0.2.1 Released

2011-02-09

Arado Websearch is an open source Bookmark-Database for Websearch. You easily can save and organize your favourite URLs (Bookmarks). So, Arado Websearch is a complete bookmark management solution that will allow you to synchronize, organize, manage, remove duplicates and check your favorite internet pages, if their content has changed.
The database can be networked with your further devices like laptop, mobile phone, home or work PC, so that all added URLs are synchronized with your connected devices. The Arado websearch experience provides to search the web within all your networked devices.

 

 

The app uses c++ and Qt framework around a SQLite Database. You can download the source code of the Websearch Galaxy or use the Arado Windows Installer.

Download Linux and Mac Versions of Arado now here |

Screenshot of Arado - or: Watch Video

Arado Screenshot

http://identi.ca/group/arado - Arado Facebook Group - Facebook Arado Wall

1: Organize Your Bookmarks with Arado

Arado is not a company service, it does not track any users. It is a simple open source community application instead: a database - to save and organize your bookmarks, technically called "URL"s.

You easily can synchronize your bookmarks on your several devices with the import and export function or do it with the network function online and connect two or more devices.

It is like "Excel" or OpenOffices´ "Calc", in wich youl save e.g. your values of expenditure on food. Like "BiblioteQ.sf.net" is storing library metadata for your book or cd collections - ISBNs and titles -, Arado is storing web URLs as metadata in your local bookmark-database. While BiblioteQ uses the library protocol "Z39.50" to connect to the library and saves the data in your local database, Arado uses the normal simple web protocol "http" to connect two or more of your devices and synchronize your bookmark-URLs.

While any webbrowser stores the viewed and so downloaded website in the browser-cache, Arado is just saving metadata: your bookmarked URLs you enter into Arado.

It does not matter where you store your bookmarks, in the browser in
an XML/SQL-database, at social networks, at webbased services or - in Arado: If you have them all added in your Arado locally on your machine – the URLs are saved and bookmarked for you: like emails in your email client you can browse them.

 

2: Read your RSS/Atom Feeds with Arado

Arado is as well a RSS / Atom News Reader. Just enter your Feeds you want to read, and get them descending ordered by time coming in.

 

3: Php-Portal for your Webserver with Arado

Arado and its file "urlbase.sql", in which all URLs are stored, can be addresses as well over a convenient php portal (currently still beta for testers and developers with a webserver and php skills only). So users with a webserver can start an own Websearch Portal, which is open source.

 

4: Synchronize Your Bookmarks with Arado

So, like all the big web browser like Firefox, Opera, Explorer or Dooble (http://dooble.sf.net) and Safari allow to save and synchronize your Bookmarks among all your devices, Arado does that too, but without a central server! You just connect direct from your laptop to the mobile phone or desktop PC. It is like putting your bookmarks from work on a usb stick, and import and add them at home to your home-bookmarks.

Scuttle was a very popular application (in the end 90´s) to save your bookmarks using a PHP-Database, today Arado allows to have your URLs synchronized on all of your devices: Your laptop, your mobile phone, your browser at home and at work: all your URLs and bookmarks are everywhere the same and synchronized every few minutes.

You still organize your Bookmarks with the Firefox Addon Foxmarks? Then it is time to test Arado, because as it was announced some month ago, it will change to a commercial service soon.. Arado would be a good open source alternative to your Firefox Bookmark service (or any other browser like http://dooble.sf.net).

Arado allows you to search in all your bookmarks and the latest bookmark is on top of all search results. So, let´s describe the Arado Websearch experience more...

 

5: Search the web social - with Arado

Like wikia search - an explorative project of the wikipedia founders some years ago - connected several "nutch"-databases, Arado can connect to all your further selected Arado devices too: You can join and merge your bookmarks from work, home, mobile or with friends. That allows to share your URL-bookmarks even with friends, if you add their devices to your Arado.

"Nutch", "yacy.net" or "faroo.com" are projects, which are technically similar. Arado has a strong focus on the social web community adding URLs manually or adding only approved sources of Bookmarks. A movement like "wikipedia" and "openstreetmap" is able to start with Arado to provide shared bookmarks.

Social Bookmarking is very popular in the internet today and "sharethis.com" or "addthis.com" post your bookmark-URLs to over 100 further central services - like e.g. the most popular: "twitter" or "facebook" - where you share your  - latest or most interesting - bookmarks with your friends too.

Arado synchonizes booksmarks too, just without advertisements or
tracking your behaviour, and of course, you can search within the bookmarks.

Here it comes to the core competency of modern social bookmarking: the websearch experience. Arado is a searchengine for the web, which enables to export the bookmarks and have them at home. Maybe that´s the reason why some of the community say about Arado, Arado is a "stumble URLs @ home" or just "your websearch @ home".

With Arado you search like in any other search engine (e.g. "Baidu", "Scroogle", "Bing", "Metager.de" etc) for URLs. Enter one or two keywords, press the "search button" and then URLs, titles/descriptions and keyword-tags of your Arado Database will be searched. The results can be browsed immediately or even mailed to friends. With the "recent button" you automatically get the latest of your bookmarks shown to start your web browsing of today.

 

6: The bigger the better - Arado is a community build websearch experience

Arado offers a new internet search experience based on your community movement: You define, with which devices you want to sync your bookmarks. If you sync your bookmarks as well with your friends, Arado might establish a really big database, which gets manually added urls and provides a community build websearch engine.
Arado needs roundabout 1 KB per added URL on your hard disc, so if you sync
your database up to 16 GB (it is simply the size of a small USB stick) you have more than 300 Millions of URL-Bookmarks, so you can use it for advanced websearch.  That size is even possible to install on you mobile phone, like "http://www.openacoon.de/" allows you to crawl 200 Million URLs with 12 GB there. Though Arado is not a crawler for the web, is is synchronizing quality proved bookmarks in the networked database, we have to build now.

 

7: URL-Shortening with Arado

Arado is not just saving your bookmarks and keeping them synchronized or providing a new websearch experience for web-URLs, it is a tracking-free URL-Shortener as well.

Each Bookmark-URL you add to Arado, is shortend to a small number. This is called Arado-Flashmark. An Arado-Flashmark looks like this:


Arado-Flashmark: e31b111c21a64265f81f0573d1dd1949daac1a2d

You might have noticed, that many users post Arado-Flashmarks to the social networks like "twitter" or "facebook", or use them in Chats and Instant Messengers or on Community-Boards. Because SMS services from mobile phones allow onyl 160 digits, sending and sharing the Arado-Flashmark is shorter and allows the friends to look it up in Arado. Just enter the long string into the search field of Arado. Using Arado as Url-shortener prevents others to not track, analyse or making money out of your shared bookmarks. A function to provide an open source and ad-free URL-shortener for the community, like the ISBN is for books. Arado generates with the Arado-Flashmark metadata for the metadata, which is just shorter: e31b111c21a64265f81f0573d1dd1949daac1a2d

Btw, this is the Arado Flashmark for the website-URL you are currently visiting...

 

8: Test the Search-Engine for "latest news-URLs on top"

Join Arado today, and test the new organization and synchronizing of your bookmarks. The latest URL will be found in Arado on top of the list. E.g. if there is a news your friends want to tell you, you simply connect your device to other device, like you snyc your URLs from work to home or vice versa, and have the recommended bookmarks on
top of the list, if you search for the latest news with the "Recent" Button. Adding latest news from a RSS-Feed allows (with one of the next version) you to be on top of the latest.

Simplest and most basic thing of the web: Arado.
No, it is not Arado, the simple and basic things for the web or of the internet are: "URLs", also called "hyperlinks", "favourites", or just your "bookmarks". Arado is a database to organize, sync and shorten them and search within them. A new websearch engine for the web, driven by the community: by you! Let´s start "websearch @ home" - how the community sometimes calls Arado - and add your first URL or second device to Arado today for a new websearch experience.

 

FAQ-01: How can I add an URL/bookmark?

Arado is build by you! All URLs added to Arado are currently manually added and revised by the user using Arado. Press the Arado logo and you get a form, to insert a new URL, the title/description of the URL and some keyword-tags. If you save the data, you data entry is immediately saved and available for search and synchonization. If you connect two or more of your devices, you can see the bookmark is added soon as well on your further device over the synchronization.

 

FAQ-02: Which port should I forward in my router or NAT for Arado?

If you use the IPv4 IP-protocoll, you should specify the port you forwarded in your router/nat. By default you can run Arado on the Port 80 (recommended) or 29998. Forward that port (ideally Port 80) in your router to be able to connect to your further devices, you want to synchronize with.

 

FAQ-03: Are there similar clients like Arado I can use?

It´s true, Arado is both, a network protocol as well as a client. As Arado is open source, there might be some other projects working as well on other clients joining the Arado protocol. Currently only Arado is usable and no other mod has been released. We instead suggest to join the Arado client development and help to improve the Arado client.

 

FAQ-04: Can I use Arado for organizing eMailaddresses?

Yes, Arado is just an empty Cell-Table, in which you can put your Email-Addresses as well, because they are with the mailto:-prefix as well an URL. So the database of Arado is like the Thunderbird- or Outlook-Contakt-Function, which you can use to store your email-Addresses. KMail, ClawsMail, Sylpheed, SquirrelMail, Evolution are some alternative open source email-clients next to Thunderbird of course. If you want to email an Arado-Flashmark, these clients should work proper with Arado. Just test to email an Arado-Flashmark with your current email-client out of Arado and look, if that is formatted well.

 

Your Question to Arado?

If you have any further question, write to the Arado-Forum:

arado-forum [REPLACE->#<-THIS] lists.sourceforge.net