PRESS RELEASE

SEATTLE  - The MicroSurfer Company (www.microsurfer.com) announces the release of MicroSurfer 2.3, a unique web-productivity software tool that optimizes and organizes web access, enabling users to jump directly between links -- without waiting for web pages to display or backtracking through a browser. The Seattle-based "virtual" company, born out of its founder's frustration with the "click-and-wait" model of Internet navigation, aims at nothing less than changing the way people access web pages with their browser -- and is giving away its product for free to accomplish that mission.

MicroSurfer's innovative approach to navigating the web solves surfers' two most common problems: waiting for web pages to download and display, and getting lost trying to return to previously visited pages. Instead of visiting a series of links on a web page individually in a browser -- returning each time to the original page to explore its remaining links -- MicroSurfer users are able to surf directly and immediately to any links they select, without having to return to the page the links came from.

"I was tired of waiting for pages to come up [in my browser], and constantly clicking on my browser's Back button -- wasting time as already viewed pages were redisplayed -- just to find my way back to a [web] page I came across earlier," recalled MicroSurfer's President David Bernstein. "I wanted a tool that would let me pick just the links on a page that I was interested in, download them while I continued surfing and then enable me to visit each one directly without waiting.

"I knew the bandwidth problem could be solved by making better use of existing resources and without adding more hardware or a faster Internet connection," he said. "The key is separating the downloading of web pages from their display. If pages download in the background, when the user's modem is normally idle, then they can be viewed instantly in the browser on demand. But since nothing like that existed, I had to build it myself. In the process, I came up with a solution to an even bigger problem facing web users by finding ways to make it easier to organize and share collections of web pages."

Links dragged from any web page and dropped into the MicroSurfer window begin downloading in the background to the browser's cache, without interrupting the foreground session. Click on any downloaded link in MicroSurfer -- a color-coded download status icon next to each link indicates when it is ready to be viewed -- and the web page displays in your browser immediately. Users can jump between captured links instantly, in any order, without having to find the page the links came from, making MicroSurfer indispensable for surfing through search results, portals, and news, sports or financial sites -- anytime there is more than one link on a page that the user wants to explore.

"Revolutionary is a buzz word that lost its original impact in software marketing long ago," Bernstein said, "but MicroSurfer really is a revolutionary software tool because it actually provides a new and more efficient method for accessing web pages.  The result is a far more powerful web experience that is more intuitive -- and significantly more efficient -- than relying on a browser alone.

"People don't realize that browsers, far from being the ideal way to navigate the web, actually are more of an obstacle to fast and convenient web access," Bernstein said. "Browsers are powerful content viewers but they are poorly designed for exploring multiple links on a page, getting back to previously visited pages or managing more than a few hundred links."  

Bernstein's brainstorm provides a key element that's been sorely missing from traditional models of web surfing -- context. MicroSurfer's straightforward tree-and-branch representation of captured links reflects the basic structure of web sites, providing an intuitive and easily understood history of users' surfing activity. "With MicroSurfer, you can see at a glance where you've been, how you got there and where you're going," Bernstein said. "All the sites you've visited are instantly available in MicroSurfer and you can immediately return to any web page with a single click of your mouse."

Users can save the links they collect into MicroSurfer Tours -- libraries of links to favorite pages, which provide a context for easily organizing surfing activity and sharing links in a way never before possible. A Tour can serve as a personal portal to frequently visited pages or lead the user through a specific sequence of pages, and can be selected to automatically refresh and update its content each time MicroSurfer opens. The browser-neutral Tours can be exchanged with friends, colleagues and clients--even posted as HTML pages for web-site visitors. 

MicroSurfer’s advanced features combine and surpass the capabilities of offline browsers, download utilities, web accelerators, bookmark managers and cache viewers. MicroSurfer manages, caches and bookmarks web pages better than browsers, downloads and retrieves web content faster, and stores web links more quickly and in less hard-drive space than the browser. 

"We've really created a new kind of web navigation tool and browser companion--one that provides maximum choice, convenience and control for power users and novices alike," Bernstein said. "Our principal challenge and our greatest opportunity lies in reaching users who surf with just their browser alone."

System Requirements/Availability

MicroSurfer requires a PC with an Intel 486 or higher processor; Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows NT or Windows XP; with direct or dial-up Internet access. MicroSurfer supports Netscape Navigator 3 or 4, as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, 5 or 6.

MicroSurfer is available for download from http://www.microsurfer.com.

About The MicroSurfer Company

The MicroSurfer Company makes innovative web-productivity software to help people visualize, navigate and accelerate their web experience. MicroSurfer President David Bernstein founded the company in 1996 after a 20-year consulting career in software development and multimedia. One of the new breed of "virtual corporations" at the forefront of sweeping changes in electronic-software distribution, The MicroSurfer Company's operations and marketing functions are located in Seattle, while its software engineers and graphic designers work from across the U.S.A. The company's flagship product, MicroSurfer 1.0, debuted in May 1998.

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