Introducing a Simpler Client and a Searchable Public Site

Today we released a couple of significant new features; a new lightweight iterasi client and a new searchable Website. The new client is a lightweight bookmarklet version of the full iterasi product that’s been out for a while. Our searchable Website allows anyone to search among the hundreds of thousands of public pages housed in the iterasi archive.

Below are details of each of these features. But before I lose you to the details, let me take a moment to discuss the ‘why’s’ behind these features. Our goal at iterasi is simple: to be a place where users can memorialize what they experienced on the Web and either keep it privately or provide it publically for the benefit of others. At this time almost 80% of the archive is public. With this release of our Website all these pages are fully indexed – all keywords in each page, Tags, URLs, Notes – so that everything in the page is searchable. The bookmarklet adds a simple-to-use tool that allows anyone to memorialize pages of significance to them – be it a favorite recipe, blogpost, research report, or maybe even the results of a historic Presidential race.

So use iterasi to capture history. And perhaps give it a try when you want to see what others find interesting.

The Bookmarklet

The new iterasi bookmarklet provides a lightweight version of the full iterasi product. There are both advantages and shortcomings when compared to the iterasi toolbar solution.

Bookmarklet advantages: the Bookmarklet is basically a link that you can save as a favorite and add to your Links bar if you’d like. To archive the page you see in your browser, just click on the link. With the Bookmarklet there is no browser plug-in and no installation process. When you save a webpage using the Bookmarklet, the capture is performed in our datacenter in the cloud instead of on your computer. So you don’t install anything and no longer have to wait for the capture to complete in your browser. Being a link that runs a small Javascript script, it can run on any modern browser.

Bookmarklet shortcomings: the Bookmarklet simply queues up the archiving process to run later on our hardware. The Toolbar installs in your browser and has the ability to capture exactly what you see in your browser when you press the Notarize button. In many cases that will not make any difference which tool you use - a recipe, article or blogpost will most likely archive just as you see it. Pages that use dynamic content or are accessed behind a login/password are best archived using the full iterasi Toolbar.

Public Search

With this release we now offer anyone – iterasi account holder or anyone coming to our site - the ability to search among the public pages archived by iterasi users. (Note that pages marked Private are NOT AVAILABLE in the Public Search Site). Remember that pages in the iterasi archive are selected by a real people and not by spiders or bots. The collection of archived pages covers all corners of the Web – sports, politics, programming tips, recipes, analyst reports, tutorials, jokes, etc, etc. Whatever a user wants to save.

Some choose to save history. In the blog ‘Teaching Online Journalism’, Mindy McAdams writes how she had a student spend election night archiving 98 different news sites from around the world using iterasi. From the New York Post to the Hindustan Times. From Gazeta Wyborcza to The Australian. From the Dallas Morning News to Le Monde. To see all 98 pages click on: US Presidental Election from the eyes of 98 news sites from around the world

It’s a very impressive collection. And now the digital versions are a permanent part of the world’s history.

So take a look at what the iterasi community is archiving. Try our search and you may find something of interest. Or archive pages that you find interesting. Otherwise, they just might disappear.