Palmoto | Bee - Research App

▼ Palmoto Bee

Internet research tool.

managing web research with palmoto bee

Have you ever lost track of what you read where and when on the internet, struggled to remember where that interesting snippet of information was?

Whether doing research, searching for a new job or looking for a best buy - the bee app can help you capture the interesting bits when and as you find them on the internet. You can quickly create collections and lists of data that can be shared and conveniently viewed on your smartphone, tablet or pc (screen shot).

Palmoto bee makes internet based research more manageable and useful. Like a bee collecting nectar to make honey you can use the app to capture, curate, store and share data.

palmoto bee internet research apps

google chrome app web app *

*Web app requires chrome, firefox or safari browsers to capture data - other browsers are limited to viewing data.

works with google drive

Data is captured using web forms that you create in Google Drive and inject into any web page to capture data using the bee app. When a form is submitted the data is collected and stored in your Google Drive spreadsheet. All your data is stored on Google Drive along with your other documents. No login is required to use the bee app and no data is processed or stored by Palmoto - giving you complete control.

open source

Palmoto bee is an open source project hosted on Google Code. Using a secure server to deliver the application files means your secure web browsing will not be compromised. Being an open source project also means that anyone can review the integrity of application source code as required. It is published with a MIT code license.

further information

getting started support

▼ Getting Started

Create a data capture form for bee.

create a data capture form

Palmoto bee works with google drive, if you are not familiar with creating forms in google drive please read 'Create a Google form' before proceeding.

Create a spreadsheet on Google Drive with a column heading for each item of data you want to capture. For example to create your personal product comparison app you may require the following fields/inputs: spreadsheet view

Title Description Price Retailer Url
In the Google Drive spreadsheet editor select TOOLS > CREATE FORM and the form editor will open in a new tab. Give your form a title, save it and close the form editor.
In the Google Drive spreadsheet editor select FORM > GO TO LIVE FORM and the live form will open in a new tab. Copy the live form url in the address bar to your clipboard (right click & copy).

Once you have created the necessary Google Drive documents, and copied the url to the live form - open up the palmoto bee app in your browser and do the following:

Paste the live form url into the text field under TOOLS > ADD KEY and click the + button. Your form will be added to the blok stack on the page, click on the blok title to view your form.
Drag the link named 'Palmoto Bee' under TOOLS > BOOKMARK onto your browser bookmarks bar. Once you have added the bookmark you can visit any web page and click the bookmark to use your data capture form. Tip: The default name for all bookmarks is 'Palmoto Bee', you can rename the bookmark by editing the bookmark in your browser - this will be useful if you have more than one bee app bookmarked.
When you visit a web page containing data to be captured, click the bee bookmark and your app will be embedded into the host page. Use the selection options to help extract various information from the host page and then submit your form to save the data to your Google Drive spreadsheet.

You can simply view the captured data in you spreadsheet on Google Drive and use the powerful tools to create graphs or edit the data. You can also use the bee app to view your data collections as follows:

To view spreadsheet data in the bee app you must publish it to the web. In the Google Drive spreadsheet editor select FILE > PUBLISH TO WEB. Paste the url to your published spreadsheet into the palmoto bee app under TOOLS > ADD KEY and click the + button (just as you did with the form). Your data will be added to the blok stack on the page, click on the blok title to view your data.
The bee app layout has bee created as so it can be viewed on your smartphone, tablet or pc. You can also easily share your honey (data) on social networks or simply email a link to somebody. To do either of these use the drop down options shown below the data.

data selection options

The selection type options enable you to specify what data to extract from the host web page as follows:

Content: Text | HTML
Link: Url | Title
Image: Url | Title | Width | Height
Document: Href | Author | Title | Description | Keywords | Modified
Number: Decimal | Integer
Date: Local | UTC

The default selection type is content/text. You can preset a default for individual fields when creating your form by specifying the selection type in the 'Help text' of the form field as follows: [bee/document/href],[bee/date/local] or [bee/image/url] etc (see example academic referencing form).

The selection mode options change the way in which your captured data is entered into the form as follows:

Replace: overwrites the form field data
Append: adds to the existing form field data
Override: overwrites the form field data and ignores the default selection type (if set)

academic referencing app

The palmoto bee app is ideal for capturing data to create academic references. Look at the following example spreadsheet and form to see what form fields are required to create your personal academic referencing app (Note the example form is not currently saving responses).

academic referencing spreadsheet academic referencing form

Notice the example form makes use of the time saving data selectors [bee/document/href] and [bee/date/local] to automatically configure the form fields to the correct data type when filled. When viewed in the bee app the above documents will appear as follows:

bee data bee form

You can display more than one blok in the bee app as follows:

bee data and form