For years and years, yahoo.ca has been my Internet home page. I chose it initially because my yahoo mail was easily accessible from there, and because it had a list of headline news stories. I liked being able to see at a glance if there was anything going on in the world that I should know about. I wasn’t looking for indepth analysis of current events from my home page, just relevant headlines.
But over the years, Yahoo News deteriorated substantially. I suppose it was gradual and I just didn’t notice for awhile. The other day I glanced at the headlines and saw that Nicholas Cage had bought a pyramid, and somebody else had secretly adopted a baby. Today I see that Justin Bieber pitched a ball, someone got a perfect score on Dancing With the Stars, and Mariah Carey’s husband bought her a new ring. Oh sure, they mentioned the oil spill, but that was after the tips for having silky summer legs, and the tips for making your towels softer.
I could go on and on about what passes for “news” these days, but I won’t.
Anyway. Even though I’m a creature of habit and I sometimes tend to resist change, I’ve made the momentous decision to change my Internet Home Page.
I’m wide open to suggestions here. What’s your home page? Are you happy with it?
I’m a google girl – that way as soon as I sit down I can easily search anything. Of course, google is also in my task bar so I don’t really need it, but it’s easy.
My home page is Google, and I really like it. I too had Yahoo home page at one time, but not for long. I just love using Google, you can find everything really fast.
I’m kinda geeky. I have FF as my browser and the following tabs that automatically open:
Google reader (the first screen I see)
Facebook
National Newswatch
Wordpress dashboard for Translucid
Wordpress dashboard for my PR podcast
Google Wave
Google Analytics
If you’re looking for news, I would recommend National Newswatch. It at one point seemed to be the upstart to bourque.org, but I deeply distrust Bourque’s choice of stories (he sells access to the headlines), and I find NNW’s page design infinitely more readable and clean than Bourque’s, which I don’t think has been updated since the 1990s.
Failing that, how about CBC, either the main news site: cbc.ca/news or the local: cbc.ca/ottawa ?
Whoops, forgot one of those tabs. I use Freshbooks for time-tracking, invoicing, etc. and that’s on my startup tab list too.
I also use Google as a home page. I do not like a bunch of information staring me in the face when I first open the internet. It begs for my attention and I like to be choosy.
Google.
My homepage? None! I hate opening up my window and having it try to load a page I never end up wanting, so mine is set to load up a blank page. It’s beautiful! Usually I check my gmail first, and then move on to other regular sites, but I don’t like anything to load when I first open my browser, since often I’m loading it to check something specific, and it just slows things down 😛
I cannot live without seeing what the weather has in store for me (yes, I can look out a window but that doesn’t tell me where the rain cells on the radar are, or what the temperature is or is going to be). But I prefer the lean Environment Canada weather web site, not the commercial ones.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/city/pages/on-118_metric_e.html
iGoogle. I pick what I want and how I want it, sort it out at the very beginning, and then it just auto-feeds all the info. Within a glance I’m caught up on local and international news, new docs listed, my calendar, tasks, and a few other widgets that help with the efficiency of my work.
Google #ftw
I made my own splash page with links that I use frequently. Included are: 1) Rogers Yahoo (for mail and news snippets); 2) igoogle.ca (customizable version of google); 3) canada411.ca; 4) weather link (same as Julia’s); 5) Yahoo NHL; 6) other reference links; 7) music links; 8) and favourite blogs.
I’ve set up a “startup” set of tabs in Firefox to match some of those above but I don’t use it as “Home” page for the same reasons as Arden mentioned above, but they’re available as a collection when I’m ready to use them.
My “links” page is great when I’m not at my computer.
Ha ha… that smiley face above was supposed to be an 8 and a ).
8)
Google. (Hey Julia – we’ve been having a major debate about whether Env. Canada or The Weather Network has the more accurate forecasts. I’ve been keeping an eye on each and I think TWN is winning AND they have those great hour by hour updates)
Mine is Google Reader; I can see instantly if I have new blog posts to read, news headlines, ebay and craigslist search results, comics, etc. Reader lets you set a default category to display on opening. It’s really helpful to divide the feeds up by category: news, funny, crafty, etc.
http://www.google.ca
If I want to search for something it makes it easier to just click on my homepage and go looking.
Add another Google to the homepage list.
iGoogle for the ultimate win. You can customize everything on there, adding all the widgets you want (weather, games, news, etc.) and picking your own theme. Tons of themes! Colors, patterns, rotating images, even little characters that go about their daily “lives” throughout the day, which is synchronized with your time zone. I’m a big fan, in case that wasn’t clear. 😀
Dogpile, ma’am. Because, well…
Facebook…is that sad?
Being an anglophile tech wonk:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology
tOM
I have Gmail as m homepage, but as my web portal I use MyYahoo, with all the extra RSS feeds that I want, and I minimize the main one that you can’t get rid of for the same reasons you cite.
– RG>
My homepage is http://www.methownet.com
This site is informative, funny, creative, keeps the folks in my valley connected and as they say: “…a product of about 40 latte grandes”. It’s all about community for me. It’s empowering to find news that I can actually DO something about.
The Guardian newspaper in England because my kids live there and I like to keep up with doin’s in those parts. Every so often I spend an evening hiking through english-language dailies in far-flung places to see what they think of the daily guff in, say, Hong Kong or San Antonio Texas, along with whatever local whoop-de-doo is getting the locals all hot and bothered. Mostly it reveals how white-bread our local affairs really are.
I’m with Julia – Environment Canada (Ottawa). Though, when they took off the moonrise + moonset times two years ago, they nearly lost me.
I’m an iGoogle girl as well. I like being able to pick what I want on there. I have news feeds from the New York Times, CBC, and The Onion plus local weather and my Google reader.
I’ve always used Yahoo.com rather than the .CA version. You can access your .CA account from the .COM, plus there’s a better layout, and the article selection is much better… and they still allow comments, which are always funny.
My homepage is an easy to use Firefox plug-in called ‘Fast Dial’ which lets you set up a ‘homepage’ made of screenshots and links of up to 25 websites. For news I have the National Post, Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Sun, The Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, my local paper, Rotten Tomatoes, TSN.ca and The Score.
The others are mostly tools to help with blogging: Flickr, Photobucket, FileDen, Better WhoIs, Canada411, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google, Site Meter, Bing.com… and SETI@Home.
Any time I open a new tab Fast Dial pops up with the links. If you’re using Firefox I highly recommend downloading the plug-in.
I have msn.com as my homepage. It’s light news an entertainment. I am considering switching to cnn but I think they’re way too serious for me. And then, how would I keep track of things like Nicholas Cage’s pyramid?
bing.com
Google. Because I’m always looking for answers.
I often use katkam.ca because I enjoy the scenery so much. It’s almost always open on my computer, even if there are other windows or tabs.
Mine is simple: gmail’s sign-on page. That’s what I want to see first anyway, when I sign on, so that’s the most practical thing for me.
Google.ca, naturally. Though I’ve been thinking about just switching it to my RSS reader, since that’s usually the first place I end up going half the time anyway. Oh, and speaking of, excuse me. I’m a little behind on my reading. 😉