Web page indexer

A FEW weeks ago I read an on-line magazine article that discussed the possibility of Net-morphing into a `global brain' with sites automatically adjusting their links according to the needs and browsing habits of its users. I wanted to read it again but had no information on the site to access it. All I could recall of the article were some words such as `axon' and `synapse'. Of course, with this information alone it will be difficult to locate the site in question.

A utility installed in my machine many weeks back - but not given any credit so far - came to my rescue. The utility is MantaDB - the focus of this week's article.

MantaDB

MantaDB is a multi-functional utility that automatically indexes every web page you browse, helps you adjust the colour and font of the site you view and remove frames from a site. Before moving into a detailed description of these useful features let us see how to install and activate the utility.

Download the free software (548 KB) from the site www.mantadb.com and install it. After installation you need to attach it to the IE tool bar. Click at the View button of IE menu then access Toolbars. Among the options, you will see the MantaDB button (at times you may see only two Radio labels and not the MantaDB label, in this case select the second Radio label). Once the MantaDB option is selected, the MantaDB icons get attached to the IE tool bar. To configure the software or to view all the available features click at the Configure MantaDB button (the button labelled mdb). To activate any of the features proceed as follows:

Click at the mdb button; the system immediately presents the MantaDB Properties window. If you want to bring in the Page DeFramer button to the tool bar, select the Page DeFramer, and the program allows you three options: you can use it immediately (by pressing Do it Now button) and also keep the DeFramer icon in the IE tool bar permanently so that next time when you need this feature, you just need to click at the icon available at the tool bar.

Web indexer: The Web page indexer helps you index and search for words you have visited on the web pages. Knowledge about the indexing process is not required as the program smoothly performs this function in the background and indexes the contents of the sites you visit. To view a web page you visited a few days back, click at the Search button and a list of links is displayed within a few seconds. To index the web page whenever you visit a site automatically, select the Index Auto/Auto Select option and enable all its features.

Now you know how I could locate the site mentioned at the beginning of this article. I just clicked on the Search button and at the search window entered the word `synapse' (this is one of the words I could recollect) and clicked at the Find button. The system immediately displayed the site address with page details. Are you curious about `global brain' concept? Try the link www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/ai/globalbrain.html

Page DeFramer:Most of the web pages contain more than one window (known by the name frame) and web designers use this facility to keep some information constant (such as the site's menu or logo). In one or two frames they store information that is static and use another frame to display dynamic content. This way they can keep you locked up to their site even after transporting you to a totally different site. If you feel offended at a site behaving like this, use the Page DeFramer tool to remove the frames.Font Size: This tool is useful to adjust the font, which determines the size and shape of the letters of the text displayed in a web page. If you find any difficulty in reading a site then click on this feature.

Sensible Colours

Some web sites give us very frustrating moments due to their horrible unaesthetic colour combinations. If you come across such sites and want to view them in simple black and white, access the Sensible Colours feature of MantaDB.

Eprompter: Generally, most of us keep more than one e-mail addresses for various reasons. Some of them may be taken from free providers such as Hotmail or Yahoo. To access mail received through Hotmail type of free providers, we need to access the service's site. This may be time consuming and for dial-up users the whole exercise will turn out to be an expensive proposition. Eprompter is an interesting utility that may be of use to some of you to pick the email.

This program (of course free) helps you access automatically up to eight email accounts. You can use this program to check e-mail accounts of Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL. The software (475 KB) can be downloaded from www.eprompter.com. After installation the program icon falls on the system tray. To use the program, you need to configure it for your email accounts. For instance, if you have a Hotmail account, click at the e-prompt icon (from the system tray) and click SetUp from one of the windows. Now an input window appears; select Hotmail for the Service Type box and enter other inputs properly.

In this way you can configure up to eight email accounts (it is unlikely that a person will have more than eight live email accounts). When you connect to the Net next time the program automatically accesses your email boxes and notifies you in case you have any mail.

J.Murali

(The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)

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