Is your homepage downright boring? Try these alternatives
The term Web 2.0 is the direction that the Internet is evolving into to. This is ideally going to provide better communications, improved online collaboration, and tools to provide everyone with a feature rich up to the minute experience. I’m sure you’ve heard the terms RSS (really simple syndication), which is similar to a collection of headlines condensed and delivered to you via website, or an rss reader software program. RSS is one of the more popular buzzwords that are at the forefront of Web 2.0. If you have upgraded to Internet explorer 7, you may have noticed the RSS logo is built into the browser.
You can even subscribe this feed via RSS! You might even be reading the headline of this article in your rss feeds. Along with RSS feeds are something called blogs, or web logs. These are online diaries if you will – that serve everything from the blog owners opinions, to product reviews and RSS feeds.
Popular community sites such as www.myspace.com, www.flickr.com, and www.youtube.com are all driven by the users that upload their videos, pictures and comments. This helps to drive a trend called social networking. Social networking offers content from the users, as opposed to content from the owners of the site. The public can share videos, photos, stories, opinions and advice. They can also rate this content by popularity, accuracy of the information, and quality of content. What does this mean for you? Well, for starters, you can use these tools to build a better home page. You can easily share your information with others. Family photos, videos, or whatever you wish.
Home page web sites have now also evolved – now you can completely build your own. You can add the content you want, organize the colors, background, layout, tools and utilities, as well as the content that YOU want.
Building a better home page requires a few simple choices. First and foremost is the appearance – the eye candy effect. http://www.pageflakes.com/, http://www.netvibes.com/ and www.yourminis.com, are a selection of websites that allow you to build your own home page. Second, is content – what do you want on this page? One example may to have your favorite news headlines, stock quotes, a calendar, all your email accounts (most of us have more than one) a video player, an mp3 player, and the weather updates.
You can add from hundreds of free tools and utilities. The process of building a customized home page is simply drag and drop. The elements of your home page are modules that can be placed anywhere you like on the page. You may create tabs, and sub pages – without having to know any programming of any kind.
The RSS or news headlines themselves, well are completely customizable. You specify what site you want the RSS feed from; where you want the RSS feeds to be on your page, and when to deliver these headlines. The best part of all this – it’s completely free, and completely portable! You can use this customized home page anywhere you have internet access.