iterasi

With social bookmarking and archiving site Magnolia down until a re-launch later this year, some users might be looking for an alternate way to capture snapshots of Web sites as they appeared at specific times. Besides Iterasi, which we've covered previously, there's a new service called BackupURL that can save what a page looked like, and make it available for reading later--even when the site is temporarily down, or long gone.

To do it for any page, you simply drop in its URL, and BackupURL will capture links, images, and any page formatting. What's nice is that … Read more

Web page archiving tool Iterasi is getting a small but important update Tuesday morning. Users can now share their stream of archived pages with others as an RSS feed, letting anyone view their saved items either directly in their browser or in a feed-capturing tool like Google Reader or desktop e-mail clients.

Also being introduced is a new widget that can be tacked onto your blog or favorite start page like iGoogle or My Yahoo. It will display a reverse chronological stream of the latest pages you've tucked away. Each item is just a thumbnail, but when users click on it they'll be taken to the fully archived version of the page, complete with working links. It's the same basic experience seen when the service launched its sharing feature.

"What's surprising is how many of our users were asking for RSS feeds," Iterasi CEO Pete Grillo told me. Grillo acknowledged that the current Iterasi user base is a bit on the early-adopter side, and he thinks the widgets will help open the service up to a wider audience.

He also expects more people to jump onboard as the platform expands to include Mac users, which should be happening in the next few weeks--right around the time the long-awaited auto-archiving feature makes its way into users hands. "We're close to having it ready," Grillo said "and RSS is going to make it far more useful than we originally intended." Once in place users, will be able to schedule when they want the service to take snapshots of their favorite pages. It will continue to do so as long as the computer where the extension is installed is running.

I've embedded an example of the new widget after the break. It'll continue to update as more pages are saved.

… Read more

Web bookmarking tool Iterasi just launched the first version of its Firefox extension to people who have signed up for the beta. The service, which I wrote about in January, lets you capture a Web site in its entirety, complete with links, formatting, and a time stamp to help sort it out later.

The company was set to release the plug-in back in late February but has been busy for the past few months resolving some security issues, as well as tweaking usability with a small group of beta testers. One of the reasons for the delay was to ramp … Read more

Iterasi is a new bookmarking tool previewing today at DEMO. I got a demo of the service in action a few weeks back, and am looking forward to getting my hands on it for a review when the beta begins within the next month. The basic premise of Iterasi is that you can save any page you're looking at for later. It's almost like a screenshot, except that it preserves links, formatting, and any content that was on the page when you were viewing it at that moment. The end result is a bookmark that you can share with others that retains what the page looked like at that point in time. The creators tell me this is especially handy if you want to show someone a page that's behind a security login or on a local intranet.

To begin saving bookmarks on Iterasi, users need to install a small browser plug-in that will let them "notarize" any page they're on for later retrieval. I told the creators the notarize moniker reminded me of getting legal documents signed, but they think it will grow on users, and that it made more sense than making up some word that just sounded nice. The notarize button resides in the top right-hand corner of your browser, and also lets you jump to your bookmark list with one mouse click.

To sort through all your notarized content there's a home screen that lists everything in reverse chronology and can be parsed quickly using any tags you've added. You can either browse by text links that looks a little similar to the detailed file view in Windows Explorer, or a list view, which shows each saved site as a thumbnail. The service has a built-in search tool that will sort through the tags, site names, and any content that was stored on each page. You can also put multiple items into folders, and send them off to other Iterasi users, or your contacts via e-mail.

One of the most interesting features, and one I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on, is the… Read more