* Co-Tracker captures and catalogs images found on Web pages
This week in Gearhead (see editorial links below) you’ll find a review of Net Snippets. As a way for managing the results of your online searching, there is nothing else like it at present.
I just found another useful tool for a specific part of online research: A utility called Image Co-Tracker published by Cogitum that captures and catalogs images found on Web pages when using IE 5 or later.
This is a small download and when installed – a process that takes a few seconds – it adds a new command to the context (right-click) menu when the mouse is over an image labeled, rather sensibly, “Grab Image.”
When that command is selected a dialog box for filing the image opens with the text from the image’s ALT attribute as the default description to which you can add whatever text you like. You can also assign a category to the image. If the image is linked to a URL the link is also saved to the catalog with the image.
To access Co-Tracker’s image catalog you need to use the Co-Tracker application. This appears to be based on an embedded IE control so the catalog display is actually a Web page (which also means that if you right-click on an image in the displayed catalog you can access the Grab Image command and duplicate the image – no, I have no idea why you might want to do this but it does confirm that Cogitum is using the IE control).
You can edit image descriptions, create multiple catalogs, move image between the catalogs, sort images, import and export categories or the whole image catalog, send categories or the whole image catalog by e-mail, as well as search and print images.
This is a very useful tool and free for non-commercial use. A one-user business license is the princely sum of $10, which includes e-mail customer service and 1-year of free upgrades.
