(FORTUNE Magazine) – Among the more dramatic changes wrought by the French Revolution, the modern restaurant ranks high on the list of things that set our own society apart from that of the 18th century.

Where royalty once dined at private feasts, the Revolution and the masses of Citizen Legislators it brought to Paris introduced the egalitarian tradition of dining in public, rubbing elbows with those from all societal classes, and, most importantly, eating as much or as little as you wanted from a menu of choices. That pay-as-you-go meal, which came to be called a la carte, was the perfect informal way to allow each citizen a personal feast.

The a la carte tradition of the bistro is alive and well at many Internet sites dedicated to bringing you news and information. You may not have to pay as you go--most sites are free, supported by advertising--but many publishers on the World Wide Web are letting visitors pick from a menu of choices to assemble a kind of personalized meal out of the information that suits their tastes. Unfortunately, few sites deliver an experience that is personal in any real sense. Instead, publishers are essentially allowing you to create filters to select only what you want to see from the enormous quantity of news and information they provide. Still, there's good reason to try out this form of customized news, if only to get to know these Websites a little better.

GAME PLAN

A good way to evaluate the many personal information services on the Web is to try several of them using similar criteria, thereby creating a benchmark to compare performance. Pick just one or two categories that you know well and would like to track over time, and that you can reasonably expect to find well-represented on the Web. A game plan might go something like this: First, surf to each of the sites in turn and bookmark them for later reference. That way, you can gather in one place all the sites you want to compare, making it easier to refer to them later on.

Because most of these sites require passwords, you should then create and back up a new document on your hard drive that you can use to jot down your password and ID after each sign-up. And be sure not to recycle the same passwords and IDs that you use to gain access to your PC or other sensitive matters. Not that anyone will try to penetrate your personal Web-site account, but you don't want important passwords floating around the Internet for someone to appropriate and use.

Once you've created a membership profile, most sites will either transfer you immediately to a so-called "personal page" or E-mail you the necessary link to get there on your own. Then replace the previous bookmarks with these personalized Web addresses, which will enable you to go straight to the settings you've specified.

A perfect example of the personalization prevalent on the Web is My Yahoo, provided by the most-visited search and navigation site. All of the search sites have added some personalization features, but My Yahoo is as good a place as any to start setting up some preferences. You'll quickly discover that the choices on the menu are of the blandest sort. There's a way to specify news for any of the 50 states, and a way to stipulate that you'd like to see only music news, but no possibility of entering specific topics within these very general news categories.

All of this is free, so far, though just a click away you can pay $8 for the privilege of setting up the same sort of personal page at NewsHound, a product of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. NewsHound is tied into the online versions of K-R's papers, so if you read these on a daily basis you can also sift through the news by category. You can get the service either by going directly to NewsHound's site or by browsing one of the online Knight-Ridder papers, which contain links to the service. NewsHound can also conduct regular keyword searches of national services like the Reuters newswire, but it may be more useful to select a nationally known daily paper as the source.

A better service for covering a given subject by category is the NewsPage product from Individual, which has a staff of editors toiling away behind the scenes putting together categories of information. Although much of their information comes from the same commodity news sources used by other services, Individual makes sure to offer only categories for which the company has lots of fresh content daily. Capsules are edited to give you the gist of a story quickly, and, besides receiving a custom Web page, you can have the results mailed to your in-box.

INFORMATION SALAD BAR

In addition to Knight-Ridder, other newspapers have set up salad bars of information on the Web. The biggest of the newspaper sites is NewsWorks, formed by a partnership of Times-Mirror, The Washington Post Co., The New York Times Co., Hearst, and other major publishers and newspaper chains. However, NewsWorks doesn't allow any control over what you see; the point is to bring together material from many different newspapers to create a super-paper online.

There are a few ways you can customize your news today. The New York Times lets you set up search criteria by keyword. The information is mailed to your E-mail in-box with each morning's edition. Similarly, Dow Jones enables you to create a "Personal Journal," a sampling of the day's stories from the Wall Street Journal.

Unlike the newspapers, the television broadcasters that have launched Web services have been much more aggressive in making customization a core feature of their online "networks." MSNBC, for example, introduced a dramatic revamp in September, including a new look-and-feel that makes use of rich graphics and news tickers. At MSNBC, the guiding philosophy is that what most people will want is local information. So the service offers links to news from NBC affiliates around the country and the option of selecting news based on personal criteria.

If the national news services can't deliver the personal touch you desire, you should check out regional and local guides such as CitySearch and Sidewalk.com. True, it's a worldwide Web, but these sites are also betting that individuals need information that's close to home, the goings-on in their city or the weather forecast. CitySearch, a startup that's about a year-and-a-half old, has Websites that list events in New York, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and other cities. It covers a wide range of topics, from movies and theater listings to restaurant reviews and sports. The company is battling for eyeballs with Sidewalk.com, a service provided by Microsoft. If they cover your hometown, it might be useful to sign up with both and stay tuned as the competition heats up.

CHANNEL BLOCKERS

Some sites pursue a much more limited market. TV Guide, which provides a personalized listing of what's on the tube through Netscape Communications' Netcenter service, is an example of a well-focused product that creates the kind of local content that may seem more personal to many surfers. After assigning you a password and ID, TV Guide lets you screen out the channels you don't want to have displayed in the guide for your local listings.

A much different strategy for delivering news is so-called push technology. Once you've indicated your choices, the information is sent automatically to your computer. PointCast, the first company to offer a push product, provides software for PCs and Macs that automatically downloads news items, accompanied by advertising, from several sources on the Web. There's nothing very personal about PointCast, but its virtue lies in its ability to select information from several sources at once in the same manner, a convenience you may appreciate after a day of setting up personal news sites all over the Web. PointCast will also poll each Website automatically throughout the day looking for updated news, which can save you browsing time.

Both Microsoft and Netscape are offering alternatives to PointCast in their latest browsers, Netscape with Netcaster and Microsoft with the Active Desktop. These push programs show promise, but both require top-of-the-line computers to run. PointCast, by contrast, shines even on a three-generation-old Pentium PC.

EXECUTOR

After a day or two spent sifting through E-mail messages from CitySearch and checking your personal page at half-a-dozen sites, you're likely to conclude that these Web restaurants offer little on the menu that's truly personal, and you're right. At this point in time, there's no substitute for finding an online newsgroup or mailing list that closely follows your particular interests and is crafted by individuals who know the field well. It's the digital equivalent of sitting back and having the master chef lay your table.

Nonetheless, Web publishers are dedicated to broadening their offerings and will likely throw more technology resources at the problem of providing custom news and information. With the ability to follow your every click as you surf a site, editors will learn about what items you like, and they'll move that content in your direction without forcing you to pore over a long menu of choices. Restaurant diners should have it so good.