New Thumbshots crawler to preview printed documents
February 15, 2002

White papers, also referred to as printed documents, previously difficult to locate on the Internet are now making its way into popular search engines like Google and Northern Light. A white paper is a page piece whose production values fall between a manual and a brochure. White papers may be produced as online downloadable files as well as on paper. Publications like research papers, journals, books, magazines and newswires are usually available in portable formats only such as Adobe PDF, PostScript or Microsoft Word. While most of the contents are highly targeted for businesses and researchers it represents a substantial amount of affluent information untapped on the Internet.

Following the increasing demand for searchable white papers, Smartdevil will be releasing a new Thumbshots crawler that will enable it to preview printed documents like Adobe PDF, MS Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), PostScripts and Corel WordPerfect. Already the software can preview popular web formats like HTML, XML, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF and TXT in near real-time with pinpoint accuracy.

The new improvements will expand its list of capabilities and offer to customers an extensive variety of document previewing. The new generation of Thumbshots crawlers will empower enterprise customers that require accurate document visualization. Northern Light has recently announced a similar interest in targeting searchable white papers. The ability to preview documents alongside search engine results will enable users to save precious minutes by finding exactly what they are looking for quickly and easily.