A web crawler (also known as a web spider, web robot, or - especially in the FOAF community - web scutter) is a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Other less frequently used names for web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms.

This process is called web crawling or spidering. Many sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a website, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).

A web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit, called the seeds. As the crawler visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, called the crawl frontier. URLs from the frontier are recursively visited according to a set of policies.

Wikipedia Article

Westnet will be at Dowerin Field Days in Dowerin on the 27th and 28th of August!

Come visit our stands 121 and 122 within the Lifestyle Pavilion for Satellite demonstrations and more!

What is 'Dowerin Field Days'?
This two day event about two hours drive east of Perth and is very much a serious expo of farm machinery and equipment; from headers to water tanks and everything in-between.

Featuring a very large Family Interest Display section, conveniently under-cover and featuring a vast array of products; from honey to craftwork through to kitchen accessories.

Dowerin Field Days is a fantastic method of bringing much needed funds to rural communities and has, over the last 42 years, seen swimming pools built, fire engines purchased and schools equipped with computers, just to mention a few examples. It's also a marvellous way for machinery and related businesses to support rural Western Australian communities and a good way to educate regional customers regarding our launch of Satellite Broadband.

For more info, please visit here.

Ready, set, go!

It's August and all of us at Westnet are pretty excited about the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, which kick off on Friday 8 August. Can you believe it's been four years since the Athens Games? To commemorate the Games and help you get in the spirit of things, we've dedicated this Newsletter to all things Olympic. We'll let you know a bit about where it all began, and throw in a few tidbits you can use at a party to stump your mates. Read on to find out more.

We’ve got passes to see the hot new comedy featuring Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder, as well as copies of the Verve’s new album and the Best of the Country Music Channel to give away.

We're delighted to announce we will be increasing the download allowance on three of our most popular Broadband1 plans.

And the best part is, this increase is completely free!
(Sometimes, a change is good for you).

Check it out:

Everyday Plan Option 1 (512kbps) was 1GB,
now 1GB peak + 2GB off peak

Active Plan Option 1 (1.5Mbps) was 1GB,
now 1GB peak + 2GB off peak

Active Plan Option 2 (1.5Mbps) was 3GB + 3GB,
now 4GB peak + 4GB off peak

If you're already on one of these plans, you don't need to do anything; we'll take care of everything for you.

If you'd like to take advantage of one of these plans, check out this page here.

It's service that sets us apart!

Thanks to our new association with iiNet, you will soon have access to an expanding range of hot content, and the best thing is - it's free!

So what is the Freezone? It's a selection of servers and sites on the internet you can download from without it counting towards your monthly download limit, if you're on any Broadband1 or Broadband2+ plan (except Broadband1 Starter Option 1 and Broadband2+ Pro Option 1 plans).

You'll get on-demand access to:

• 2008/09 Barclays Premier League,
• Drift Racing,
• NASA TV,
• Golf: Overcoming the Majors,
• Wake Up! WA,
• Cruizin',
• Macquarie Digital,
• a heap of radio stations,
• online gaming sites; as well as
• download sites and mirrors.

Sound great? Stay tuned!

We’re thrilled to announce the winner of our Win a Holiday competition luxury trip for two to Hayman Island! Congratulations Edward Davis of Brookdale in Western Australia; you’ll be enjoying five nights of delight courtesy of Westnet.

Thanks to everyone who entered – the competition was a great success and we hope to bring you more soon!

Everyone loves a prize, and the chance to win is absolutely everywhere online. So much so, there is now a phenomenon where websites have been created and are devoted entirely to delivering you stuff for free (and who wouldn’t jump at the chance to save a few bucks here and there?).

Take for instance The Win Big Australia Free Online Competition Club. Sign up to Win Big for free and each week they promote the ‘biggest prize draws, special offers and free competitions in one convenient place’. Right now you can win a years worth of free fuel, the chance to win $10,000 and a years worth of pet food.

Win Big also offers tips and tricks on how to shop online and save, win the lottery (!), beat the bookie and also protect yourself from internet fraud.

Jump on to SMSpup and you can send free web-based mobile text-messages services (SMS from the web, schedule SMS reminders to yourself or friends, send and receive emails via SMS and get jokes, weather and other content sent to your phone). All you have to do is register with SMSpup to receive promotional SMS’s, with a guarantee you won’t get more than one a day.

Or you can head to The Great Australian Survey, who offer the chance to win a major prize of $30,000 cash drawn every six months. On top of that, there are weekly prizes of cash, gift vouchers and travel – all you have to do is complete their free five minute survey. Once you’ve done this, your entry into the major draw in entered. Beyond that, they’ll send you an invite to complete further surveys for your chance to win any of the prizes.

To find more ways to win, type in keywords like ‘online competitions’ into our Google search on MyWestnet here.

Did it all begin with Zeus, the father of humanity, battling it out with Cronus in an attempt to gain the throne of the gods? Or was it the massive games the man-about-town demigod Herakles staged in Olympia? There are quite a few beliefs in mythology as to where the Games began, but if we switch it up to 'real' time, we can trace the Games back to 776 BC, where events were staged in honour of the aforementioned Olympian gods.

Olympia, in the Western part of Greece, functioned as a meeting place for worship and political practises. There were majestic temples for Zeus and Hera, as well as an ancient stadium with a capacity for more than 40,000 spectators (makes the old 'Subiaco Oval' argument sound a little tired, doesn't it?). The original games held significant religious importance and were held every four years, with the period between two games referred to as the 'Olympiad' (which the Greek's used as one of their methods to count years).

As the Romans gained power in Greece, the Olympics declined in importance, then were eventually banned when Christianity took over and the games were deemed pagan.

In the early seventeenth century, an Olympic Games sports festival began in England, while a wealthy Greek philanthropist Evangelos Zappas sponsored the main revival of what we now know as the international Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established and the first official games were held in Athens in 1896 with 241 participants from 14 nations.

This grew to almost 11,100 participants from 202 countries at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens.

A list of new areas which have been enabled for Broadband - plug in your phone number via this
Availability Check page.

Westnet and Paramount Pictures are giving members the chance to win one of 30 in-season double passes to see Tropic Thunder, the new action comedy featuring the stellar cast of Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black, opening only in cinemas on 21 August 2008.

After one of the biggest promotional tours leading up to a silver screen release (including a performance by Stiller, Downey Jr. and Black at the American Idol finale earlier this year), we are thrilled to present the comedy action film of 2008!

Through a series of freak occurrences, a group of actors (Stiller, Downey Jr. and Black) suddenly become the soldiers they are trying to portray on the big screen. As their director gets increasingly infuriated with their behaviour, he decides to drop them in the middle of a real war in Vietnam.

For your chance to win one of 30 in-season double passes to Tropic of Thunder, simply click the button below, complete the entry form and hit submit. Entries are limited to one per Westnet username. The competition closes at 12.01am (WST) on Monday, 25 August 2008.

Click Here to Enter

Westnet and Musichead are giving members the chance to win one of ten copies of The Verve's Forth.

It's been a long time since we've heard form the boys who brought us the worldwide phenomenon that was Bitter Sweet Symphony, from their fantastic album, Urban Hymns. It was the fifth fastest selling album in British history, so the latest from the lads, Forth, has a lot to live up to. Given we,ve heard little from the band since the nineties (lead singer Richard Ashcroft released a critically acclaimed but not-so-great-selling solo album) there was much speculation about what type of musical route The Verve would go down with Forth, but rest assured, their staple ‘music of the spheres, trademark is certainly apparent.

Something special happens when the Verve are together which none of them experience when they are apart. Chris Martin of Coldplay has called Richard Ashcroft "the greatest singer in the world". Their reunion in late 2007 was unexpected, and their first shows as part of their official reunion tour throughout the US in April this year were simply outstanding (reviews from the Madison Square show in New York were five star). It was here they got the chance to perform the first few singles from Forth, each of them fitting in comfortably with their tracklistings from the nineties. The first official release, Love is Noise, will surprise and even thrill the most ardent Verve fans.

Forth is every bit as good as the best rock and roll albums ever released. It will be a staple in your CD collection and we're thrilled to give you the chance to be in it to win it.

For your chance to win one of ten copies of Forth, simply click the button below, complete the entry form and hit submit. Entries are limited to one per Westnet username. The competition closes at 12.01am (WST) on Monday 1 September 2008.

Click Here to Enter

Westnet and Musichead are giving members the chance to win one of ten copies of The Best of Country Music Channel 2008.

Straight from the Country Music Channel (CMC) on Foxtel and Austar networks is the latest instalment of The Best of Country Music Channel. The 2006 and 2007 editions were best-sellers, so expect nothing but the best from the 2008 release. CMC is programmed entirely from Australia and is directly involved in the local country music industry. If you love the channel, this is the soundtrack to modern country music for you. Featuring Adam Brand Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, Sara Storer, Willie Nelson, Troy Cassar-Daley and (or course) Keith Urban, there's a great mix of Australian and international stars.

For your chance to win one of ten copies of The Best of Country Music Channel 2008, simply click the button below, complete the entry form and hit submit. Entries are limited to one per Westnet username. The competition closes at 12.01am (WST) on Monday 1 September 2008.

Click Here to Enter

Alex Rozycki
Software Systems

Alex has done a great job on the Webmail/Zimbra migration, putting in 110% to ensure everything ran as smooth as possible. Alex has also been instrumental in the successful development and deployment of our Billing & Email system integration software. His attention to detail and willingness to provide assistance to other departments regarding this system has been invaluable. He is never too busy to look into issues and he does so without hesitation. He is a great asset to the Software Development team.

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