OLD MAN RANT: I'm one of the ancient dinosaurs who still uses a Yahoo page as my home page. So sue me -- I like having the news, sports, and entertainment headlines, plus the TV listings, all in one place. But you know what? Ever since Yahoo started branding all of its entertainment stories "OMG," I have developed a deep and calcifying resistance to clicking through. OMG, Yahoo, you're dumped.
Please suggest a good general-purpose home page.
iGoogle is excellent. You can even get the TV listings.
ReplyDeleteI have my browser set to open up Google Reader (RSS), Twitter, and Gmail every time I start up. Works for me.
ReplyDeleteI use NYT.com as mine, but I also recommend isiticedcoffeeweather.com/
ReplyDeleteI just open up to the last page I had opened.
ReplyDeleteYou want to talk dinosaurs? I'm still using the excite.com homepage I set up 10 years ago. It lets me put bookmarks in categories near the top of the page, so my 20-30 most-clicked sites (including this one!) are right there, with news headline feeds below. None of the other major portals seem to be able to do this, though I would like to know if I'm wrong because Excite will surely kick the bucket one of these years.
ReplyDeleteI'm could sure I could keep my Favorites in a left sidebar like a normal person, but I don't like it cluttering the screen.
No home page, just the Google Chrome start screen of your most visited pages and last closed tabs.
ReplyDeleteI use msnbc.com.
ReplyDeleteI will be another vote for igoogle.
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite use of the blog ever. I don't know when that OMG! thing started, but it makes me want to throw something at the computer.
ReplyDeleteAnother vote for the Google Chrome start screen.
ReplyDeleteI currently have three starting tabs, if you'll believe: Gmail, facebook, and this thing.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of my favorite place on the Internet (besides here) - www.isitchristmas.com.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia here.
ReplyDeleteI have a home page but because I use the last open tab feature so much it generally doesn't open there. I like bbc.com
ReplyDeleteI think the answer is part embracing the ability to have more than one "homepage," and part figuring out what that page should be. iGoogle is great, if that's what you want (and, based on these recs, I think it's going to be one of my pages now), but there's no need to constrain yourself to just one thing.
ReplyDeleteI actually use two browsers, since my current workplace uses Microsoft Exchange, and that works a lot better in IE than Chrome. IE opens my work email, hotmail, and Netflix (instant movies do not play in Chrome - at least not on my machine). Chrome opens fake sports pages at Y! and ESPN; if I want to go somewhere else, I open a New Tab, and there's my most visited sites.
I've actually been using igoogle for a few years now, but have been on the lookout for something that's a little more streamlined. Right now, I'm playing around with netvibes.com and liking it.
ReplyDeleteI open whatever tabs I had open previously (usually about 30.) My home tab is always Gmail, but if I used a landing page/portal it would either be iGoogle or Netvibes.
ReplyDeleteI sitll have a my.yahoo.com page that I visit fairly often, but only for movie times. I haven't found other pages that let me save a list of specific theatres and show all of the showtimes on one page.
Left side-what?
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting thing about reading this is seeing how people set up their web browsing.
The sense I get is that everyone figures out something that works for them, and that rarely changes unless they get a new computer/browser or their homepage starts putting OMG! everywhere or something else drastic forces their hand. Seriously, if your Excite homepage has exactly what you need, why would you change it?
I used igoogle until I switched over to Chrome about 3 months ago, and then I didn't really need igoogle anymore. Like a few above I just use the Chrome browser.
ReplyDeleteI too am a fan of iGoogle- so customizable!
ReplyDeleteOn my work PC, Drudge Report; on my notebook, just Google; on my home PC, this blog.
ReplyDeleteThat guest was me, got a new computer at work.
ReplyDeleteI use iGoogle as well, but I have the Yahoo entertainment feed in my RSS reader, and HELL YES that OMG thing is the worst. Especially when it's deployed improperly. OMG! Reese went shopping today! OY. Makes me want to punch myself in the face repeatedly. (because I a little bit care where Reese shopped, but I'm so not all OMG about it. Yeesh.)
ReplyDeleteAnother ancient dinosaur here. With every "improvement" I like My Yahoo less (although I don't seem to have the OMG issue). Perhaps a dumb question, but do you have to log into Google to use the iGoogle home page?
ReplyDeleteI used to be able to read Doonesbury (or any of a large selection of comics of my choice) on my home page without clicking through. I can't do that anymore and would love to have that back.
iGoogle. Whyever not?
ReplyDeletethere is a dummy igoogle page that you don't have to log onto, but it won't have the right weather and you can't customize, but once you set up your own igoogle, just log in and it is there.
ReplyDeleteThat was a HUGE hit with the spacies.
ReplyDeleteso thanks!
ReplyDeleteJust Google. (Although apparently I'm way behind the times and need to switch it up to iGoogle.)
ReplyDeleteI use my workplace's homepage at work. So used to that that I expect the home button in a browser to take me there when I'm on any campus computer (which is not the case).
ReplyDeleteI'm a rebel (in this crew at least) and simply use CNN.com.
ReplyDeleteMy home page tabs are Yahoo, CNN and MSNBC. I guess I should admit that the reason I have Yahoo is not for headlines, etc. but for web searches. Yes, it's true, I don't Google, I Yahoo. I used a search engine YEARS ago which was bought by and became Yahoo. Haven't moved since. For some reason, I like the results I get there better than my Google results. Although I do love Google maps!
ReplyDeletetwo tabs: google and this thing
ReplyDeleteI always used to like Infoseek. Mainly because I knew that if you put "+" before a word, it would only return searches that had that word in it. I'm sure that there are other searches that have this kind of hard filter, but I don't know it, so Infoseek was great.
ReplyDeleteI also used to love Yahoo's categorization. I liked that there was this kind of directory of the entire Internet. I could click on "hobbies," and then "woodworking," and it would just have a list of woodworking sites. Or I could click on Yahoo Sweden and click on "hobskumachisch," and then "arborfabrichen" (I'm guessing; I don't speak Swedish), and it would possibly give me a relatively comprehensive list of woodworking sites ending in .se. Extremely important for research on nu metal. Anyway, I remember the day when Yahoo dramatically collapsed its categories, and then the day a year or so later when it did away with them in their entirety. Those were the two days on which Yahoo became 90% less useful than it had been before.
Might I also recommend the Star Wars Weather Forecast?
ReplyDeleteChrome's pinned-tabs feature is awesome. I use the same set of five pinned tabs at home and work: gmail; google reader; a google spreadsheet I use every day; tripit; and instapaper. My new-tab page is the standard Chrome page with eight frequently-used sites.
ReplyDeleteI'm set up in a similar way: Chrome with a few pinned tabs.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Finn: awesome. Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteThe spacies are now recommending http://isithalloween.com/
I too am a fan of iGoogle. It's what My Yahoo! was supposed to be, except it works and isn't plastered with advertising.
ReplyDeleteIf it ever kicks the bucket, you can likely replicate it in a Google Page.
ReplyDeleteGoogle has that sort of filter: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
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