Onfolio Web Tool Fine-Tunes Old Idea

In the early evolutionary days of the Internet, there were tools to collect and organize data, but most eventually fell by the wayside. Onfolio has refreshed that idea with Onfolio, a tool that collects and packages information found on the Web.

Onfolio, released this month, is priced at $30 for the basic edition and $80 for Onfolio Professional. It consists of a tool bar in Internet Explorer and a frame that helps organize documents and sites in folders.

I found Onfolio an easy-to-use tool that grabs Web pages, links, documents and graphics to build research reports. I had the option of opening a property tray, an additional frame at the bottom

of the page, which I could use to view and add information about a given site, such as keywords or custom fields.

The purpose of Onfolio is to gather information for research, capture Web sites as links or in MHT format and get other elements, such as document files and graphics, in their native format.

The Professional version has an authoring tool, which I used to compile information in a report that I could distribute via e-mail or publish on the Web. The publishing options include posting to a Web site via FTP, publishing to a shared folder or sending to an RSS feed.

This first release of the product includes welcome—if basic—options. For example, Onfolio offers five report styles and the ability to view information about files in a report to keep the report size in check.

More information is available at www.onfolio.com.