If you are a regular browser, you can click on My Netscape and go to a personalised page. You only need to do this once on your computer every time you launch the browser after connecting to the Internet. Thereafter, you will automatically be taken to your personalised Netscape page.

This personalisation takes advantage of the push feature of newer browsers of version 4 and later. Internet explorer 4.0 and 5.0 allow you to define features on your home page that you like and gets the latest on those topics.Likewise, Netscape allows you to set your preferences and then brings up the newest material on those.

I personally like Netscape as it is faster and cleaner. The opening page of My Netscape has gone through severalavatars and its latest one is functional. The best thing is that the site sets a cookie, or an identification tag on your computer the first time you access the site to personalise your page. Subsequently, the cookie identifies you to Netscape and automatically gets your page.

But, both Netscape and Explorer are US-based and give a US-centric feel. However, with a little patience you can work around this and harness push technology to your advantage.

How it works is that you get a set of parameters to choose from and define on your page. These deal with news, weather, stock quotations, horoscope readings and search engines. There are some others but these are the compulsory ones.

Each parameter is further broken down into service providers. For instance, news is broken into news agencies and newspapers. You can select your news agency or newspaper and the number of items you want to see up front. Then you select the kind of news--world news, local news (where available), business news, sports andfeatures.

I found Reuters the best source of news though sadly there is little on India most days. It does act as a good supplement to the regular newspapers though.

Neither Netscape nor Internet Explorer allow you to select from any Indian newspapers, tall claims of some being among the World's best newspaper notwithstanding.

So be content with what's on offer and don't expect Reuters to inform you of the latest double murder in Delhi. They do a reasonable job of world news and that's what you should take them for.

I've selected three items as an ideal mix of news and speed; the more you select (you can go up to nine in Netscape) the longer the page will take to load. You may want more.

I've stuck to three for all the news sections and have all the major categories of news though sports is sadly disappointing, being all US-centric. Occasionally there is cricket and tennis to break the monotony of basketball, ice hockey or skiing but these are few and far between.Anyway, this section is unimportantand can be dispensed with if you want. Use the news to find out about global business trends, something our newspapers sadly lack.

Of great interest to businessmen will be the stocks corner. Again, with the exception of India, you can get quotes from all the major stock exchanges of the world. Its extremely easy to set go to the Add Channels link (each item is called a Channel in push technology parlance) that gives you a list of available stuff. Don't find what you want? Create a new channel.

You can select individual stocks, tell the system how many you bought and set a price range. If the stock price goes below or above this, an alarm goes off telling you your investment is in danger. There are set groups of stocks on NASDAQ that you can select or you pick your individual ones. All limited to the US for the time being, I'm afraid. The quotes are updated every 20 minutes so while there is a time lag, its faster than most other systems of tracking global stock prices.

Once you've selected what you wantto appear on the page, you can lay out the page as well. Each item can be placed exactly where you want in the three column grid.

Ideally, news appears on top of the middle column followed by the search screen. Stocks can go on the left and weather on the right. The weather section is the only one that's truly international, allowing you to select cities from all over the world. It's easily updated using forecasts from a professional weather forecasting company that in turn depends on data from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

If you want to create a new channel to show you Indian news, it will take a bit of programming experience, though not a lot. Select the Create a New Channel link on the Add Channels page and then follow the instructions on the page. The advantage is that you can list the Indian newspapers or other sites that you want on the page. Up to 15 links are allowed, that is a lot for the page. The procedure is simple enough and instructions provided online are easy tofollow. If you are slightly computer literate the procedure should take half an hour and add immensely to the value of the page.

Netscape gives you a horoscope section that is actually most amusing. It provides a break from the otherwise heavy reading matter on the page. You can select as many signs as you want on the page with an option to see more details about each. They are well written (more so than our home-grown ones) and are free. So add away.

The drawback with this customisation process is that you require new browsers. Versions older than 4.0 of both Netscape and Internet Explorer will not allow push technology to work but as these are free and available readily with computer vendors, it should be no problem to upgrade if you are using an older browser.