Nextaris -- smart search related web application from SurfWax

By Lars Våge

The company behind the advanced metasearch service SurfWax has released a free web based search related tool called Nextaris. It is a search tool as well as an information manager.

(September 1 2004) To access Nextaris you register by filling in a web form to get a user name and password that you use to log on to the Nextaris start page. Once you have logged in to the discreet white and blue interface, you have access to eight tabs that lead to the different functions.

Under the Search tab there is a search field that you can use to query 30 search services that are grouped under different headings. First you find the largest of the regular search engines, and then come news services, shopping search, sport, entertainment, economy, health and reference.

The selection is OK and includes not only Google and the other major search engines, but also services like Amazon, eBay, Internet Movie Database, ESPN, BBC, CNN, Encyclopedia.com, About.com and last but not least the Internet Archive. The search results are opened in a new window.

Under the next tab you may use Newstracker, an online tool for gathering and keeping track of news, to generate news alerts like the ones you find in Google News. You may also enter a query (several if you like) and then get an email whenever new articles that are relevant to your query turn up.

Newstracker works with SurfWax’ own News Accumulator which indexes 4000 news sources. You may also use News Accumulator separately. It is a categorizing news search service not unlike Topix.net, although the number of categories is not as extensive yet.

Under the tab Folders the fun really starts. Here you can make any number of folders in which to put four types of objects. First, you can save your bookmarks and URLs here (Add URL). These can be cached copies of web pages even though not all file types are supported and the pictures are not cached.

Second, you can save any file from your hard drive (Add File), though you have only 20 MB free storage.

Third, you can create one or more blogs in every folder (New Blog). Lastly, you can also create web pages and place here (New Web Page). These may be published on the Net.

All typed of objects like URLs, files, blogs, web pages and the folders themselves can be annotated. Objects that you want to save but do not need to access frequently can be put in a special archive folder. It is easy to change name, move, copy, comment and delete the objects.

Maybe you would like to access some of the files without logging on to Nextaris? You can take care of this under the tab Publish, where you can choose to publish folders and also choose a folder for your start page. You then access these folders through a special web address (www.nextaris.com/username).

The next two tabs, Messages and Address Book, relate to the special messaging systems of Nextaris. If your friends use Nextaris, you can email each other and share folders. Under the Account tab you can manage your Nextaris Account.

If this is not enough to impress you, there are more useful features. You can install so-called Bookmarklets in your web browser. This makes Nextaris even easier to use.

When you have navigated to a page that you want to remember (or even save a cached copy of) you click on the Nextaris Pages bookmarklet. This brings up a pop-up window where you can choose from a pull-down menu which of your Nextaris folders you want to put the page in.

If all you want to do is to save some lines of text from a web page, mark it with your mouse and click on Nextaris Clippings. You then choose which blog in which folder you want to paste the selected text into.

These are both very practical functions and they do not only work in Internet Explorer for Windows, but also for instance the Mozilla variants for Linux.

Nextaris is an advanced web application for information management of many kinds. This is only to be expected from SurfWax which for years has been renowned for its intelligent metasearch service which uses linguistic tools to propose alternative query words, and creates abstracts or Site Snaps for the search results through automatic text summarization.

There is only one fault with Nextaris worth mentioning: Scandinavian characters like å, ö, ä, ø and æ does not work at all when creating web pages and blogs. I have not tested for special characters of other languages.

There are other applications that offer features similar to Nextaris, but I am more than satisfied with Nextaris. The name Nextaris is based on the phrase Next terrace. At first I found this to be a bit pretentious, but I have definitely changed my mind.

Nextaris
SurfWax

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