Program Description

Repetitive Web surfing wastes a lot of time to individuals and companies. The Easy Bee aims to provide an user-friendly solution to Web browsing costs. Indeed the product lets the user quickly and easily record web browsing macros. It then replays them periodically and silently. Macros can include user actions such as form filling and button clicking, thus allowing the so-called invisible Web to be reached and included in dashboard pages. The product also allows the user to specify an area to extract from target web pages such as an image or a table, letting users focus on their interests without being distracted by flashing advertisements and irrelevant links. The Easy Bee aggregates these extracts on pages that the user can easily edit by resizing and moving excerpts. Aggregated pages may be thought of as dashboards that always display up-to-date information. Dashboards are printer-friendly and can be annotated before being printed. The graphical interface is designed to guide the user through the creation of a new web agent in such a way that no technical knowledge is required in order to record a browsing sequence, specify an area to cut out of the target page, indicate the refreshing schedule and design the layout of dashboard pages. The product automatically locks all agents that operate on password-protected pages, hiding the gathered content and preventing agent edition. A global password chosen by the user is used to unlock such private content. Files related to private agents are encrypted on the user disk with standard algorithms provided by Windows systems, preventing any malicious user to access private data. Altercept has chosen to hide the complexity of its underlying proprietary technology with a nice metaphor: honeybees -web agents- diligently fly and gather their Web harvest in honeycombs -dashboards.