Hey! Hooeey is here

CHENNAI, INDIA: Faster emails, myriad smileys, easier chat windows and a host of innovations have made browsing on the Internet an easier and enriching experience. The entire world corresponds, checks its bank balances and even orders movie tickets on the web.

However, how often have we missed out on URLs and web address of sites that caught our imagination. Most of us still spend considerable time and effort trying to relocate a web page viewed in the past. Existing tools such as browser history and bookmarks have limited usefulness because of portability, persistence and dependence on proactive user participation.

Hooeey approaches this situation differently and combines seamless web hop recording with complete transparency and user control. It is pretty easier for anyone to imagine this as a history manager or a book-marking application.

Rajeev Purnaiya, chief executive officer of Hooeey.com explains, “The idea of starting something like this was to have an idea about your online history.”

He points that the site operates in an environment where it acts as a history manager, book marking application and a search engine, promising to make browser history useful. Making it accessible across browsers, computers and networks do the trick, enabling bookmarking more flexible and searches more precise. One does not have to bookmark or tag immediately.

“It locates web pages you've seen before but can't remember and using a general search engine gives you too many links,” states Purnaiya.

He mentions that browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera do come with a history function but most of them only provide a two-week history of the sites that were visited. A user can order this list by date, most visited or order of visit. But tag and comments as well as analytics aren't possible.

Also the search function within URLs tagged and saved by other users is not available. And the browser history is dependent on one machine and not portable as with Hooeey.

How does Hooeey operate?

Hooeey effortlessly records web hops for users. Users are free to add a tag or a comment to a web page when they are browsing (similar to del.icio.us, furl, etc.) or even when they are not browsing (Hooeey is unique in this respect).

Interestingly, it combines browsing history from multiple browsers across multiple machines into a central repository. The user can then access this information from anywhere through the Internet. Through the sharing of history and tags in a public manner, users can search for others with similar queries or requests for information.

Hooeey also enables the selective sharing of history and tags with friends and family and even offers a nice visual overview on your browsing behavior of the day, of the month, or even of an entire year.

Would Google feel overawed?

For the Google loyalists, such a situation would not be arising for some years at least. But there are some aspects which Google would need to monitor closely. Google on its part does not track every page that a user visits neither does it allow you to tag those pages nor does it aids you to share them with your pals.

Google Personal Search stores the history of websites only at the server level and there is no possibility to track this information in an off-line, user-centric mode. It also does not offer the user the ability to filter off-line what links are to be stored. Every site visited is automatically stored in Google's server.

With Hooeey, the user decides what web site links are stored and when. Google web history has no way of tagging and commenting interesting web sites.

Hooeey allows you to tag and comment sites as you visit them or even when you are off-line. Hooeey ensures that user privacy is safeguarded at all times.

Purnaiya maintains, “Some specific features and tools built for your privacy are: browser history recording can be turned off with a single click the user's data stays in his/her computer until the user chooses to upload it a block list set by the user helps maintain privacy the links and tags marked private are never seen by anyone except the legitimate user users can edit or delete links in their Hooeey account any time.”

While the approach of Hooeey comes as breath of fresh air to specifically address a need that each one of us has while using the internet and its endeavor could help those in front of screens know their web history in an organized manner.