I have been playing with the GT spider off and on for a couple of years now (?) and what it's always needed, painfully needed, was better docs, an examples library of stored searches and crawls, and simpler interface.
The interface on the first version was soooo cool, I wonder why they gave it up <G>. It looked/worked more like fileman, had alternating color lines, etc and was almost intuitive to get around, but awefully complex to make work.
The newer look, is more like a plugin, than a stand alone application (like the first one was) and I _think_ the issues of stand alone vs plugin really clouded it's development, as it has for my own plugin development.
The bottom line is the spider is really powerful, and I've used parts of it to do things in other ways, never quite getting the spider to work.
But, if GT is smart, and they are, they need to release a plug-and-play version of the spider, with an easy install, ready for links, and:
1) better docs, even if it's just a hand-held walk-through on how to create a new search -- a complicated search. Starting small, showing the results, then adding complexity to the crawl.
2) a library of stored searches, that can be used, or built upon -- crawl all my links, update the following fields, crawl all my links, look for new links, etc.
3) A "google" type crawl and cache.
They needent get too concerned with the "extras" on that, as third parties will probably come to the rescue, such as page rankings, targeting, etc. But, the actual crawl, store and cache features need to be honed to a fine edge.
Just my 2cents, but this is probably as important to them in the long term as their mass mailer/auto responder system.
PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.
The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
The interface on the first version was soooo cool, I wonder why they gave it up <G>. It looked/worked more like fileman, had alternating color lines, etc and was almost intuitive to get around, but awefully complex to make work.
The newer look, is more like a plugin, than a stand alone application (like the first one was) and I _think_ the issues of stand alone vs plugin really clouded it's development, as it has for my own plugin development.
The bottom line is the spider is really powerful, and I've used parts of it to do things in other ways, never quite getting the spider to work.
But, if GT is smart, and they are, they need to release a plug-and-play version of the spider, with an easy install, ready for links, and:
1) better docs, even if it's just a hand-held walk-through on how to create a new search -- a complicated search. Starting small, showing the results, then adding complexity to the crawl.
2) a library of stored searches, that can be used, or built upon -- crawl all my links, update the following fields, crawl all my links, look for new links, etc.
3) A "google" type crawl and cache.
They needent get too concerned with the "extras" on that, as third parties will probably come to the rescue, such as page rankings, targeting, etc. But, the actual crawl, store and cache features need to be honed to a fine edge.
Just my 2cents, but this is probably as important to them in the long term as their mass mailer/auto responder system.
PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.
The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
