Thing 4 - Custom homepage

With a custom homepage, you can have everything you want to access in one place when you are on the Internet – links to the latest news, weather, sports, and entertainment, access to your email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as all of your favorite Web 2.0 sites, just to name a few.

In this Thing, you will create a custom homepage or, if you already have one, review and revise it.
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To complete Thing 4 you must:
A. Explore and review homepage services
B. Create (or review and revise) a custom homepage
C. Reflect on Thing 4 on your blog
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A. Explore and review homepages -
Wikipedia defines a start (or home) page as “a website or page meant to organize links or information for the user when a web browser starts. Start pages generally consist of information like news, weather, games, and other web widgets and web gadgets. Start pages also aggregate information like RSS feeds or collect and manage web page links.”

To the uninitiated, homepages often look like meaningless clutter. However, upon further examination, you will see that they are the ultimate management tool and can be synched to Smart phones and other devices. Personal calendars, weather reports, breaking news feeds, links and widgets to all of your favorite places (email, Twitter, Facebook) are all organized in one site every time you access the Internet.

Before you begin to create (or review) your own homepage, take a look at 3 popular sites that offer this service:

Netvibes

Pageflakes

iGoogle

Now check a feature by feature comparison of personalized home pages from mashable.com

B. Create (or review and revise) a custom homepage -

Select a service and create (or revise) your own custom homepage.
Still not sure of what to do? Take a few minutes to watch this quirky YouTube video titled Make Your Own Custom Homepage Now. Click here for a direct link to the video if you have problems opening the embedded video below.





C. Reflect -
What service did you choose? Why? What are some of the items you included on your custom homepage? What kind of widgets or links could you add to your homepage that would enhance instruction?