The WebTools
Company added what it calls
“Universal Search Power” to its Mata Hari desktop Internet search tool.
Via a single checkbox, it is made to provide users with the advantages of
translating the
bewildering variety of search engine dialects into a standard query format.
“Mata Hari is like a turbocharger strapped onto existing Internet search
engines,” said Jerry Tardif, TWTC’s president. “Any capability within Mata
Hari–phrase searching, plain-text searching, extensive Boolean operators,
use of special search characters, or flexible filter options–now applies
to the
more than 140 search engines supported by our product. Once users learn
several powerful search features and our universal syntax, they can apply
them at will to any search engine.”
With Mata Hari the user begins by querying the “card catalogs” that are
maintained by the selected source engines. It retrieves these documents then
uses an internal full-text indexing engine to evaluate whether they meet the
search specification. The whole process is very fast because its
multi-threaded
design allows simultaneous document retrievals and processing, the firm said.
Available for Windows 98, 95 and NT, Mata Hari costs $34.95. There is a
free 30-day evaluation, and distribution of the commercial product is solely
via the Internet.