With newspapers the world over now available on the World Wide Web and with virtually every broadcast news organization offering a large menu of news and information, a Web surfer has a lot of ways to find out what’s going on. But what if you don’t have the time to browse a host of sites? You just want the top news of the day, together with the weather where you are, or where you are going, and only the sports and business news that you care about.

You may think you need your own personal news editor to do your surfing for you, but a number of Web sites are providing something nearly as good: news, weather, sports and stock quotes tailored to your specifications, all in one place. A good example is the “My Channel” feature of Excite, a search engine that has grown into a much more comprehensive World Wide Web service. It is free of charge.

To try it, go to Excite’s home page (excite.com) and choose the “My Channel” option from the “Channels by Excite” list. You will be taken to a registration page, where you will be asked for your zip code, your e-mail address, and a password. You will also be asked for your name, birth date and sex, but it is not mandatory to answer those questions. You then click on the “Submit Registration” button, which takes you to a page called “My Channel.”

You can then click on the “Personalize” option and be delivered to an extensive menu of information choices, ranging from headline news, to sports scores, to weather, to TV listings to a stock portfolio.

You click on a box next to each of these to determine which you want included on your “channel” page. Within many of these categories, there are further choices. For example, you decide which sports you want to see the results from, and within that, which teams you want to track. You also decide which cities’ weather forecasts you want, or which stocks you want to track.

You can see your horoscope, if you like, and have a listing of your favorite Web sites. Click on a listed site, and you go there. A typical personalized channel page will have a list of headlines in such categories as Headline News (general world and national news), Technology News, Sports News and Business News. In each category, there are five or six headlines. Click on any of them, and you are taken to the full story.

In addition, there is a customizable feature called “NewsTracker,” by which you can keep on top of a variety of running news stories. If you decide, for example, to follow the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, NewsTracker will maintain, and update, a set of stories on it from various publications. On one recent day, NewsTracker had collected stories on automobile air bags from The Washington Post, The Detroit News, Newsday and the New England Journal of Medicine.

When you click on a NewsTracker subject, you see a list of stories and articles with the first paragraph or so from each. Click on one and you get the full story. There is wide latitude here for customization. You can choose your own topic for NewsTracker to follow by choosing first a topic area, then entering search words to tailor it precisely to what you’re looking for. Each time you visit your channel, the topic will be listed and you can get the latest stories by clicking on it.

Your custom channel will always have the latest final scores from your chosen teams posted, and during games updated scores are periodically posted as well. In addition, the Sportsline Web service keeps a scrolling list of current scores from all games in progress on your channel page.

You can customize your TV listings to include any channel you like, but if you enter no choices, Excite will automatically list the local stations, which it knows because you have entered your zip code as part of the registration process.

You can be equally specific about your investment information. Your channel will automatically post the main stock averages Dow Jones, Nasdaq, S & P; 500 but you can add any stock you like, and its latest listing will be included as well. You can change any of your choices at any time.

In addition, Excite’s search engine is readily available, through a small window at the bottom of your channel page, or by a button near the top. All of Excite’s other features maps, airline bookings and access to shareware are available on your page as well.

T.R. Reid is Rocky Mountain bureau chief of the Washington Post. Brit Hume is managing editor of Fox News in Washington. You can reach them in care of the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St., Washington D.C. 20071-9200, or you can e-mail T.R. Reid at [email protected], or Brit Hume at [email protected].