I’ve been using iGoogle for a few years. Mostly happy with it. Shows my new emails, a big honking section to put my favorite links (which constitute about 95% of my surfing needs) a somewhat useful section for news headlines, a decent weather section, and a calendar that I never use.
About six months back, they warned that they were discontinuing iGoogle as of November of this year. Figured I’d start looking into a replacement in September, but iGoogle’s acting up for me today. I click on a link, and the link opens in that small windowed section reserved for the links, instead of opening it full-page. Weird. So I thought I’d accelerate the search for a new home page.
[ul]
[li]Most important thing: links to my favorite internet haunts. I’ve got ~45 in use now on iGoogle, but could probably trim 5-10 and hardly notice.[/li]
[li]I doubt another home page will keep me up-to-date with my gmail account(s). Would be nice, though.[/li]
[li]Weather listing.[/li]
[li]A listing of news headlines, preferably customizable by source.[/li][/ul]
I’m playing with http://www.allmyfaves.com/ right now, but I’m not wild about the graphical links - would prefer a listing, I think, but I might come to accept this. It’s also lacking in every other area I’d like to have. I could link to a weather page and Gmail, and a news aggregator page. All of those links are on my iGoogle page anyway, for when I want more in-depth info on each, but I’ve come to appreciate and rely upon the cursory at-a-glance info iGoogle delivers.
What’cha use as a homepage, and do you have any recommendations based on what I listed above?
OK, I RTFG and came up with some articles related to the end of iGoogle and some suggestions. Thought I’d post one here. Some interesting possibilities.
I’m still fielding suggestions, though, if anyone has a fav to share.
It wouldn’t be too hard to make your own homepage and just save it locally somewhere on your own computer. That way you could put whatever you’d like on it.
My homepage is about:blank and I’m perfectly happy with that.
No point going out on the web and pulling ANY page until I decide where I want to go today.
But I like that idea Chronos suggested. Default page, without having to go out and fetch anything until I decide what. I just might try that, when I get a round tuit.
Yeah, I thought about that, but I never did learn HTML. You could put together a really slick page and have it displayed at the speed of your HD & browser. If I wanted to make a project of it, I’m sure I could cobble a simple links page together (should be relatively easy), but I’ve got enough to do at the moment, and if others have what I want plus more, it’s more effort than I want to put out for the return. Lazy, perhaps, but I’m OK with that.
igHome seems to be pretty good so far. It’s modeling itself after iGoogle, so it’s appealing to me. I’m giving it a whirl.
Since I have 10 up/10 down unlimited(in theory) bandwidth, I’m happy with the half-second or so it takes to throw all my favorite info at me, and then a simple point-and-click to arrive at 95% of all my necessary internet haunts. No typing, no digging through nested bookmark folders. Save that for the other 5% of my internet usage.