Thing 15 - Personal Homepages

What is your homepage? Some people choose a news website, others pick their favorite site, still others just keep whatever home page their computers came with. That's OK! Whatever works for you. This thing will introduce a few options for creating your own personalized homepage on your desktop.

Have you heard the phrase, "there's an app for that"? A personalized home page is similar to someone personalizing their smartphone. Except with homepages, "apps" are usually refered to as "widgets" or "gadgets".  What information do you want to know right away each day? It could be as simple as the weather and a few top news stories. Or it could contain medical journal table of contents and status updates from your favorite social networking site and feeds from the blogs you like to read.

Personalized homepages bring the information to you up front. No searching or clicking on your favorites list.  Choose a homepage and start "adding stuff".  The site will walk you through the process.  Search for a major medical journal or news site to try it out.

Which personal homepage (or "start" page) is right for you?  Explore these options for setting up a personalized home page:

iGoogle

Yep. It's Google again. Continuing it's quest for world domination. Enjoy the ride. If Google is your home page, you may want to consider iGoogle. As long as you don't share a computer with anyone, you can set Google to remember you (like Google could forget you!). That way you won't have to sign in to see your iGoogle page each time you get on your computer.

Netvibes

Netvibes often gets "best homepage" awards in the web world.  It looks nice and has lots of widgets and what-nots.  Try adding an RSS feed. 

PageFlakes

Pageflakes also gets high marks in the world of personal homepages.  The widgets on this site are called "flakes".  Very clean look.

MyYahoo

If you have Yahoo email, this may be your best bet for a personal homepage.  Your emails and various other yahoo news-y features will be on the first page. 

Personal homepages have some social piece to them.  A few allow you to invite friends.  All of them have a widget for Facebook and Twitter so you can interact right from your homepage.

Assignment
1.  Read this article from Mashable on using personalized homepages (start pages).


2.  Choose a personal homepage and, well, PERSONALIZE it!  Add widgets and other fun things.  You could spend the whole hour for this Thing just looking at "themes" for your site.  Um... don't do that.  Pick a theme and get to the adding widgets part.  Fun stuff.


3.  Add an RSS feed to your personal homepage.  An RSS feed could be your favorite blog or a medical journal.

Address the following questions in your blog

What personal homepage did you choose?  Do you think it will help you start your day and become more organized?

What do you like and dislike about personal homepages? 

Why did you choose this Thing?

Record the time spent on this Thing.