DonationCoder.com Software > Web Link Captor

Latest Web Link Captor Release - v1.11.01 - Dec 17, 2013

(1/8) > >>

mouser:
Web Link Captor is my new application, which was created as part of the NANY 2012 event at DonationCoder.com

Web Link Captor is a program that takes a list of plaintext items, and builds an output document containing a list of url-linked results based on web searches for the items. It's a way to quickly build a clickable list of items from just their names, suitable for posting on your blog or a forum, etc.

Download latest version from Official Web Page: HERE (download now available to the public).

Watch videos of the program in action: Part 1 and Part 2.

Features:

* Friendly GUI lets you build flexible sets of processing steps to parse plaintext input lists and perform search and output functions.
* You can save and load projects and script configurations for easy re-use.
* Uses a set of standalone utility scripts that can be run without the windows front end GUI, and can be easily modified and expanded.
* The included backend scripts are in Python (but other languages can be used)
* Uses caching to avoid repeating web searches unnecessarily.
* Comes with output formatters for HTML, BBCode, Markdown/Wikipedia
* Comes with searching engines for google, and bing/opensearch (which can handle amazon, wikipedia, and many others)
* Flexible scoring system lets you interactively or programmatically tweak your results to get the best list of links.



Version History

v1.11.01 - December 17, 2013

* [Feature] Scripts now create different temporary filenames in temp directory to make it much easier to debug where a search or manipulation script went wrong.
* [Documentation] Added help information for how to narrow a search to a specific site in google and how to add text to input.
* [BugFix] Excerpts in result grid that contained newlines were messing up the result grid (and potentially the results).
* [Feature] Option to check for updates at startup.
v1.10.01 - April 17, 2012

* [BugFix] Double-quotes in search strings were not being handled properly and resulting in 0 results
v1.08.01 - December 24, 2011

* [Feature] Now packaging with a minimal python addon included
v1.07.01 - December 23, 2011

* [Feature] New script combobox is hierarchical.
* [Feature] Script Tool files now specified hierarchical path and unique identifier which will make it easier to change tool labels without losing track of scripts.
* [Feature] Better error reporting on missing scripts.
v1.06.01 - December 22, 2011

* [MinorFeature] Added plaintext output script
* [BugFix] Fixed bug where blank labels could cause crash
* [Minor Feature] New option in output to remove labels from items
* [MinorFeatures] Minor improvements
v1.05.01 - December 15, 2011

* [MajorFeature] You can now download Python2 addon pack for the program, rather than using a standard python installation.
* [MinorFeatures] Lots of small user interface improvements.
v1.03.01 - December 13, 2011

* [MajorFeature] Embedded Python 2.7 DLL mode option -- MUCH faster
* [Feature] Improved all python scripting invocation features and options and error reporting
* [MinorFeature] Added more gui options including ability to hide help panels
* [MinorFeature] Small improvements to tools (ability to show readme links)
v1.02.01 - December 13, 2011

* [MajorFeature] You can now use an embedded DLL python interpretter option
* [Feature] Cache controls from options
* [Feature] Includes additional search scripts from ewemoa (thanks) [note they require some additional module installations]
* [MinorFeature] Reports elapsed time for operations
* [MinorFeature] Scripts can now include readme files and link to them from their tool descriptions.
* [MinorFeature] Some reorganization of script files
* [MinorFeature] Hover over links shows url in statusbar of web preview.
v1.01.05 - December 11, 2011

* Regular expression script improvements -- should be faster and may work on Python 2.6 now
v1.01.04 - December 11, 2011

* Tools/Scripts improvements
* Minor GUI tweaks

You can read the original NANY2012 discussion that led to this program here.

mouser:

The program will be officially released as part of NANY 2012, on January 1st, 2012.

BUT If you would like to try it early, just send me a personal message via the forum or email me ([email protected]) and I will send you a link.  :Thmbsup:

mouser:
As a super simple example of the kinds of things that WLC can do, I put in a list of a few of my favorite bands, and click "Run" to get the following output, ready to paste in a forum post:

Input:
Cat Power - The Greatest
Bikini Kill - Reject All American
The Doo Wop Box - Volume one
Dexy's Midnight Runners - Greatest Hits
--- End quote ---


Output (raw):

--- ---[url=http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Cat-Power/dp/B000C0X3ZC]Cat Power[/url]
[url=http://www.amazon.com/Reject-All-American-Bikini-Kill/dp/B00000373N]Bikini Kill[/url]
[url=http://www.amazon.com/Doo-Wop-Box-Various-Artists/dp/B00000333M]The Doo Wop Box[/url]
[url=http://www.amazon.com/Too-Rye-Ay-Dexys-Midnight-Runners/dp/B00005Y1ZF]Dexy's Midnight Runners[/url]

Output:

* Cat Power
* Bikini Kill
* The Doo Wop Box
* Dexy's Midnight Runners

And here's output from a different kind of search and output on those same bands:

Cat Power:

* Cat Power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
* Amazon.com: The Greatest: Cat Power: Music
* CAT POWER ALBUMS
* Cat Power Discography and Music at CD Universe
Bikini Kill:

* Bikini Kill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
* The Singles (Bikini Kill album) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
* Amazon.com: Bikini Kill: Songs, Albums, Pictures, Bios
* Bikini Kill Discography and Music at CD Universe
The Doo Wop Box:

* Amazon.com: Doo Wop Box: Various Artists: Music
* Amazon.com: The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2: Various Artists: Music
* Doo Wop Box CD Album
Dexy's Midnight Runners:

* Dexys Midnight Runners - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
* Amazon.com: Dexy's Midnight Runners: Songs, Albums, Pictures, Bios
* DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS ALBUMS
* DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS

mouser:
One of the major goals of the program is to provide a flexible way to rank and filter search results.

This can be done interactively using the result grid, by using pattern matching to modify scores, by adding terms and options to web searches, and by using external processing scripts to apply heuristics.

In such a way one can hope to filter out results that are undesirable and favor sites that are more likely to have good results.

I'm hoping that people will write and share additional such filter and search scripts with us to improve the program.  The included scripts are written in python and it's (relatively) easy to add your own new ones to the system.

mouser:
I hope the program is useful to people.  There is a lot that could still be added to it.  I will be posting a screencast video tutorial in the next day or so.

And lastly.. If you'd like to see this program continue to be developed, please consider making a donation -- It would be very appreciated. Thank you  :Thmbsup:

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page