How many Web pages do you visit regularly as part of your recruitment efforts? If you're like most of us, you spend a fair amount of time Web surfing -- checking out news sites, perusing resume banks, digging through virtual communities and monitoring discussion boards. You've got all your sites saved as favorites (or bookmarks) in your browser, but you're probably wasting time manually moving through a checklist of sites. Instead of visiting all those sites one at a time, why not visit one page that contains them all?

If that sounds like a better way to review Web content, you should take a look at a metabrowser. A metabrowser (not to be confused with a metasearch tool) brings the content of multiple pages into one large page. Unlike a personalized newspaper site that forces you to pick and choose specific types of information (such as world news, sports and weather) from a single source, a metabrowser lets you choose pages from anywhere on the Internet. Then it displays them on one long page that is stitched together from end to end, allowing you to scroll up and down looking for information.

The first and perhaps still the slickest metabrowser is Quickbrowse. Developed by a freelance journalist looking for a simple way to examine the same newspaper sites each day, the core program is easy to use and offers plenty of methods to customize your results. Some of the program's features are geared specifically for newshounds, such as the Newsstand. On the form that appears on this page, you simply check off the type of content you want to see and the sources from which the content is pulled. For example, you can choose to view the Internet section of The New York Times, the business sections of the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, and the U.S. News section of CNN.

There are also easy ways to select content using the Selections link. First, pick a category that interests you, such as Tech News, then select sites from the recommendations supplied, such as CNET, ZDNet, Industry Standard and Slashdot.org. The result: all the tech news you want will be delivered to you on one page. And each link on that page opens a new browser window so you don't lose your place on your metabrowser page.

Undoubtedly the most useful area of Quickbrowse is myQuickbrowse. Here you can specify a list of the Web sites you visit regularly, thereby creating your own "must-see" page.

As long as you sign up for membership (it's free), you can save your pages as a collection that you can return to again and again. You might group sites by their function (one for vertical portals, one for professional associations and another for resume banks), or by the types of candidates you're seeking (one for Java programmers, one for help desk representatives, and another for inside sales managers).

You can even include password-protected sites as part of a collection. The first time you go to that site you'll need to enter your username and password, but after that Quickbrowse automatically stores the info and sends it along each time you return to the site.

You can customize your collections so pages appear in a specific order or so you get reminder email on a daily or weekly basis or whenever content changes. You might also choose to make a collection public so everyone in your office can view it.

Quickbrowse also offers a free desktop application (qbEasy) that makes it easier to manage and access your collections. (It appears as an icon in your system tray and you access its menu choices by right-clicking on the icon.) With qbEasy you can import existing favorites/bookmarks or work interactively, collecting pages and adding them to collections as you surf.

Just to confuse the whole issue of the differences between metasearch tools and metabrowsers, Quickbrowse includes a metasearch tool on its site. The Search link on Quickbrowse's homepage allows you to search the Internet using up to 15 different search engines and control the maximum number of results each search engine returns -- from 1 to 20 pages.

The real advantage of Quickbrowse is that your daily must-see sites are collected for you in a single source. By bringing down your “click factor,” it does save you some time So, if you’d like your Web surfing in a tied up in a neat single-page packages, give Quickbrowse a try.