Setauket, NY, June 1999 - Limit Point Software is proud to announce
the public beta for the ambidextrous Blue Crab 1.0 for Mac OS -- a
high-performance crawler for intranet and the internet.
Blue Crab crawls in two modes... 1) Download Mode. Mirror remote
sites or volumes, downloading sites to disk. 2) Bookmark Mode. Crawl
a remote site, creating a hierarchical bookmarks library which is
indexable and searchable by LPS' Boolean Search engine. Crawl from
any Mac on your TCP/IP network independent of, or as a complement to
a web server.
Crawling sessions schedules are highly configurable. Page
Controller's drag-and-drop interface makes session config a snap --
custom configs may be saved, edited and applied to individual crawls.
Blue Crab can even crawl multiple sites simultaneously, schedule
unattended content delivery and control directory and path depths.
Specify exactly what you want, exclude what you don't. A rich
three-level filter system allows you to filter precisely what Blue
Crab crawls, grabs and saves by date, suffix, file name, size and
path containment for starters. And the Crab is a relentless spy --
stalking remote sites, updating grabbed files or bookmarks.
DOWNLOAD MODE:
Download complete web sites for speedy offline browsing. The Crab can
grab HTML, images, PDFs, audio, video and more -- flawlessly
preserving directory structure, whether you're grabbing a handful of
files or a complete web site. Blue Crab is a natural for educational
institutions and other organizations where internet access is limited
to a library or resource center -- web content can be grabbed for
local viewing in classrooms or corporate presentations. The Crab will
also save files to a remote FTP server.
BOOKMARK MODE:
Expand your site by indexing related web content. The Crab will
generate a clickable HTML Site Map and when paired with Boolean
Search, offers feature-rich indexing and search of any remote site.
The Bookmarks Window makes it easy to schedule, configure and
maintain complete collections of bookmarks.
BONUSES:
Blue Crab's built-in search engine is a valuable network research
tool, performing fast content searches on mounted WAN volumes -- no
indexing required. Blue Crab also ships with a copy of our Active
List plug-in, which will display an easy-to-navigate collapsible and
expandable "tree view" of your HTML Site Map and includes any file
type -- HTML, images, PDF and more.
Blue Crab's true ambidexterity means you can crawl solely for site
download purposes or crawl to add remote indexing and search
functionality to Boolean Search, or both! (Boolean Search 2.2b
required to index and search remote sites.)
Final pricing is expected to be less than $100. Stay tuned for
introductory pricing on Blue Crab and bundle pricing on the complete
Limit Point Search Tools Suite. Details and fully functioning 1.05b
eval at http://www.limit-point.com/BlueCrab/BlueCrab.html.
MORE FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS:
~ Supports Robots Exclusion Standard.
~ Extend functionality through custom AppleScripts.
~ Realm support -- muliple admin realm strings and passwords.
~ Skip, Pause, Resume and Stop button control during downloads.
~ Customizable e-mail notification of crawl starts and stops.
~ Processing monitors include a real-time status window which
constantly monitors every detail of a crawling session and a text log.
~ Unauthorized Pages List, Broken Links List itemizes broken links and
the parent pages.
~ Auto-batch modification of file type and creator for saved files.
~ Comment field of each file automatically stores the address of
a grabbed URL.
~ Controlled grabbing rate modulates load on crawled servers.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Blue Crab is an application which requires a PowerPC 601 processor
minimum, Mac OS 7.5.5 or later. 16MB of RAM; 5MB disk space.
_______________________________________
ABOUT LIMIT POINT SOFTWARE:
LPS is an enterprising developer committed to creating
industrial-strength Macintosh server solutions for international
business, government, education and science.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Debbie Curtis | curtisd@isdn.net.
Voice: 615.297.0004. | Fax: 615.460.0060.
