Surfing the Web Without a Connection

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

On a cold night two years ago, Brad Husick and Rakesh Mathur sat in a rental car near Fairbanks, Alaska, waiting to photograph the aurora borealis. Dressed in parkas and with temperatures dipping below zero, the buddies dreamed up a radical technological idea: What if you could browse thousands of Web pages without being connected to the Internet?

"It was sort of a strange, audacious, crazy question to ask," recalled Husick.

But the two entrepreneurs -- who made names for themselves at NetGravity and Junglee -- returned to Seattle to make the idea a reality.

Today, Husick and Mathur are introducing Webaroo -- a Bellevue company whose free software allows users of laptops and hand-held computers to take portions of the Web with them wherever they wander.

The technology, which stores Web pages on a laptop's hard drive or a mobile phone's storage card, could have wide-ranging implications. A sales professional staying in a London hotel could access reviews for nearby restaurants without the hassle of paying for an Internet connection. Airplane travelers could use Webaroo to read portions of The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle or News.com without needing an airborne Internet service such as Connexion by Boeing. And visitors to remote regions -- whether Australia or Alaska -- could have superfast access to archived versions of their favorite Web sites.

Amazing.