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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."  -Aristotle

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I am a co-founder of Notches, an early stage startup currently based in NYC. We are building a free, open reviews network that anyone can participate in and anyone can build on top of. You can find out more on our official blog.

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This article is more than 45 days old. Given the speed at which the technology world moves, this post is probably somewhat out of date. Please keep this in mind when reading the post. If this is a tutorial, please check whether you are using the same versions mentioned in the article.

Webaroo seems so 1999 to me

At first glance, here's something I don't get: Webaroo. They store the content of Web pages for offline retrieval, apparently keeping it searchable and serving it alongside ads. Acer laptops will come with a 40Gb pre-packaged web pack.  I'm sure, or at least I hope, they're doing something more than saving webpages and displaying ads, but I can't help but be reminded of all those products like SurfOffline that saved a local copy of a website.

Granted, I'm in one of those "metropolitan areas" that has a 3G network, but the coverage is getting better every day. It's clear that the "online web" is greater than the "offline web" even if it's not broadband speeds. Being connected allows me to do a lot more than just read the "best of the Web", whatever that means.

But let's take a step back: Even before I had this always-on connection, I had all the things I really wanted to read already saved in my RSS reader for offline consumption.

It just seems like a curious place for a startup. On one side, they are racing against the connectivity from both WWAN deployment and municipal / free WiFi. On the other, the savvy "road warrior" probably already has their content available offline through RSS. Once RSS really hits the mainstream user (and I think IE7 will be a big flag-bearer in this effort), why do they need Webaroo?

If the investors are reading, give me a call - I can think of a lot better things to do with your $8 million.

Only published comments... Apr 10 2006, 12:00 PM by Tim

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