Seinfeld once quipped "Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is onTV." The joke says something about the sense of unfulfillment, attention span deficit, and profound restlessness that motivates not only channel flipping, but also web browsing... and I guess, by extension, that insatiable acquistiveness that keeps the economy going - especially at this time of year! If any of that resonates with you, you may share my enthusiasm for Pageflakes - in just a few minutes, you can assemble a page full of "flakes" - widgets displaying rss feeds from your favorite blogs - and see what else is on, without even switching channels! It's almost like having that bank of TV screens you also wanted but couldn't afford for your home! A page full of pageflakes is called a pagecast, and can be reserved for your own private viewing, shared with selected individuals, or published on the web for anyone to see. The layouts of individual "flakes" can be customized independently of each other. You can select from a variety of themes for your pagecast, or create your own, as I've done here. For an example of a page that presents an enormous range of information harvested from many different sources, see the the Dublin City Public Libaries pagecast.
Another start page website to consider is Odysen, at http://www.odysen.com. It has free-formatting widgets, multiple pages, and social networking features.
ReplyDeleteA few of the key differences include: ability to integrate multiple news feeds in the news widget; the free-formatting widgets means you can change the size of the widget to whatever you want simply by dragging the corners or sides; and the very minimalistic look and feel, giving the user the most control over their space.
There is also a blog available with feature updates and page examples, at http://odysen.blogspot.com.