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OneClick Summary Surfs the Web for You

Custom page from ezlogin.com displays synopses from your favorite sites, but the summary might be shorter than you expect.

By Lincoln Spector, PCWorld   

OneClick Summary is a new feature that the Web site ezlogin.com is adding to its free Internet identity service. It is now available as a beta product.

Ezlogin is one of a growing crop of free services that help you manage multiple Internet accounts from one site. (Others include digitalme, jotter.com, and the Enonymous Advisor.) Like most of these services, ezlogin lets you store login names and passwords for various sites, so you don't have to remember them. It fills out forms for you, so you don't have to keep typing in your address and credit card number.

OneClick Summary offers a page with quick summaries of information from sites you'd otherwise have to visit separately. You might, for instance, get your bank balance, a daily schedule from your online calendar, today's headlines from your favorite news source, and the in-box for your Web-based e-mail account (such as HotMail). Other site categories include chat, research, and even adult sites.

Unique Features and Functions

OneClick Summary also offers a few unique features. It gives you a set of bookmarks on the ezlogin server, accessible from any wired computer.

When you set up your page, you select sites out of the available categories, filling in login and password information when asked. The setup process still needs some tweaking, so you might get asked for logins and passwords even when you shouldn't. For instance, you can't add Salon.com to your list without filling in this information, but Salon doesn't require a login.

Another potential problem is that you might not be able to see all of the information that your chosen sites provide. If ezlogin doesn't support your bank, you won't be able to see your balance on that page. The same applies to e-mail and other categories. Right now, very few of the listed sites are actually capable of putting a summary onto your summary page.

If the sites you need aren't fully supported, OneClick Summary will give you a very short summary indeed: it might not list the facts you want. Of course, this is still beta. Things are bound to improve.