Computer

Tech-y StartPage

7,727 Comments

I have spent hours upon hours trying to find the “perfect” startpage. I have come to the conclusion that there is none; at least for me. I want a way to include feeds, mail, pictures of Hob and Istar, my Vimeo vids, my calendar, and more. All of the startpages pretty much offer these things, but in different ways.

I, like many others, started with igoogle, which was fun for about 15 minutes. Not too long after I designed my page to my satisfaction, they forced a lot of dead space on users by moving the tabbar to the left. That, and the fact that theming is so very limited meant that I needed an alternative, which led me to Netvibes. Netvibes is one of the best presented options I’ve used, but the lack of true customization leaves me a little unsatisfied (for instance, there is only one theme that does not have glaringly white widget backgrounds and the “extra” customizations, such as tabs, look cheap). Do not let their claim to have 1000s of widgets woo you…most are third party widgets, which always look tacky and include links to the widget’s “home”. Blech.

Pageflakes was my next trial, and I really like the flexibility it offers, but the native design looks very 1995, and not in a good way. It is by far the worst looking option, but has some really great flakes. Shame, really.

While searching for ways to overcome the issues I have with the above-mentioned sites, I found a link to Protopage. This is my preferred page, and I love it up to 95%. The lack of love is for an (apparently) outdated feed reader that can’t even find half the feeds I give the exact address for. I can circumvent this problem by using Feedburner feeds, which seem to work 100% of the time, but it’s still a gripe. Another gripe I had was that my thumbnail images weren’t showing up in my own feeds, but they were in everyone else’s feeds. I solved that problem by not using the “singlepic” function of the Nextgen Gallery plugin. Again, this is a non-issue with other readers, so I’m not sure why Protopage can’t handle them. Since there is no real calendar option beyond the most basic, I’m able to use my ics calendar from Netvibes, and include it as a widget on Protopage by use of the “webpage” widget. Niiiice. Widgets can be free positioned and resized, colored any way you want, and choosing a background is much easier than in other services. There are basic ads at the top of the screen, but you can close them forever (or until you reload) with one click, then they collapse. Not too bad.

The latest, and definitely most fun, option I found this weekend is Schmedley. Since Schmedley is so new, there is very little to choose from, but given a few more “schmidgets” and the option to resize the schmidgets (they are HUGE), this will become my favorite. The Gmail reader is wonky as hell, as it pulls emails from archived and trashed mail and never from my inbox, but the POP Mail seems to work a little better. The retro design of the logo and amazingly cool backgrounds make this a top contender for me. I just hope development continues!

If you try any of these out, let me know what you think!

7,727 thoughts on “Tech-y StartPage”

  2. Aw, this was an extremely nice post. Taking a few minutes and actual effort to produce a really good article… but what can I say… I put things off a lot and don’t seem to get nearly anything done.

    Reply

  13. When I initially commented I seem to have clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and now every time a comment is added I get 4 emails with the same comment. Is there an easy method you are able to remove me from that service? Kudos.

    Reply

  45. I blog often and I truly appreciate your content. This great article has truly peaked my interest. I’m going to book mark your blog and keep checking for new information about once per week. I opted in for your Feed as well.

    Reply

  46. I’m not sure why but this web site is loading extremely slow for me.

    Is anyone else having this problem or is it a problem on my end?
    I’ll check back later and see if the problem still exists.

    Reply

  50. We are a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community.
    Your website offered us with valuable information to work on. You have done an impressive job and our whole community will be grateful to you.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *