When you fire up your trusty Internet browser, you're faced with what is known as the ''start page''. Lately I've been exploring ways to make that start page more useful and enjoyable.
Now, a lot of companies want you to use their ''start page'', and if you want to see what's on offer, pay a visit to msn.com, aol.com, yahoo.com and so forth. But for this week's Internet Site of the Week, we're going to go to a place where you can make the page more your own, putting on it content that you actually want to see. This site is called www.netvibes.com.
Now, like the other sites I mentioned _ another word we could use would be ''portal'' _ Netvibes allows you add content and remove content as you fit _ PLUS, you can add tabs, which are additional pages, and they have a huge gallery of ''widgets'' (little programs like Clocks, email checkers and whatnot) that can add to your page. As an additional bonus, you can drag the boxes/widgets around and arrange them on the page any way you please.
When you first call up the site, what you'll see is the weather (which can be set to Bangkok or wherever you are), a news widget with items from the Bangkok Post (for those of you with Thai IP addresses) and a widget for ''Flikr's Most Interesting Photos''.
But it goes much deeper than that.
That first page is the ''General'' page. You can name it, if you like. Click on the tabs at the top of the page to bring up more pages with more things to do. Netvibes can automatically check email providers like Yahoo!, Google, Hotmail, AOL and more. It provides you with a widget for your ''social network'' of choice (Facebook or MySpace), and on the right hand side it shows you Google maps.
You can explore on your own. You can easily remove widgets that you don't want to see or use just as easily as you can add them. You can make as many pages as you like and click through them on the tabs. And if you sign up, your choices will be saved and you can use the pages you made on any computer.
Worth a look!
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About the author
- Writer: Gotfried. K
- Position: Writer
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