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January 1, 2007 7:16 PM

Start the new year with a new start page:a hundred or so internet start pages, most including nifty Ajax or flash features, and many with third-party modules. Netvibes and its ecosystem of developers is a favorite among many reviewers, but the new MS Live and its gadgets are also getting good press, at least among Windows users. Of course, there are are always the standards. Alternately, you can select a homepage for kids that will make your eyes bleed; a site that lets you share your own portals; a homepage that creates itself; or download the amazing Orb 2.0 to create a personalized portal that lets you stream any media or files on your PC to any other device connected to the internet. What is your homepage? [Warnings: Not all pages work on all browsers. Not having MeFi as your homepage may be viewed as a sign of disloyalty, but not having the RSS feed on your page certainly will.]
posted by blahblahblah (20 comments total)

netvibes is awesome. orb is pc only. wank.
posted by phaedon at 7:26 PM on January 1, 2007

I'll second Netvibes. I 'm a fan of all things Google, and used to use the Google personalized homepage, but I switched when I found Netvibes. I looked at Google again a few days ago, and it's still not nearly as good as Netvibes.

It can even, oh, let's give a purely hypothetical example, show the feeds of 32 knitting blogs on one page. Not that I would know anything about that.
posted by booksherpa at 7:36 PM on January 1, 2007

netvibes has lost my profile :(
posted by specialk420 at 7:38 PM on January 1, 2007

Refdesk has been my homepage for years now. It's not slick or ajaxy; no rss, just an AP feed and a crapload of links. Some of these seem like viable replacements, but switching now would seem like cheating.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 7:41 PM on January 1, 2007

Haha, netvibes shows a lot of pictures of tulips and windmills when you visit it from the Netherlands.

But still, I didn't know that site, nice.
posted by jouke at 8:44 PM on January 1, 2007

I actually don't really see the point. I tried Netvibes a while back, and there's not enough content in each block - it's just skimming off a little bit of what makes each site good, without giving the full range. My start page would just be a list of links to various sites, but who needs that when there are bookmarks? So my homepage is about:blank.
posted by djgh at 9:17 PM on January 1, 2007

Nice link, that netvibes is pretty slick.
posted by wah at 9:27 PM on January 1, 2007

djgh - use Netvibes (or any other rss reader) to keep track of less frequently updated pages - like online cartoons that don't update frequently, or customized craigslist searches or bittorrent lookups so you can see when that album finally leaks, etc.
posted by jonson at 9:33 PM on January 1, 2007

about:blank rules.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:10 PM on January 1, 2007 [2 favorites]

djgh, did you try editing the block for each feed to change the number of items you can see? I think the max is determined by the feed provider, and not Netvibes. My Lifehacker feed is 40 items long.
posted by booksherpa at 10:11 PM on January 1, 2007

It's all about:blank
posted by blasdelf at 10:27 PM on January 1, 2007

Thirding the blankess.

A warning though, the personalweb.com software that automatically creates a homepage for you (FPP link text: 'creates itself') is made by Claria Corporation, but you might better recognize them as Gator Corporation, one of the most notoriously awful adware companies.

I'd no more use software from them than use condoms from the Catholic church. Their incentives do not align with yours.
posted by Rictic at 11:47 PM on January 1, 2007

man, there's something fishy about that favoor site on his list. No demo so (like a fool) I signed up to check it out and none of it works? I'm sticking with the google.
posted by chrissyboy at 3:51 AM on January 2, 2007

not quite as cool as about:blank is the ol' favourite The Hunger Site...
posted by rmm at 6:47 AM on January 2, 2007

does anyone who uses NetVibes have a custom stock ticker on their page? I couldn't figure out how to make it work.
posted by jonson at 7:32 AM on January 2, 2007

As an addendum - I didn't touch on mobile homepages in the FPP. Has anyone found anything better than Google for cell phone/PDA homepages?
posted by blahblahblah at 7:39 AM on January 2, 2007

jonson - I use Bloglines for my cartoon (and blog) fix, but that BitTorrent idea is a good one. I think for me though the reason for using about:blank is so that I don't go "Oh, shiny thing" and waste half an hour.

blahblahblah - When I had to use my Palm T|X as my primary means of accessing the web for six months, I decided to knock up a page beforehand. Wasn't particularly special, just a list of links, but it loaded quickly, and I made sure it would only deliver to a Palm browser (so odds of it being seen by the outside world were low). Obviously, authentication etc. would be better, but it wasn't critical for me that it be uber-private.
posted by djgh at 8:49 PM on January 2, 2007

Even though I have a Netvibes account (because I'm an internet whore), I really like Pageflakes because it allows you to do one thing that Netvibes doesn't. You can make your page public and share it with others, which is a great way of collecting all your aggregated content into one place.

But in all honesty, all the browsers on my computer are set to "about:blank". It's just easier, especially if you're having plugin issues or you just launched a link.
posted by deusdiabolus at 10:24 PM on January 2, 2007

I don't really see the point of these either, apart from the cynical view which is that providers of these services aggregate data to sell to demographers and marketers.

Then again, I've never seen the appeal of Refdesk either. It always just makes my eyes water.

I'll stick to my "Daily" folder in the bookmarks sidebar for now.
posted by Zinger at 10:26 PM on January 2, 2007

Blah, try Tigdoo or my personal favourite WAMPAD
posted by Duug at 2:05 AM on January 3, 2007