Seeking software that creates a permanent, local, complete and searchable personal web-browsing archive

August 22, 2004 11:09 AM

Can anybody recommend software that creates a permanent, local, complete and searchable personal web-browsing archive? [MI]

I want it to save and time-stamp EVERYTHING, even every loaded copy of an already saved page that shows any difference. I want to search on words, urls, to be able to rewind through previousy seen versions of pages. I want grapics and text saved and other media saved. I don't care at all about storage requirements (what the hell else am I going to do with 300 gigs of space?).

And, of course, I want a friendly and intuitive interface. And a pony.

Has anybody used something like what I'm describing? I'm on Windows, but I could be convinced to set up a separate Linux box on my home network.

posted by NortonDC to computers & internet (7 comments total)

So you're looking for something like a real-time archive.org?

You would probably have to setup a Linux proxy, run Squid on it, and then write some custom software to interface with it.
posted by cmonkey at 11:36 AM on August 22, 2004

Actually, this might be a good start: iPROXY
posted by cmonkey at 11:39 AM on August 22, 2004

There's always good old "wget" for archiving sites to your hard drive, but it's pretty basic and doesn't have the time-travel stuff you describe.
posted by inksyndicate at 12:13 PM on August 22, 2004

Oooh, Squid!

Even if you liked IE then this still wouldn't be what you were looking for, but it is a useful tool for searching previously viewed webpages. (in IE) (via kottke)

I lied, but now I am going home.
posted by onlyconnect at 12:48 PM on August 22, 2004

The Slogger extension for Firefox will do everything you mentioned except for the search interface.
posted by llamateur at 2:10 PM on August 22, 2004

wow, what a great idea...i want one too
posted by jacobsee at 9:55 AM on August 23, 2004

For what it's worth, Omniweb caches every page so you can go into bookmarks and search for "Gore" and it will pull up your entire history for any instance of the word Gore.

Helpful for pages I want to return to but I don't need to be full-blown bookmarks.
posted by jragon at 10:49 AM on August 26, 2004