Webaroo

Webaroo is a technology startup company that has its offices in the U.S. (Bellevue and Santa Clara) and India (Mumbai and Delhi). It has been founded by a group of professional entrepreneurs -- Rakesh Mathur, Bradley Husick, and Beerud Seth.

The company is currently building an application that will enable users to search and browse web pages without an Internet connection. Its use is especially targeted towards laptops and mobile devices. The company released a beta version of their software in the second week of April 2006 for use to the general public.

As of now, 4th September, 2006, Webaroo is offering free download of the proprietary Webaroo v1.2 and is still in the beta mode.

They also have a web service by the name SMS GupShup, which allows people to create their SMS groups and let others subscribe to the groups. The SMSes are free to receive.

Overview

Webaroo is freely available for download on its website. The software needs to be first downloaded and installed on a laptop or a desktop and subsequently can be installed on a mobile device. Before you can start using Webaroo, web content needs to be downloaded from the Internet. This content could be web sites or web packs created by Webaroo.

Web Packs

Webaroo has created web packs based on a particular topic. Web packs are a collection of web pages that are compressed and indexed into one unit. This is useful to search a variety of content on a particular topic without the need of downloading individual web sites. Web packs are available in many sizes. There are mini packs in the range of 5-20 MB based on categories like news, entertainment, people, places, health, technology, reference and Wikipedia slices. In addition a 6 GB web pack of the entire Wikipedia is also available for download.

Webaroo on Mobile Device

Webaroo is designed to search and browse web pages on a mobile device. Web packs and web sites downloaded in the Webaroo library on a laptop or desktop can be synced to the mobile device.

Currently Webaroo can be installed only on Pocket PCs and Pocket PC phones running Windows Mobile 2003 SE and Windows Mobile 5.0.

MS GupShup

SMS GupShup is a web service which allows users to create their groups and then send free SMSes to the subscribed people. Creating and subscribing to a group is free. Its a very useful tool for people who want to give regular updates to a closed group. However, one thing that can be set against is that it can be used by people to advertise their products via SMSes, which can be annoying

Quotes

* "The demand for [computer programming] talent is very real and there is a shortfall of trained [computer programming] talent in the United States." Rakesh Mathur, founder of Webaroo talking to Reuters about a recent shortage of H1-B visas and his decision to hire the bulk of his workers overseas, with 15 employees in the United States and about 100 in India.

External Links & References

* [http://www.webaroo.com Official site]
* [http://www.smsgupshup.com]
* [http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=462 Webaroo Wikipedia] - "PC Review"
* [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1752267,00.html Hold the web in the palm of your hand] - "The Guardian"