) and Webforia Organizer 1.0 ($79.95 downloaded from the Web; $84.95 on CD-ROM).

Saving copies of Web pages locally on your PC is nothing new, but both SurfSaver and Webforia Organizer go beyond that simple chore by indexing and organizing the results of your searches into searchable and shareable archives. That is, you can actually go back later and find what you're looking for. And both offer free 30-day downloadable trials.

SurfSaver Learns to Share

SurfSaver version 1.5 adds a number of new features, the most important of which is the ability to save Web pages that you capture in HTML format. This is handy if you have a Web site and need to quickly edit pages and load them back to the server.

But it also lets you share saved pages with other people without the need for them to have their own copy of SurfSaver (or even their own connection to the Net) in order to view them. The network version adds the ability to record the user name and PC name of each person's saved Web pages. This eliminates confusion when several people are working on a project.

It's a breeze to use. After installation, you use your browser (Internet Explorer or Navigator 4.0 or higher) in the usual way. When you find a Web page you want to save, you click the right mouse button and choose the SurfSaver option off the menu. An archive screen pops up that lets you choose or create a folder to save the page in. Usually, you'll want to create folders for each topic you're searching on.

More importantly, you can enter keywords for quick access to the page later, as well as your own notes. The program then captures the page and saves it for later access. There's also a SurfSaver QuickSave option that automatically saves the page to the last location with a single mouse click.

Once you've saved your pages, you can work offline at any time to access the information you've saved, using your Web browser as the interface. You can access the folders directly, or search the entire SurfSaver database by full text, keywords, notes, or even the URL. SurfSaver's search capabilities are advanced. Should you so desire, you can use Boolean or proximity searches (specifying how close search words should be to related words.)

Webforia: Serious Searching

Webforia's Organizer 1.0 is quite similar to SurfSaver, but--as reflected by its higher price--adds features that attune it to the needs of researchers, analysts, students, or anyone else who spends a great deal of time tracking down information on the Web.

One handy feature is direct-access to seven major search engines, a good place to start.

As with SurfSaver, you use your browser in the normal way, although Webforia only works with Internet Explorer 4.0 or above. When you're running the program, it adds a bar at the bottom of your screen with quick-access choices. Once you've found the information you want, you click the Clip icon to save the page. (Unlike SurfSaver, you can also save part of a page by highlighting it.) You can also save a bookmark to a site, a handy feature for future reference.

Webforia saves the results of your searches into a ClipTray, a temporary storage location. Once you're done with your search, you enter the main Organizer screen and put the results of your searches in what the program calls libraries. Webforia extends the folder paradigm, though, by letting you create subcategories--essentially subdirectories--within libraries.

Webforia Organizer automatically creates keywords and an abstract (the first few paragraphs of text) from the Web pages you've saved. I found the package to be clever at figuring out keywords from the saved Web pages, though its pickings were sometimes sparse. You can, however, add your own additional keywords or edit the abstract. You can also add your own annotations to saved pages.

Webforia's search capabilities are also advanced. You can look for keywords or text strings, and specify whether to search all text and all libraries, or limit the search to individual sections, libraries, or subcategories. You can define very specific search criteria, including what to include as well as exclude, although it does take a while to figure out the options.

The package does a particularly good job at organizing large amounts of information. You can also share libraries with other users via a network or send them as e-mail attachments. But the recipients need to have their own copies of Webforia in order to use them.

And in keeping with its orientation toward serious searching, Webforia's Web site offers a wealth of information. The company's Research Center offers hints and tips about doing research on the Web. It will also offer sample libraries for various types of research, although these weren't yet available when I checked the site.

Making Choices

Although Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 (now in beta) allows you to save Web pages in a fairly practical way, both SurfSaver and Webforia Organizer go way beyond those basic abilities. They're effective tools for making sense of the flood of information on the Web, allowing you to save and easily access your search results.

If your needs are basic, SurfSaver is inexpensive, effective, and very easy to use. But if finding, saving, organizing, and retrieving large amounts of Web data is essential to your job, Webforia Organizer is the logical choice.