Posts Tagged With: start-pages
· March 4, 2008 at 6:22 am · Online Tools
Inspired by popurls, Alltop hopes to deliver you what popurls does but do so in a way that covers more content rather than cool page tweaks. If your looking for a way to browse through a lot of news rather quickly, without cluttering up your RSS feed reader then Alltop is a must have bookmark.
From celebrities, gaming, news, photos, politics, food and more they have more than just a few topics covered well. They also seem to specialize in just bringing the best resources on a lot of different topics together in one spot.
Where a place like popurls gives you general geeky web goodness with a lot of page customization tweaks, Alltop focuses on delivering you as much relative content as they can and do so in a stylish way.
· February 16, 2008 at 9:53 am · Online Tools
I got an invite to Netvibes Ginger release a few days ago, and I have to say after playing with it for a while it is an awesome upgrade to an already awesome start page solution.
There are tons of positives. The overall loading seems to be faster than the previous version. Also adding content to the page is a lot easier thanks to the new top dashboard-like area:
The public "Universe" is cool too - as now I can push out my own customized page on Netvibes for the public to see. To check out the one I created while testing, go to:
http://www.netvibes.com/cheasym
Here is another shot of host Netvibes looks with a little personalization and flair added to it. This shot is very colorful but in all honesty you can customize almost every aspect of how it looks and they even have 2 new themes to use too.
I could only find one negative. The new social aspects of it, that is the only area where I am not so sure about yet. Maybe because I don’t have any friends using it yet (might be better to test it with a few good buddies). Not sure if I want to manage yet another collection of friends.
Final thoughts on Netvibes Ginger is that it is a winner and another nice reason to use Netvibes as one of your start page solutions. They are really trying to move beyond being just a start page though and are evolving into a place where they hope you will hang your had and stay a while.
· February 5, 2008 at 7:02 am · Online Tools
Need a simpler way to start your web browsing experience? One of the most original start pages I have seen in a long time is smplr.
Yep, that is it. No boxes, no RSS and nothing else to distract you. How do you use it? Type in certain keywords or phrases and it does the work for you. Here are all the commands you can use:
These are the triggers that smplr currently supports. Type one, followed by a query. go:(open a supplied url), y:(yahoo), news:(google news), w:(weather, zip code only), wiki:(wikipedia), film:(imdb), tv:(epguide), mmm:(recipes), wow:(thottbot), ebay:(ebay), game:(mobygames), bt:(thepiratebay), buy:(pricegrabber), stock:(yahoo finance), blog:(technorati), snopes:(urban legends)
They also have several themes you can pick from too - changing the background picture. All in all smplr is one unique way to start your browsing experience that can at least say it is copying nobody else out there in the start page world.
· December 13, 2007 at 6:38 am · Hot Web Topics, Interviews, Popular Posts
Your start page says a lot about you. Do you like tons of information flying your way - or do you like to keep it short and simple? I recently got the chance to have a quick chat with one of the leaders in the start page arena Dan Cohen, CEO of Pageflakes. From taking the start page idea of out Pageflakes to what his favorite pagecasts are - I tried to cover it all with minimal fluff.
How important is user feedback and experiences (good and bad) when it comes to the Pageflakes product?
Dan: It’s extremely important and we have ongoing dialogues with our users through the blog and support forum. We monitor this full time and read & respond to every email. Our product plans include user requested information by way of reviews and feedback. We always have a representative from customer services support team involved in our product sessions.
This is to not only know how our site is produced & written, understanding sessions etc but also to represent the user base and their comments/suggestions into our future plans. They aggregate the most popular requests and common denominator feedback so we acknowledge this as paramount in our product plans. Ongoing dialogue internally and with our users are taken extremely seriously into our product design development strategies.
Start pages have a history of being something that people spend five minutes on, get caught up on whatever they want to watch - clocks or kitten saying funny things. Why should somebody invest the time to spend more time with Pageflakes?
Dan: A great number of users spend more time on Pageflakes than email and social networking sites. The old generation of personalize pages i.e. my Yahoo would result in people clicking for a moment and then visiting another site. But the old RSS information was sports, news and stocks related so if the user wanted to read more, they’d click through or venture to other websites.
With Pageflakes, users can check bank balances, email, network, visit social networking flakes so the interactive elements on Pageflakes is richer and includes flakes that users couldn’t do before. We are revolutionizing what people are doing on the Web. Technology has changed and Pageflakes is more of an engaging experience by definition to keep users on the page longer. They are learning and digging deeper into topics individually and interacting with other like minded individuals.
Read the rest of this entry »
· October 1, 2007 at 6:11 am · Online Tools
I have been playing with a number of start pages these days, and I have to say I am about ready to make a switch. It seems like over time iGoogle seems to be getting slower to load. I don’t have many things on it - maybe four thingies, widgets, gadgets.
So now I am looking at some of the competition and I have to say only one has impressed me thus far.
Netvibes is becoming king of the start pages, if you like customization, speed and cool tools to use. Now I don’t need a lot to get going - but it is nice to see they have tons of tools to add.
What does Netvibes Have that iGoogle Does Not?
- More Customization Options for the Web Page
- Quicker Loading Times Overall
Only reason I can see for using iGoogle is to use their specialty gadgets for Gmail and Google Reader. So am I making the right choice? Is there one that even blows Netvibes out of the water?
· May 18, 2007 at 7:30 am · Hot Web Topics, Online Tools
I don’t like to have to scroll when looking at my start page. If I make a really long one and have to keep going down and down to view it - chances are I’m not. This is a page I look quickly at when I want to go somewhere else. It should be small - yet easy to quickly navigate through.
Get the Basic Gadgets Out of the Way First
Your first tab should have all of the gadgets on it that you actually get some use out of. I like the weather one along with the Google Reader one the most. You might also put other application based gadgets here so that you can get good use out of them.
Here are a few good “basic” gadgets to get you started:
Easy Way to Gather Gadgets Based on Topic
Now every tab after that should be based around things the interest you. You can create them very simply by naming the new tab after your interest. For me I would type in “Web Hosting” and then make sure the check mark for “I’m feeling lucky. Automatically add stuff based on the tab name” is selected.
From the suggestions they give you - you can cut out the ones you really don’t like and add a few it might have forgotten.
Should You Create a Popular Tab?
Now there are a lot of social link popularity Web sites out there as well. Digg, Reddit, Delicious and a boat load of others. You might try to gather all the ones you can and put them on their own tab. This way you can see what is the most popular set of links at any given moment.
Need suggestions on which ones you should be tracking? Visit popurls for a long list of these sort of Web sites. Visit each one, grab the RSS link and take it to you own iGoogle start page.
Is That It? Do You Have More to Share?
There you have it. That might have taken a whole five minutes to configure! Now you have a need focused start page that will help you keep up to date with what you need to stay informed with. If you know of any other iGoogle optimization tips feel free to drop in a comment and let me know.
