"Azzaman", Arabic Daily Newspaper Vol/ 3. UK. Issue 707 - Wednesday 23/ 8/ 2000.

A new free service on the web challenging the censorship
Don't go to forbidden sites... Let them come to you!

Rabat, Morocco - from Alladdin MOHSIN

If you start your day like me by visiting different web sites such as newspapers or discussion forums, this subject should interest you.

And if you find difficulties in viewing your favorite sites, because of the poor connection or censorship, this subject must interest you too.

And if the country where you live treats you as a young citizen who did not grow up yet -and who'll never grow up-, and decides for you what to visit and what not to visit on the web, this subject should interest you more than ever.

The subject is simply about a new free service on the web, that sends to your email address a long web page that contains all your favorite sites. You receive the page as html and you can open it with your browser and check it even if you're offline.

After filling a simple application form in the site "http://www.quickbrowse.com", your browser will take you to another page where you will enter the addresses of your favorite sites. Enter the addresses, and name the group of addresses, (as you can create different groups), then choose when you want to receive your mail (daily, weekly, or monthly). You can also choose the specific days you want to receive your mail.

If your mail program supports "html", then choose to receive your page as "html". But if your mail program supports only text, then you can choose to receive your page as an attached html page to a one line text email.

After making your choices, you can see in the same window an example of the page that you'll receive, and this example is very helpful, because it allows you to see if you made any errors in the addresses and links etc.

After completing this part of the registration, you'll instantly receive an email asking you to confirm and activate your account, which you can do by clicking on a link in the message. The company says that this confirmation is necessary to avoid problems such as the unauthorized use of an email address.

Personal Experience

I used to spend a lot of time -3 hours approximately- and a lot of money, to check what's new in about 60 Arabic discussion forums about computers and the Internet.

After I subscribed to this service, I started my day by receiving in about 2 minutes through my email, a long web page of 400k, then I stop my connection and read the page in anytime I like.

Another advantage of this service is that when you receive your page, the links on it are still "alive." Meanwhile, when you save a page from the web, even with Internet Explorer 5, as soon as you're offline, the links on the saved page no longer send you to the correct site.

The writer of the program, "Marc Fest" (journalist) says that he used to get tired when visiting all his favorite newspapers, so he looked for a program that could do that, and as he did not find one, he decided to make one himself. So he created the program during a holiday at the beach.

In the beginning, the program he designed was for his personal use, but because the program was written in the programming language Perl, he had to put it on a server and invited his friends to use it. They advised him to put it up for public use. So he made a company with two of his friends and they enhanced the program, then they put it on the web for everybody as a free service, giving birth to a new internet phenomenon called "Metabrowsing." Metabrowsing means "any kind of service or tool that enables a user to view more than just a single web page at a time inside a continuously scrollable display unit."

Fest says, "This service will change the way we surf the web. Therefore instead of visiting a lot of different sites, you can get them all in one page, that you can view even if you're offline." And he laughs: "Isn't it funny that a whole new category of web services called "metabrowsing" got started because a fledgling freelance writer was looking for a way to spend more time at the beach?"

The best way to use this service:

- Categorize the sites that you want to add to your page, so for example group all of the newspapers and all of the discussion forums together. And choose sites that are often updated so that you don't receive the same content everyday.

- Before filling in the addresses list, check the addresses you're going to enter on the web to see if they are correct, etc.

- It is better to use a "pop3" email account instead of "http" email, and there are a lot of companies that give you free "pop3" email services like "softhome.net" and "hotpop.com". Receiving your emails though "pop3" is faster than "http."

- We remind you that this service doesn't send you an entire site but a page that you chose from the site. For example if you want to receive only the computer forum of a discussion forum, you should enter the web address of the specific page and not the address of the site. But if you want an entire site, then you should enter the addresses of all the pages of the site.

- Don't forget that if you open the page in offline mode, you wont find any pictures on the pages you chose (which is sad for those who chose porn pages!), that's why it's better to choose pages that contain text more than pictures or "pdf"...

translated from Arabic by Farouk ALTIMIMI(faroukal@hotmail.com)

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