Monday, May 19, 2008
The Best Personalized Homepages
What's the first thing you see when you fire up your browser? If you said "default web page", you defnitely need this article. Everyone has a list of websites they visit routinely, and yours could be email, social networking forums, news sites, blogs, or just about anything else that fascinates you. The point is, there are sure to be some sites that you visit regularly for updated information.
Personalized homepages have been around for a while. These are pages that receive feeds and allow you to interact with your entire list of favorite sites, right from your homepage. These pages offer you various services like RSS readers, email clients, games, and a lot more in the form of widgets. Here are three of the best-known startup pages on the Internet today...
iGoogle
If you're the type who practically lives off Google, via Google Docs, Calendar, Gmail, Orkut, Reader, etc. the choice is pretty clear already. iGooogle is the most compatible startup page you will find with these applications. The design is pretty minimalist, but considering that the biggest selling point of Google is its simplicity, I can't cut any points for that. I can, however cut points for blandness.
What I like best is that the Google search bar is permanently integrated into the page header – this not only cuts down your need to look for a good Google search widget but also ensures that your cursor is always present in the search bar by default when the page loads, so you can just type away your query when at iGoogle.
You can have multiple tabs on your homepage, and classify widgets according to category or usefulness. The vast widget library covers almost everything you'll want, and configuring and personalizing widgets is very straightforward. You can add a personal touch by selecting custom headers for your page, many of which change according to the time of the day. You can even create personal widgets, without the need to know any HTML and other programming languages. It's true these widgets tend to be a bit limited in nature, but it's still a great value-add.
The biggest gripe I have with iGoogle is its loading time. Of all the personal homepages I tested, iGoogle took the longest to fire up. It also has a limitation of having only three columns of widgets per page. Considering I use a widescreen monitor at 1680x1050 resolution, I could easily make space for a couple more columns per page.
All said, the page's 'Google compatibility', vast widget library, and personalization options make it a great startup option.
Personalized homepages have been around for a while. These are pages that receive feeds and allow you to interact with your entire list of favorite sites, right from your homepage. These pages offer you various services like RSS readers, email clients, games, and a lot more in the form of widgets. Here are three of the best-known startup pages on the Internet today...
iGoogle
If you're the type who practically lives off Google, via Google Docs, Calendar, Gmail, Orkut, Reader, etc. the choice is pretty clear already. iGooogle is the most compatible startup page you will find with these applications. The design is pretty minimalist, but considering that the biggest selling point of Google is its simplicity, I can't cut any points for that. I can, however cut points for blandness.
What I like best is that the Google search bar is permanently integrated into the page header – this not only cuts down your need to look for a good Google search widget but also ensures that your cursor is always present in the search bar by default when the page loads, so you can just type away your query when at iGoogle.
You can have multiple tabs on your homepage, and classify widgets according to category or usefulness. The vast widget library covers almost everything you'll want, and configuring and personalizing widgets is very straightforward. You can add a personal touch by selecting custom headers for your page, many of which change according to the time of the day. You can even create personal widgets, without the need to know any HTML and other programming languages. It's true these widgets tend to be a bit limited in nature, but it's still a great value-add.
The biggest gripe I have with iGoogle is its loading time. Of all the personal homepages I tested, iGoogle took the longest to fire up. It also has a limitation of having only three columns of widgets per page. Considering I use a widescreen monitor at 1680x1050 resolution, I could easily make space for a couple more columns per page.
All said, the page's 'Google compatibility', vast widget library, and personalization options make it a great startup option.
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