![protopage.png](\"http:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/protopage.png\")
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Where does your browser start? Currently mine goes to Protopage<\/a>. A lot has changed with this free service since I blogged about it almost a year ago. The main thing that I now notice every time I open my browser is the sluggishness of the site. Sometimes my browser will take fifteen to twenty seconds to load my page. I don\u2019t know if Protopage is bogged down or if I have too many items on my start page. It\u2019s probably a little of both. I am very demanding of my start page. I have a dozen RSS feeds bringing all the news I want to one page. Three different sets of links get me to UF, Popular and Course related pages. Of course I have the local weather and quick notes to myself (the killer app of the Web 2.0 start page). I have five different computers pointed to my start page. From any of those computers I can make a change and it is instantly available to all the machines. On top of that, it is password protected so I am the only one that can get to it.<\/p>\n Over the Easter break I plan to look at some different start pages and decide if I want to make the jump to something new. It won\u2019t be the first time that I have changed. Ten years ago, my start page was always my server at my office. You can find it on the WayBackMachine<\/a>. If you want to see something really funny, check out the link to “searchs<\/a>“. Alta Vista was the top search engine of the time and Google wasn’t even on the list.<\/p>\n At some point I realized that my \u201cfavorites\u201d (bookmarks) were being saved on my computer as an HTML file. I found that file and made it my start page. I made a copy of my bookmarks page and loaded the HTML on my laptop, my office desktop and my home computer. The only problem with this was changing it. Every time I added a link, I had three places that needed the update.<\/p>\n By the time 2000 hit, I was connected enough of the time that I went back to a web server based starting page. My own server had a page I called the Intranet.<\/p>\n I switched to the UF server in 2002 – http:\/\/homepages.findlay.edu\/trusty<\/a><\/p>\n I used the UF page until early 2006 when I switched to Protopage. Before starting with Protopage, I looked at several similar services.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.netvibes.com<\/a> All the biggies have their own start pages tied to your personal account.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.google.com<\/a> I even thought about making del.icio.us<\/a> my start page since most of the resources on my start page have always been links. Google\u2019s browser sync<\/a> is similar. Ten years ago either would have worked great. Now I have notes, lists and dynamic content. A list of links isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n I have start pages on all the popular sites and I plan to explore how each one can make my browsing more productive\u2026 and fun. I\u2019ll check back in when I\u2019m finished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where does your browser start? Currently mine goes to Protopage. A lot has changed with this free service since I blogged about it almost a year ago. The main thing that I now notice every time I open my browser … Continue reading
\nhttp:\/\/www.pageflakes.com<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.goowy.com<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.live.com<\/a> (Microsoft)
\nhttp:\/\/my.yahoo.com<\/a><\/p>\n