国外几大个性化首页服务比较

What Makes a Start Page?

Start pages have been around since the days of baud modems and cheap 28-56k dial-up access. In the early 90’s, the first thing to show up after you double-clicked on those pixilatedNetscape,IE, orMosaic icons was [most likely] a portal of some kind, loading at strenuously slow rates, giving you html in all its plain-spoken glory. Maybe with a few faint traces of basic Java thrown in.
The Web was a geeks-only arena at the time, to put it bluntly. Since then, we’ve gotten online commerce, inexpensive domain-with-hosting bundles, and bandwidth more and more astounding the further east from the American West you go. All of those ingredients have led to an insurgence of increasingly powerful amenities ingrained in Web 2.0, and it hasn’t stopped before it reached the start page category. The title of “portal” has been passed on, but its purpose has changed.
You can get headlines at today’s “portals”, but the headlines themselves encompass not onlyReuters reports, but highlights uploaded toYouTube, posts on blog feeds, and more. We can thank RSS for these all-in-one conveniences, but despite the fact that the data has surged dramatically since our dial-up days, enterprising individuals have made it increasingly easy to sort it all out and help us find the best of the best. In fact, some might allege that what’s available now is more navigable and consumable than theYahoo! pages of yore.
TakeYourminis. It does the job of disseminating news, music, video, and more from sites you’ve requested that information from into candied widgets that you can eat up through your own unique methodology. No more is it Yahoo! dictating what you see when drinking your morning coffee. You see what you want, regardless of what Yahoo wants to push into your browser space. Yourminis will likely only amass a few thousand regular users (perhaps a million or so at peak levels) in its existence, but if it “fits the bill” for you, don’t let its diminished status among the web’s colossi persuade you to go elsewhere. Choice is everything with Web 2.0.

The variety that comes with the phrase “start page” cannot be encapsulated in any one way. You can choose any site to have as a start page. The simple entry of a URL into the preferences pane of your browser will change what you see at the commencement of your daily Web adventures. That doesn’t mean people solely go by their own moods, however. Popular opinion plays a large role in how we see start pages.
If you’re aDigg fanatic, chances are you’re already seeing it on startup. I myself rely on theGoogle News aggregator to bring me up to speed (in addition to myFT home delivery subscription) on breaking news and odds and ends from a myriad of international and domestic sources. I’m fond of the service because choice is everywhere. An item from theSan Francisco Chronicle can be placed directly above or beneath something fromXinhua,The Washington Post, or theIrish Times. Algorithms do work in democratizing the web, but if you’re a picky individual, there are plenty of services for you too.
Say you want to get a blend from Youtube, some sports headlines, a Reuters feed, the forecast for the next few days, and a simple utility such as a to-do list. In such a case,Pageflakes might please your taste. You’ll need to sign up if you ever want to thoroughly customize your feeds and save those settings to use on a continual basis, but once you’re in, you’re in. You can add pages if you’re crowding your first start page. Plus, withAjax, you’ve got drag-and-drop functionality, and, well, who doesn’t like some Ajax now and then?

Netvibes is a very similar service to Pageflakes, and it is my favorite of the two. I like the layout of the site, the default colors, the abundance of widgets to start you off, the fonts, and the expandable folder to the left, where modules abound. Pageflakes offers more ‘flakes’, though the menu opens along the top of the page. Your preference for one layout or the other will no doubt choose your service for you.

Though I favor Google News over all others, the search giant also offers a page dubbed ‘Ig’, where its trademark white backdrop presents Google’s own selection of widgets (Anyone else getting tired of that “widget” tag?). Nothing special to that ivory backdrop, but it’s benefited Google throughout its existence so I won’t go so far as to downplay its significance here. So what’s the best way to go?
I could side with a service that’s visually captivating but relatively ineffective at grabbing and sorting the reams of data being added to the WWW every day. But I won’t. Of course, I’m not knocking Yourminis. It does a great job at offering tidbits of info to the user. AndGoowy is also a great optioning if you want to send instant messages to friends, play games, store some files, keep a calendar, maintain a web-based contacts list, and don’t mind using an ‘@goowy email address’. But when I think of a start page, I think of something that specializes in one thing and excels at it.
I like fiddling with Flash magic from time to time and definitely do enjoy some YouTube as well. However, nothing works better than getting news if you want news, videos if you want videos, etc. Start pages are meant to get you started, right? They’re not there to be your only means of direction on the Web.
Ok, so really, who’s on top?
I’d really like the see Goowy win the battle of the mashups. It really is a brilliant execution of Flash programming, the widgets are plentiful, and it just looks so darn cool. But in terms hits and passersby, they’re the Fiat to Yahoo!’s Ford. Actually, maybe a better analogy would do, considering the latter is en route to bankruptcy. But you get the picture. It’s the biggest house on the block, and it won’t be giving up its crown any time soon. We can be certain of that.
Netvibes andPageflakes are the models of where Web 2.0 is today, so if anyone’s taking the throne today, it’s one of them. I don’t know which, so I’ll plead ignorance here rather than assert numbers less than factual. The implementation of Ajax on either is without a doubt the best we’ve seen from any start page, that’s for sure. But whether the momentum they’re generating turns into an outright boom, is anyone’s guess.
I like being optimistic, though, so for the sake of healthy growth in the market, and a good prelude to the new year, I predict at least one of them will see its numbers double, triple, maybe even square its user count by next December. Here’s to hoping such events take place.