Please note: This is an updated and corrected version of a review I wrote earlier.

The quote of the day that displayed when I went to AFLC was something to the effect that

Technology has given us more places to store information which just means more places to lose.

As an ICT teacher, learnscoper and a PhD student, I spend about, on average, 8 hours a day online looking at education related sites.

There is no online drought - just the opposite, a continual flood and it's so hard not to drown. Over the past 9 years of surfing the net, I have employed various methods for keeping myself from drowning. I started out with my browser book marks and saving pages to folders. Then when I had multiple browsers, I had to resort to a dedicated bookmark manager so that I could keep projects organised and annotate the book marks. This was it for a while, then I realised that I had to bite the bullet and do something more with the gigs of info I had downloaded. It was all there but I couldn't always find what I wanted easily and the more I collected, the worse the problem got.

Over the 2002-2003 summer I looked for the management tool that would enable me to remain afloat. I was looking for a tool which

• was stable on my machine (Windows 2000)
  
• had a pleasant interface
  
• a usable help file
  
• could capture web pages or elements of web pages on the fly
  
• could import most types of documents I normally dealt with - html, mht, doc,rtf, pdf, swf
  
• could export to at least html and rtf
  
• could gather my document collections in a structured tree form with annotation, editing and searching facilities
  
• didn't cost an arm and a leg

I tried a number of programs but the one that appealed to me most is called Web Catcher.

Evaluating it on the criteria listed above:-

• It hasn't crashed at all
  
• Its interface is well laid out
  
• The help file was written by someone who doesn't have English as a first language ( I am in no position to judge the Chinese help file) but it is usable
  
• A small program called Web Catcher Helper is included to act as a small floating on top window which will assist you in saving a web page or individual items from the page. There is a tabbed dialog box to give you full control over how and where things are saved. You can a keywords and a note to whatever you are saving. These additions can be edited at anytime
  
• The program can import documents of all the types I habitually come across and can do bulk imports from folders on the hard disk
  
• The program can export a user's selection of documents a Windows help file which is great because you end up with a compact file which is searchable and has built-in navigation. It doesn't export to rtf though I can get around that fairly easily if needs be.
  
• W C organises documents into "each book" with each book being contained in a separate database, Within a book you can create sections as you see fit and move documents around using drag'n'drop. You can edit documents using the WYSIWYG editor or switch to HTML source if needed. All books can be backed up with a single click.
  
• It has a few other tricks up its sleeve such as password protection and autoscrolling for long documents. Also you can copy documents between books and add bookmarks as needed.
  
• The program costs $25 US and has a trial version available for 30 days. After the trial expires, you can still read what you have collected but can't add more.

I am now finding it much easier to manage all the info I collect from the net - pity Web Catcher won't teach my classes for me ;-)

The home page for Web Catcher is http://www.wizissoft.com if you wish to check it out.

I have no connection whatsoever with the makers of this program. I wrote this review solely to share my experience with other learnscopers.

Update 5 August, 2004

Webcatcher has gone through several new versions as the author seeks to improve its functioality and reliability. I have been using it for several months now and find it invaluable.

I think that USD25 is a reasonable price for this product, but if you want a free application which captures web pages (only) to a database and allows you to add annotations, then you might want to look at WYSIGOT. This program is much less versaltile than WebCatcher, except with respect tp one feature. It allows you to compare your stored version of a page against the current online version and highlights the changes which have been made. If you only want an offline broswer with annotation and searching, then you might be happy with this program. If you want something with a more robust feature set, then try WebCatcher.

Update 2 December, 2004

WebCatcher has changed its name to CyberArticle. Along with the name change, functionality has increased even more. The program works with shell applications for IE now (eg Maxthon). The price remains the same.