Here's a great idea in search of money and a better interface. QuickBrowse ( http://www.quickbrowse.com/ ) is a site that lets you specify the Web pages of your choice and aggregate them into a single long page. You can then go through this page, click on items you need, and have them downloaded into a single document for your perusal.
     Who would need such a tool? Anyone researching topics on a regular basis knows that making your way from site to site is time-consuming; just waiting for the pages to load can take more time than the research itself.
     Marc Fest, a German writer based in Florida who needs to monitor news stories regularly, dreamed up QuickBrowse as a way to check on multiple American newspapers simultaneously. Using QuickBrowse, he fetches the specified pages from each paper's Web site in one operation, peruses them, and chooses the items he wants to see. QuickBrowse then formats them as a single document.
     Now Fest is being besieged with investors who think his idea will take off. And it will, if the user interface can be simplified. As it is, the pages QuickBrowse consolidates into one create an unwieldy document whose management is anything but intuitive. Some venture capitalist is going to bring in the money to hire programmers to fix that problem. When that happens, QuickBrowse could become a significant research tool.
    

Paul A. Gilster can be reached at gilster@mindspring.com

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