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The Rhombic Explorer
Introduction
The Rhombic Explorer will make the life easier for millions of Internet users. The Explorer will also
make thousands of organizations more efficient and productive. Bthe Explorer provides a powerful
tool for gathering information that will automate the painstaking and tedious process of manual web
surfing.
The Rhombic Explorer will accomplish this by giving consumers and organizations a new set of
capabilities.
The Consumer Version is analogous to the personal computer, which shifted computing power
from mainframes to the desktops of individual users. The Explorer places the information gathering
power of Internet search engines in the personal computers of end users.
The Corporate Version is analogous to the minicomputer, which shifted computing power from
mainframes to departmental computers. The Explorer places the information gathering power of
Internet search engines in local area networks. It offers greater storage and retrieval capabilities
and an advanced knowledge base at a higher price.
Background
The World is Our Computer
The Internet offers a vast market for goods and services, but only a handful of major software
applications have emerged for the Internet user. The Net and the World Wide Web are a
computing platform in which the world itself becomes the user's computer. This represents a
fundamental change in direction. For decades, computers have evolved from large systems to
smaller systems. The Internet breaks completely with this process, providing a common world
cumputer without a definable size or fixed characteristics. It is unsurprising that software that
exploits the Net's potential is slow to appear. The important revolutions in Internet software are still
ahead of us. Internet software's major task to make this world computer useful.
Overview of the Software
Whenever a new type of software automates a task that people perform manually, or gives them
the power to do something that they could not do before, it creates a tremendous market. Past
examples include spreadsheets, database software, word processing, and desktop publishing. In
each case, the first company to develop and exploit the market prospered. The software industry is
always looking for "The Next Big Thing".
The Rhombic Explorer automates Web searching, the most commonplace and time wasting task
performed on the Internet. This task has only been possible for a few years so the opportunity to
automate it has only now emerged. The Rhombic Explorer integrates familiar design principles from
other kinds of software, making it easy to use and to understand. It provides new powers and
tremendous convenience and timesaving to every individual and every organization that uses the
World Wide Web. It is a new type of software, with all the potential that that statement implies.
Individual Benefits
· Automates a slow, manual task
· Uses off peak hours
· Prevents redundant searching
· Provides condensed versions of sites
· Reduction of online charges
Corporate Benefits
· Reduced staff costs. Employees are freed to perform other tasks.
· Improved staff productivity
· Reduced communication costs. Queries can be consolidated and executed at the most cost
effective times and dates.
· Central coordination of searches for improved efficiency and supervision
· Elimination of duplicate searches
· Accelerated response when queries yield sites already searched. Instead of downloading and
scanning a site, taking many minutes, the database constructs a response in seconds.
· Automated construction and maintenance of a corporate knowledge base
Millions of individuals and knowledge workers spend more time surfing the Web than on any other
Internet activity. 72% of Internet users surf the web at least once a day, 41% 6-10 hours a week.
Searching the Web is fun, but it is also a slow, painstaking and inefficient manual process. The fun
wears off, but the work remains. Studies of Internet usage by SunSoft and others reveal harried
workers racing through web pages under deadlines, scanning rather than reading web copy,
missing most of the available information for research tasks, and duplicating their own searches and
those of their co-workers. The costs and waste are enormous.
Individual users suffer the same frustration and inconvenience. Stymied by slow response times and
frequent dropouts during peak usage hours, many North American users do their Web research in
the small hours of the morning, when they should be sleeping, or after getting up very early. This
leads to increased fatigue and stress, and a host of secondary health and productivity effects in the
workplace.
The Rhombic Explorer solves these problems neatly. It provides an easy, convenient way to
automate manual work. The benefits provided to individuals are multiplied when used by
organizations. The Rhombic Explorer is a new class of software that creates a vast new market.
Powerful cost/benefit justifications open up the corporate and government markets.