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Startpage Mash-up!
The most comprehensive startpage review available…
To continue the weekly series reviewing, exploring, and living Web 2.0… Last week we introduced startpages.
Quick Note for those who feel left out: Web-based startpages(aka AJAX/Flash homepages) are nifty sites aimed at making your web life easier by putting most-needed services on one page. Check out my entry last week describing them. There are lots of them and they’re all free.
Go to the winner list…
Go to the reviews of the top 3…
Go to the score chart…
There are so many different options for what you can use for a startpage. In fact as I explored the list I gathered together last week, I discovered a few more. Some have big names with them, but surprisingly (or not) it doesn’t seem to guarantee quality. The startpage market has come into its own as something distinguished. I looked through 20 different options, which exhausts the lists of other older comprehensive reviews I found. For the sake of information, feel free to check them out: 14 Personalized Homepages Compared, Feature by Feature (June 2007); Top 12 web-based Startpages Compared. The winner is… (February 2007); and Alpha Geek: Start-page showdown (March 2007). My research even dove me into the world of easy-to-make webpages (now finally taking advantage of AJAX) and so I decided to draw the line of this review at the specific mention of startpage or a clear adherence to the concept. You can catch links to these page builders at the end of this entry. They do though provide a highly customizable option to developing a startpage.
To come up with a fair way to judge I had to come up with categories and an appropriate scoring system. I tried to think of the things most important to a startpage user. The categories I decided on are: user friendly, basic functions, looks, site layout, RSS handling, tabs, widgets, speed, a useful community, and an extras category. The overall scores were determined via an averaging of scores in all categories, you can view these at the end of the entry. The category winners were determined by which had the highest score in the category. If there was a tie, it was broken by which had the highest overall score.
Each was scored on a scale from 0-5. Zero - zilch worthwhile in the category. Five - I couldn’t have asked for much more in fulfilling the category.
User Friendly - How initially intuitive the functioning of and interaction with the site is.
Basic Functions - Whether or not basic functions expected from startpages are included. I considered RSS, email, calendar, todo, notes, and a few other things that my mind more than likely took note of.
Looks - Did it catch my eye or cause an eye-sore? Mainly, would I want to see it opening up in my browser every day.
Site Layout - Taking a close look at if the structure of the site made sense, displayed well, and felt like an asset to the functions offered.
RSS Handling - First, is there something to manage RSS feeds. Second, how worthwhile is it?
Tabs - Are they there? Also, looking at the functionality of them; if they drag, are easily created, and etc. or not.
Widgets - Variety, quality, number, organization, and integration were key factors in evaluating widgets.
Speed - Simply how fast it seemed to load and how quickly the site responded to user interaction.
Useful Community - Looking specifically at if there is a built-in community and how useful it is. Also, I wanted to see if there was any effort for one community to share/interact with another. Finally, I took into account permanent or shareable links to created startpages and their tabs.
Extra - This was a section to give extra points for unique features, overall site impression, and anything else that was hard to account for in the other categories.
The Winners!
Overall: Netvibes
And by category…
User Friendly: yourminis
Basic Functions: Netvibes
Looks: yourminis
Site Layout: yourminis
RSS Handling: Netvibes
Tabs: Netvibes
Widgets: Netvibes
Speed: iGoogle
Useful Community: Pageflakes
Extra: Symbaloo
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