Recently I had a situation where a user couldn’t re-set her homepage using the normal Internet Explorer (IE) options.

This was a problem as the site that was set to her homepage no longer existed and every time she launched IE she would get ‘Page not found’.

In order to resolve this i applied the following registry hack :

1. Winkey + R or Start menu run
2. Type ‘regedit’
3. Go to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
“Start Page”=”http://www.aaronharvey.co.uk/”
4. Change the website to the one you require and you are done.

* Please note that the registry is a very important part of the operating system and you should use extreme caution when making changes.

Foreverhome4me’s ’spokesdog’ Ramona and myself

http://leapfish.com

The best of the web in a click-free search.

Even though Pageflakes is a little clumsier, it has functionality that Netvibes doesn’t.

There’s a category of web software called “start pages.”  These are sites that let you assemble your own Web pages out of widgets, gadgets, and snippets than each implement some specific function.  One of their most important – and oldest – functions is to gather and display news feeds from the Web.  But you can do much more than that with them: you can add a clock, a description of the weather, stock market quotes, check the traffic through popular web sites, create to-do lists, play games, and access other services like Google Mail, or Facebook, all through little boxes on a Web page.

For some people, these start pages are the cat’s meow.

Years ago, I got an account on Netvibes – which remains the leader of the pack in terms of popularity – and thought it was great.  Below is an image with a sample of some of the kinds of widgets you can get on Netvibes.  On the left is Google Calendar running in a widget.  In the centre column is a news feed constructed of items I’ve tagged with “sustainability” in Google Reader, followed by a dynamically updated graph by Alexa of the number of page views on a few of the popular social bookmarking sites.  On the right is the built-in tool to tag and bookmark sites, above a slideshow of one of my picture albums on Picasa.  Clearly, there’s all sorts of things you can do with Netvibes.

A small sampling of Netvibes widgets

You can set up tabs within your Netvibes page to organize your feeds and widgets; it has a good assortment of themes and customizations; and the software looks good and acts right.  Of course, since Netvibes provides a free service, there are the occasional bugs – like some, but not all, of my Google Calendar appointments render with the wrong time zone in Netvibes’ Icalendar widget.  Or that for several months, the Alexa widget showed only 1 site, no matter how many I had configured in to it.

Still, Netvibes is one very smooth Web app.  I especially like their to-do list widgets, that let you interactively reorder the items and change their colours.  Here’s a shot of some of my Netvibes to-do widgets.

Some of my to-do widgets in Netvibes.

Over time, though, I came to realize that start pages can be so much more.

…I’ll skip all the time I spent trying to find just the right way to benefit from start pages.  Instead I’ll just write that in the end, it wasn’t a matter of figuring out how to use all the widgets, but figuring out how to stitch together a number of tools, of which a start page was only one.

Of course, I’d also heard of the iGoogle start page.  I checked a few others, including MyYahoo, and smaller efforts like Sthrt. MyYahoo and iGoogle both had a serious problem: I couldn’t make my pages there public for the world to see.  Since one of the reasons I wanted a start page was to present an aggregated view of information I’d collected for my students and the public at large, this eliminated both MyYahoo and iGoogle.  The other services all had significant problems of one kind or another.

When the dust settled, there were only two players left: Netvibes and Pageflakes.  Netvibes is clean, efficient, and well-run, and their support is just fine.  Pageflakes feels a little clunkier, and there are occasional service outages that don’t seem to be explained anywhere by their staffers.  They are both very easy to use.  If that were all there was to it, I’d've stuck with Netvibes.

But Pageflakes offers a few widgets that Netvibes doesn’t, and these, for me at least, made all the difference in the world.

The Blog and Message Board widgets in PageFlakes

The blog widget might seem weird for a site intended to aggregate the content from other blogs, but it’s very useful.  For example, I have a tab (or a pagecast as they like to call it in Pageflakes-speak) devoted to my recent trip to Sweden.  On that tab, among other things, is a blog widget where I write about what the trip meant to me.  Basically, you can set up tabs for any number of topics, and include a mini-blog that covers just that topic right in the tab itself.  And these blogs support pretty broad formatting (via a WYSIWYG editor), commenting, and their own RSS feeds.

Mind you, it’s not a full-blown blog system (like this one), but it’s plenty good enough for many smaller tasks.

Next is the message board widget.  This widget lets anyone post short messages, including nested replies, as you can see in the image to the left. Different from the blog, which is basically just one-way communication, the message board approximates some kind of chat facility.

Again, no matter what you’re doing on a Pageflakes tab, you can add a message board to let people ask you questions or post other thoughts, which you can then reply to.

The AnyFlake widget is the third great idea at Pakeflakes.  It lets you create HTML either in a WYSIWYG editor or in raw text, and will render pretty faithfully whatever you put into it.  This means you can embed other things – like youtube videos – into an AnyFlake.  Or you can create a surprisingly complex document with many features of HTML (headings, lists, embedded images, links, colour changes, etc.) that will live inside a widget on a tab.  You really can put nearly anything into an AnyFlake.

How does Netvibes compete with this?  Not very well.  While it doesn’t really have a widget like Pageflakes’ AnyFlake, Netvibes does have a number of very crisp widgets that can, between them, handle anything that AnyFlake can do.  Unfortunately, Netvibes can match neither the message board nor the blog widgets in Pageflakes.  All Netvibes has to offer is a Wall widget, on which anyone can write up to 1,000 character messages.  Unlike the blog widget, there’s no formatting, or embedding of images or links in the Wall.  It just doesn’t compare.

In fairness, I will also say that the ToDo widget in Pageflakes is really not up to its cousin on Netvibes.  And that irritates me, because I love my to-do lists.

Of course, Pageflakes has many other widgets, some of which are essentially the same as Netvibes widgets, and others that are substantively different.  You’ll have to explore them on your own.  All I can say is that, for me, the extra functionality of the Pageflakes blog and message board widgets really opens up possibilities; and the consistent simplicity of the AnyFlake lets me generate custom widgets pretty quickly.  As a professor, I can easily see a tab for each of my courses, with a list of bookmarked resources specific to the course, a message board for students to ask questions of both me and the rest of the class, a blog for me to make announcements, a picture gallery of interesting images relating to the course….  All kinds of interesting possibilities there.

In the meantime, you can check out all my public Pageflakes tabs at http://www.pageflakes.com/FilSalustri.  And if you’re looking for a start page that offers a lot of good functionality, then you need to take a good look at Pageflakes.

Tot asa “iesit” la plimbare am dat de o alternativa draguta a unui portal personal sau “pagina personala de start” asemanator variantei oferite de Google, iGoogle sau Yahoo! cu My Yahoo! (mai cunoscute, dar nu singurele)…aceasta alternativa se numeste NETVIBES. Un portal personal este un fel de “homepage” in care iti asterni frumos ce te intereseaza sa vezi gata deschis in fiecare zi atunci cand pornesti browserul tau preferat.  Asa ca poti sa ataugi “casete” care sa te informeze de vremea, sau casete care redau titlurile celor mai noi stiri de pe site-urile alese de tine…slideshow-uri cu poze personale…sau nu. Iti verifica si mail-ul si ti-l afiseaza daca ai cont la yahoo, google, hotmail…poate mai suporta si altceva, dar astea cred ca sunt cele mai folosite.

Personal cred ca e parca mai vesel ca si layout…culori, “manevrabilitate”. Merita vazut…poate va asterneti si voi pe acolo.

Pentru cei care vor si alte variante ar mai fi: PAGEFLAKES, ALOT, MICROSOFT LIVE (Office live, Windows Live)

Card.ly gives you a really easy way to create an online business card containing links to all of your online profiles.  Card.ly doesn’t stop there though – you can also add contact information, an ‘about me’ section, and RSS feeds.

When you sign up, you’ll select a custom URL.  Mine is www.card.ly/molly.  You can then add your usernames for the various social networking sites you belong to like Digg, Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook.  The next step is to create your ‘about me’ section and then add as much, or as little, contact information as you want shown.  You can add your personal Website, your address, phone numbers, and IM usernames.  Lastly, select your design and your page will be set and ready to go.

There is a free account (which is what I used for this screencast) and a paid-for subscription option.  Paid accounts get access to more themes, they’re ad-free, and you can use a custom domain.

To see Card.ly in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

Guzzle.it is a type of news feed dashboard that allows you to select specific topics that interest you, and create a page filled with articles and images about those topics.

You don’t need to sign up for anything in order to get started.  Just select a bunch of topics that you want to read about – I chose screencast, Camtasia, running, vegetarian, NIN, and Social Media.  Those topics aren’t really related, but that’s OK because you can create separators and drag and drop various topics underneath the appropriate section.  When you’re all through customizing your content you can create your page.

You can easily switch to an image view for each of the topics and remove them any time you need a change.  After you create your page, you have the option of saving it by creating an account.

To see Guzzle.it in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

[Thanks for the tip, Paisano!]

Are you fan of Google Chrome? Although it seems faster than Firefox there are some things about the interface, which at one time to annoy.

For starters, you can open your browser you want to see a home page and not a lot of thumbnail links of sites visited recently. But this is set by default in Google Chrome.

Fortunately, there is an easy method by which you can set your browser to display a start page every time when you open it.

Here’s how:

1. Open Google Chrome and click on Tools (button-shaped key top right), then click Options.

2. In the Basics tab, look in the Home and activates this Page Open.

3. In the field beside type the URL of the page you want the browser open each time you use Chrome.

4. Since you are in this option and check the Show Home button.

5. Click on Close and restart Google Chrome. Ready! Now you have a homepage, as nature intended.

Ages ago I was trying to find a cool start page which I could set for my homepage; I’d grown bored of Reader because it stopped me going to other websites. I stuck with /r/funny for a while before switching to the Onion. Ultimately they weren’t giving me what I wanted, so I decided to make my own.

So I made this RSS quilt type thing, and it’s pretty perfect for me at the moment. By default it uses data from the combined RSS feeds of Reddit, BBC, the Guardian, and Ars so it’s a pretty nice pool of information for me. It only shows the headlines too, and that’s all wanted. Putting the body of the articles on would take up way too much space.

Dark items are newer items, whilst lighter items are older. Eventually they get so old they’re barely visible – but you can mouse over them to see it clearly again. Not that I’d want to, if it’s that old I’ve probably already read it. It checks for updates to the feeds every four minutes too, and then inserts them nicely into the page (in an element that you can see, so it’s not inserting elements at the bottom of the page where you won’t notice). It adds new elements in italics too, just to make them extra prominent.

Article order is always randomised

You can change the feed by clicking the modulo symbol in the navigation bar. You’ve got to put the actual RSS feed URL into that though. You can also nab the bookmarklette (click the question mark in the navigation bar) and that will hopefully find the RSS feed for the website you’re looking at when you click it.

Using it in full screen mode is cool. 100% filled with information, pretty much.

Not quite finished yet though, still a couple extra things I want to add: some option (without adding more text to the page) to say “I’m tired of seeing this story, get rid of it” and have that data locally stored in the browser. If the article is a picture post, or at least has a prominent picture in it, then show the picture rather than the headline. Add options to change the gradient from black to lighter to other colours. Dynamically insert an entire new feed (this shouldn’t be that hard, just need to rejig some logic around).

Symbaloo is a personal start page, your personal desktop for the internet created by a bunch of good Dutch scripters. By clicking on a block you surf easily to your favorite websites such as Ebay, FaceBook and zillion of other websites. It’s really fantastic. With this service, you get tiny modules that have been bunched together by default for many of your every day purposes: travel and shopping search, music and torrents, podcasts and RSS feeds. These can be rearranged, added to and deleted, according to your preferences. Symbaloo has left a few boxes empty for you to insert your own modules based on its existing options (such as a weather widget) or a custom URL. A search box in the center of the screen lets you perform a regular keyword search, or a specific search based on a module you’ve chosen; for instance, clicking on the dictionary module gives you the option to do a dictionary.com search, and a drop down menu allows you to choose Merriam Webster or Wiktionary instead. Your actual search results will appear in a new browser window. This is a MUST HAVE

And if you have it…. click on this =>

These are my everyday web tools that makes my day really productive.

protopage/  is a start page that you can customise according to your needs. There you can have you bookmarks, feeds, list and your resources in a nice and customise design.Also can set up a public page. Has been 3 years since it I have been used and can’t leave without it.

zimbra/  provides open source email and calendar groupware software. Check your emails, share multiple calendars, share collaborative projects, tasks and also can upload stuff. Works and synchronise nicely with your mobile/pda.

google search and scoopler/  for real time search scoopler is a really good new toll to know what is happening now on the web.

google alerts/  another tool to keep me  track of topics, people and brands  on the web.

twittter and facebook/ no need to introduction. This is where I connect to people and to get and give information in real time.

diigo/ more than a bookmark page site it also have nice cool features to organise information  like lists, highlights, sticky notes and comments.

dopplr/  this is were I organize my trips share them with friends and work pal.

retaggr/ a central location for my personal info, and a gateway to all my online profiles and networks.

tumblr/ microblog that is easy to post and works really well. Have audio post that I have to try. Check my Tumblr blog.

I will soon add pics of my 9 year old bichon toby. Thanks for viewing my blog. Lots of new stuff comin soon too!

Startpages - Want to get all the information you need to do your job and not clog your inbox or spend hours “surfing the interweb”? I encourage everyone I know to take the time to establish a personal start page. You can add RSS feeds of your favourite trade publications, magazines, newspapers, blogs, or even RSS feeds of Google News searches for any topic.

I’ve scooped people many times on important industry information or even news releases from their own company in this way by looking at my screen every morning for five minutes just like anyone else and no additional work. There are many platforms available, but I use Netvibes (it has mobile versions so I can see it anywhere) , but you can also use iGoogle, My Yahoo, and Pageflakes to name a few. I highly recommend it as a productivity gain and a great way to learn about what is going on in the retail industry, and with relevant organizations and solutions.

SelfScan – Being in self service, I sometimes hear questions about scanning your own items as you walk around with the store. Various organizations have tried this idea and variations on it. I haven’t seen it stick anywhere as of yet. Why not?

A recent article decried this solution as being the way of the future – interesting based on the fact that the technology has been around for years and hasn’t caught on with significant installations. From the customer perspective, it looks like a great idea – you’re walking around anyway – why not scan as you go? Here’s a few thoughts:

Inconvenience - how many times do you pick up things and put them back – more than you think – now add scanning and unscanning every time you do it. NOT ideal for most shoppers who are not patient with technology.

Security - How do you verify customers are taking what they scanned? Check them all at the end? How do you de-activate EAS security tags without an attendant or a station? What about people who dishonestly swap barcodes from one item to another?

Technical Issues - If there are issues on the floor, store staff now have to help people all over the floor instead of at the front end of the store.

Weighable Items - Do you trust customers to weigh items on their own? Most people are honest, but some could mis-identify what they weighed to get a cheaper price for what they buy. With no attendant, who would know? With a clerk to validate and check you out, what is the benefit?

Investment - Technology costs have dropped so this has improved, but wear and tear in retail is legendary – particularly in environments like grocery and DIY. Add the uncertain element of customers who will drop or break units, or even steal them, and costs will rise.

Network Security - Retailers are giving customers unencumbered unattended access to a wireless device that is connected to their network. You can encrypt it, but there is a way to break into everything. Nobody wants to be the next TJX.

Customer Time Savings - Many implementations allow you to go to registers at the end anyway. If you only get a few things, scanning time is pretty negligable. Scanning is a relatively small part of any transaction – it’s tendering that takes the time. Using this solution today, time and effort savings are low, and potential errors are high.

I think scan as you go is intriguing and will eventually get to a point where it is practicable, but there is a lot of work to be done on the operational validation. Retail transacations are a complex balance of browsing, selection, scanning, tendering, and security. With so many elements, there are a million ways to fall down, and no retailer wants to do that today.

UPDATE: According to a recent Washington Post article, these units are in use at Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Food Lion, Bloom. Who knew. I’m still against being audited as it goes against the whole time savings.

eDeals - Mobile coupons are growing. Coupon Sherpa, Yowza, and others are embracing the fact that consumers have a device in their pocket that is rapidly replacing their wallet. With the ongoing decline of paper based newspapers, digital natives and smartphone users becoming a greater portion of retailer wallet share, and the trackable nature of electronic media, expect this trend to continue.

I encourage grocery clients to move away from using paper flyers and towards electronic for the same reasons above. With fewer newspapers in business, expect printing costs to rise, and store flyers to become more expensive. Retailers could reduce their flyer print runs, or reduce the page count and encourage clients to move to the electronic version from the paper. Customer reaction to specials and items can be gauged by click-throughs, and retailers can drive a true interractive relationship with their customers.

Hepimiz insanlık ve doğa için kendilerini adamış organizasyon ve topluluklara yardım etmeyi düşünüyoruz. Ancak her zaman bunu yapmak için maddi imkanımız ya da zamanımız olmuyor.
Krizin, Dünyayı etkisi altına aldığı bu günlerde, ne acıdır ki, bu yardımlara ihtiyacı olan insanlar artmasına rağmen, yardım derneklerinin gelirleri de düşmekte.
Durum böyle olunca, internetin gücünü kullanan iki zekice proje, yardım derneklerini ve yardım etmek isteyen gönüllü insanları buluşturuyor:

replyforall.org kısaca gönderdiğiniz maillerin altına imzanız olarak yerleşen ve yardım etmek istediğiniz kuruluşu/alanı sizin seçtiğiniz bir fikir.
Bu imzanın içinde hem neye yardım ettiğinizi belirleyen bir yazı hem de bir sponsor linki bulunmakta. işte bu sponsor linki, siz mail’i gönderdiğinizde sizin adınıza yardım etmiş oluyor.

startforall.org hepimizin kullandığı internet tarayıcılarının başlangıç sayfalarını dünyaya yardım için kullanmamamızı sağlayan bir araç. Yapılacak şey çok basit, startforall.org‘u tarayıcımıza başlangıç sayfası olarak ayarlıyoruz ve böylece site sponsorları bizim yerimize kuruluşlara maddi destek sağlıyorlar.

Daha ayrıntılı bilgi için: replyforall.org ve startforall.org

Start.io allows you to create a custom homepage, filled with links to all of your favorite Websites and blogs.  You can customize the way your page looks and even choose to be notified when a site you have listed has new content.

When you create your start.io account, you’ll choose a username which will be included in your homepage URL.  From there, all you need to do is create groups and add links to each group.  For example, I created a group called “Music” and added links to my Blip.fm account, MixTape.me, and Pandora.  When I click on my home button in my browser (I set my start.io page as my homepage) I’ll now have access to all of my favorite Websites and blogs.  I can click on a link and be brought to Twitter, Facebook, etc.  You can also choose to have start.io put a little marker next to any of the sites that have new content since the last time you visited.  It doesn’t give you a preview – it just lets you know that there’s something new to look at.

You can customize the way your page looks with one of their available themes and, if you’re so inclined, edit the CSS to give it more of a personal touch.  You can also create your own theme from scratch.

The only beef I have with start.io is that when I click on “Logout” it brings me to another page which states, “Are you sure you want to leave?”.  Yes, I’m quite sure I want to leave which is why I clicked on Logout to begin with.  It’s a very minor detail, and I’m afraid that start.io is receiving a lashing from me because of all of the other sites that do this as well…I just can’t keep my mouth shut anymore.

Other than that, I’m quite happy having start.io set as my homepage .

To see start.io in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

[via Download Squad]

As I spend more and more time on Google, I continue to find really cool things – some are just “fun”, but others are just plain common sense/logical things that really make computer life easier.

Enter the customizable Google Start Page or Home Page.  I spent way too much time playing with this, making it “mine”, but now I LOVE it!  First, I had to make it pink to further discourage my husband from using my laptop.  Then I added some polka dots, just because I like them.  Polka dots was something I didn’t see much of on my “work” computer back in the day, so its a fun change of pace.

Next, I added some truly functional things; weather, my Google Groups (more on those later – another really fun thing!), my ESPN updates, my Gmail, local news updates, CNN and of course, the date/time box in the middle.  My start page covers so many of my needs in one glance.  The best thing is the fact that I can change it, add, delete and tweak it so many ways – the options offered are endless.

As soon as I log on in the morning, I see what the current weather is (important so I know how to dress the kids to leave the house), what the weather will be during the day (so we know what to plan to wear outside for recess) and the expected weather for the next several days.  I can get a glimpse at the big stories in the news, glance and get the latest sports scores (Go Spartans!), and see if there is anything important on CNN.  I can do all of this in a matter of minutes – I can click on the item should I need more than just a quick glance, but in the morning craziness of my house, a quick glance is all I’m usually allowed!

I have just entered the world of Google Reader, so I’m not well enough versed on that application yet to warrant adding it to my start page – I’m reserving that for when I can use the application like an intelligent person, which shouldn’t be too long from now.  But, it is nice to know that once I know what I’m doing, I can add the reader to my page too, which will only increase the value to me.

Finally, I like my Google start page so much, I added it as my Internet home page on my iphone (I just keep impressing myself with all my techno advances).  In some cases it is redundant (I have a weather application on my phone, as well as a news app and my gmail) but nonetheless, it is a cool feature, and one that is so easy to use.

My Google Start Page has changed the way I start my mornings, and has certainly made my initial computer foray of the day better and much more interesting!

I have been using this site for almost a week. It took me a bit to figure out what it was all about and how to use it.

It really works. Once I put my adds in I really started getting traffic. Free Traffic.

I just read an article from someone that rights reviews for good sites and bad. He has been using traffic swarm and so far has no complaints. No bad write up.

 “여러분들의 시작페이지는 어디입니까

 Link HERE

Image via Wikipedia

From EcontentMag.com, I took Ron Miller’s advice: “Want to get to know the inner workings of the EContent team members’ minds? Then check out their blogs, which are well worth bookmarking.”

I’ve inserted the list under the “Trend Watch” link heading.

With the help of the semantic links provided via Zemanta add-on, my WordPress blog site serves an added purpose of being a personal learning environment start page for select interests.

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