DEVONagent 2.0, Second Public Beta
Coeur d’Alene (Idaho, USA), 31st of January, 2006 – DEVONtechnologies, LLC releases a second public beta of DEVONagent 2.0, its intelligent Internet search assistant. The final release will be published at the end of Q1/2006.
The second public beta is a major step towards the final release of DEVONagent 2.0. The feature set is now 99.9 percent complete. The focus now lies on removing the last few glitches, adding details, and finalizing the documentation.
DEVONagent 2.0 Public Beta 2 brings the final look-and-feel to tabbed browsing including an “add new tab” button and innovative in-tab information. Every tab shows the icon of the web site it represents and an informative progress bar while loading the page instead of a rotating tooth-wheel. New search sets can be created in DEVONagent 2.0 much easier than before by simply “cloning” a successful search run and modifying it later. A convenient button in the search window and commands in the main menu as well as contextual menus make this a one-click task. Unwanted web sites can be added to the list of excluded domains using the menu instead of opening the preferences window and manually modifying the list.
New AppleScript scripts add search results as a sheet to DEVONtechnologies’ information manager DEVONthink Pro or add bookmarks to URL Manager Pro. Workspaces, collections of open web browser windows, can be saved and later be restored using three enhanced workspace scripts. They save not only the window positions but also the addresses of the web sites displayed. Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann, President of DEVONtechnologies, LLC: “Only few web browsers on the Mac allow you to save your workspace and recall it in an instant. And it’s so logical. Arrange all the news pages you want to read every morning, and open them in exactly this layout again in an instant.”
In addition, many of the over 130 included plug-ins, interfaces to search engines, have been updated, the integrated stop word lists for various languages have been improved and some localization glitches have been fixed.
Finally, the integrated online help is now complete and will just get some more polishing. The online help is easy to navigate, introduces new users to the concepts of DEVONagent and explains all user interface elements en detail.
Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann: “DEVONagent 2.0 solves a problem every Internet user has: finding information on the web can be a pain. Google & Co deliver just a long list of links, many of them outdated or simply irrelevant to the query. Contrary to that, DEVONagent delivers answers. It visits all the pages delivered by one or many search engines, sorts out the information junk and returns with a nicely formatted digest including an innovative topic map that makes Internet research not only easy, but fun!”
DEVONagent 1.x is still available for US$ 35 instead of for US$ 49.95, and everyone who buys DEVONagent until the final version is released is entitled to upgrade for free. The public beta does not require registration until the end of March, 2006. So, DEVONagent 2.0 is effectively available for an introductory price of US$ 35, US$ 14.95 off the coming regular price.
DEVONagent 2.0 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. A fast Internet connection is strongly recommended. DEVONagent 2.0 is immediately available as public beta 2 from www.devon-technologies.com, the final version will be released in Q1/2006. It must be purchased for US$ 49.95 after the evaluation period, registered users are entitled to upgrade for US$ 19.95. Users who have purchased DEVONagent 1.x on or after November 1st, 2005, are entitled to upgrade for free. DEVONagent is also available together with DEVONthink Professional as the “Infoworker’s Pro Bundle” for US$ 99 ($109.95 when DEVONagent 2.0 is released).
DEVONagent overcomes all the shortcomings that make Google & Co. such a pain for serious research. More than 130 plug-ins for search engines, scientific databases and research tools, predefined search sets you can use right away and a clean, easy to use user interface make DEVONagent the #1 tool for finding information on the web for the Mac.
DEVONagent is much more than just an interface for web search engines. It helps you
- searching,
- collecting and
- organizing
information with a powerful and flexible search architecture, powerful visualizer, a simple to use built-in archive, and advanced automation options. DEVONagent creates perfectly tailored summaries, acts as a fast and lean web browser, supports news feeds like RSS, and shows all items of interest in a separate drawer. It can’t be easier to look for information on the web.
Also, DEVONagent is the perfect extension to DEVONthink. Users collect found information as plain or rich text, web archive or as PDF directly in their research database with just one click and from any view. Then, they use DEVONthink’s intelligence to organize and navigate it conveniently.
Key features:
- Collects, analyzes, weights and summarizes search results from all major Internet search engines. Eliminates junk, similar, archived or error pages on-the-fly and looks for specific types of data, e.g. webcams, multimedia files, downloadable archives, e-mail addresses or links on demand.
- A scheduler would run predefined queries completely unattended and execute a series of actions like archive in DEVONagent or to DEVONthink, send an e-mail, speak a text or execute an AppleScript script.
-The integrated web browser based on the Safari engine is especially tailored at the needs of web researchers. Access all your Camino, Firefox, OmniWeb and Safari bookmarks, filter out e-mail addresses, images or linked files with just one click and compare the results of a search run using AI.
- DEVONagent is able to scan RSS, RDF, RSD and Atom feeds. In addition, the integrated web browser converts such feeds on-the-fly to HTML and presents them similar to Safari 2.0.
- Presents the result of the search run in human-readable format as digest, dynamically assembled to selected topics. A visualizer displays topics and their relations to each other as a graphic map. Found search words are automatically highlighted and texts summarized.
- An easy-to-use yet powerful archive allows for organizing and searching stored pages.
- DEVONagent is built on a flexible and extensible plug-in architecture that allows to query a great variety of search engines and write new plug-ins at ease. Also, DEVONagent automatically scans lists of web pages for news and follows promising links.
- DEVONagent features a clean, intuitive user interface. Also, it fully supports AppleScript and Automator. Like all DEVONtechnologies applications, DEVONagent is built to seamlessly integrate with Mac OS X and supports services, drag-and-drop, and the Dashboard, provides a Dock menu and a contextual menu extension.
