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It's like Winston Churchill said: The Web browser is the worst way to navigate the Net...except for all the others. Well, okay, he was really comparing democracy to other forms of government, but you get the idea. Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator have faults aplenty, but ultimately, they work.

Maybe that's why so many radical alternatives to browsing have died on the vine. (Anyone remember Microsoft's Active Desktop?) But while trying to replace the browser seems to be a fool's errand, reinventing it is another matter. A bunch of new tools do just that, each in its own ingenious way. And although not one of them is perfect, each is worth a try.

The Urge to Merge

Right now, I'm perusing a single Web page bursting with news from the Washington Post, the Times of London, CNN, NBC, and my hometown paper. I engineered this media megamerger myself, thanks to Quickbrowse.com. This site stitches Web pages together into a single, extralong page you can browse or receive via e-mail. You can piece together one of these pages out of any set of URLs you specify (which is what I did), or choose sites from ready-made lists in categories such as business, stocks, entertainment, and comic strips.

In short, a Quickbrowse page is an all-you-can-eat content buffet piled high with stuff from your favorite sites. The info-glutton in me loves to dig in. Still, it takes a lot of scrolling to traverse a megapage that consists of three, four, or more Web pages in their entirety. That's even more true when those pages are already larded with text, graphics, links, and ads.

So ultimately, I prefer the pickier approach that Octopus permits. Maybe all you really need from Lycos's superbusy home page is the search box. Fine--just grab it (using a button that Octopus installs on your browser) and plunk it on a custom page. That page (a view, in Octopus parlance) can also contain bits and pieces of content from all over the Web--weather forecasts, sports scoreboards, news headlines, and anything else you care to snag. Views have a refreshingly minimalist feel, since they consist entirely of items you've chosen, and Octopus tends to strip out ads, colors, and graphics. (Click a link you've included in your view, though, and Octopus launches a new browser window and dumps you at the originating site.)

Octopus users have published scads of views for public consumption, most of which pull together disparate content on a single topic, be it alien abductions or Ziggy Marley. But as far as I'm concerned, the best way to use Octopus is to weave together subjects that have nothing in common, except that you're interested in them. (My favorite view combines stuff on old wristwatches and Burt Bacharach with the contents of my Yahoo Mail in-box.)

The Web was never meant to be so malleable, so it's a wonder that Octopus works at all--and truth to tell, it only works most of the time. Sometimes I can't pry a Web element loose from its originating page; other times elements don't function properly after I've deposited them in a view. And even when Octopus operates as advertised, it still requires some studying and fiddling.

The same caveats apply--only more so--to a couple of its rivals. OnePage resembles Octopus in feel and features, but it's a tad less flexible and less intuitive overall. Meanwhile, DataBites is stuffed with tantalizing tools: It can display bite-size chunks of Web content in unobtrusive desktop windows, and shuttle those content chunks to a PDA or Web-ready cell phone. The beta version I tried was certainly promising, but also tricky to figure out and prone to crashes. (Check the DataBites Web site to see if a more polished update is available.)

All-in-Onespace

Finally, there's Enfish's Onespace. Part personal information manager, part file manager, and part browser, this free, exceptionally powerful Windows application herds together Web pages, office documents, contacts, e-mail messages, appointments, and probably some other items I'm forgetting right now. It does all this via bookmarklike links that tie related items together via multiple tabbed windows.

Onespace does many things that traditional PIMs can't. However, the sheer range of its features can prove daunting, and its idiosyncratic interface doesn't help. So at times, I have to agree with Churchill's verdict: Onespace is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

All right, he was really talking about Russia. But you get the idea.

FYI

So long, snail mail? In a new survey, 80 percent of respondents say that e-mail has replaced postal delivery for most of their business correspondence.

Source: Vault.com

E-mail PC World Executive Editor Harry McCracken at websavvy@pcworld.com.

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