1: on-the-fly document indexing
Let’s say you need to research the latest analysis related to biotechnology stocks performance. You hit a site that features such analysis.
As soon as the page is displayed in your main browser window, netXtract indexes all the words in the page and displays them in the Index side-bar.
You immediately find the word boomers in the index list, by typing in its first letters or by directly clicking on it.
Next step will show you how to extract from the document all the phrases containing a given word, for a quick relevancy assessment.
Related features:
Words in the special “ignore” dictionary are skipped, so that the list is not cluttered with such words as the, with, only or any other words that you want ignored.
You can also type a phrase (such as bitechnology index) in the collapsible box provided at the top of the index list. netXtract will re-index the document showing you the occurences of each such phrase, regardless of its capitalization or punctuation.
You can also order the list by word or by word count, ascending or descending.
You can also filter the list using any dictionary of keywords you have created. This way only those document words matching that dictionary will be displayed.
2 : context extraction
The page displayed in your browser has a number of occurrences of the word “biotechnology” which interests you. By double-clicking biotechnology in netXtract’s Index side-bar, all references to this word in the body of the article are extracted and displayed for you, in their contexts.
The result is a quick overview of all contexts of the word in the document. Now it’s very easy to decide which one looks interesting and is worth further reading.
Next step will show you how to “jump” in the document to the context you want to read.
Related features:
The size of each context extracted by netXtract is adjustable from the Preferences. It can be anything from 1 to 10 words before and after the keyword you selected.
The color scheme and fonts used by netXtract is also configurable from the Preferences.
3 : “jump” to an interesting context
Of the extracted contexts for the word “biotechnology”, the 3rd seems particularly interesting. You double-click that context and netXtract will navigate directly to that point in the document, and hightlight it.
There is no need to scroll and visually “scan” the document for that relevant piece!
Next step will show you how to save any piece of the document you find relevant into your local Knowledge Base.
Related features:
The Context panel can be “torn away” from the IE window (not shown). That way you can have both the word index panel and the context panel in view simultaneously, without having to toggle between the two. However, toggling is simple: just press the Ctrl key.
4 : save that relevant context
Navigating to that context in the document confirms that it’s of value. By right-clicking on the highlighted context in your browser window, a pop-up appears that allows you to save the selected content directly to your Knowledge Base Manager.
If you’re not happy with the default context, simply highlight the text you’d like to save, right-click and choose Save to KBase…. The full URL of the original online document is automatically saved as well.
Next step will show you how to explore the Knowledge Base you have built from the pieces of web documents saved.
Related features:
The Save feature works even when you have turned off the netXtract side-bar! Just select and save.
You can save any selected text from a Web (html) document, even the whole document. You can also annotate the text with your own comments, and cross-reference it with the keywords that make sense to you.
You can also create a hierarchical structure of categories in your Knowledge Base to help you organize the information better.
5 : explore your Knowledge Base
Once you saved any selected text from your browser window into to your Knowledge Base, the following meta information is automatically saved by netXtract:
· Document title
· Date saved
· Keyword(s) association
· Topic association (category)
· Original online document URL
You can get back to the saved information using the Knowledge Base Manager. This is netXtract’s “explorer” of your local Knowledge Base.