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I confess I was one of the first web-geeks in the early 1990s. I vividly recall those incipient AOL days, waiting while that blue bar ticked off the graphics’ progress as they loaded on my Mac SE30 – waiting, waiting, always waiting. By 1994 I think they got rid of the blue bar and you just waited for the actual graphics to load one by one, allowing you the freedom to move to a chat room, or check sports scores without waiting for every darn graphic. Still, you could have baked banana bread from scratch in the time it took for that homepage to come up. Of course, technically it wasn’t really a homepage, because in those days, one never launched a browser. Most of us had no choice: the “homepage” was whatever AOL wanted you to view, and tough beans if you didn’t want to see it.
By 1997, I dumped AOL and started using IE for most of my web needs. I think my very first homepage was Yahoo!, followed in quick succession over the next few years by The New York Times and CNN, before switching back to Yahoo!
These days, I use—count ‘em—four different browsers, depending on what I want to do online, and each one has a different homepage. On safari, I have The New York Times, on Firefox, my homepage is the stat tool for my own website, so I can see who’s visiting my site. On my Mozilla browser, the mental_floss dashboard fires upon launch, making it easier to blog, and on IE, which I very rarely use, I have the browser point to my webmail access.
Sizing up a person’s homepage is like checking out the books they keep on their shelves: you can tell a lot about a person by what they’ve got on display. So I’d be curious to know what you all look at first when you launch the old browser. Stock quotes? Sports scores? The weather? Where do you start your day?
Comments (28)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
Google of course. I have 2 different weather gadgets, the current moon phase, and the Jeopardy Google daily challenge.
posted by Kelley on 6-11-2007 at 4:15 am
My homepage on Firefox and IE is about:blank , because I don’t always follow the same browsing sequence.
If I do set a homepage, it would be Gmail, because it’s most often the first bookmark I click.
posted by Bassem B. on 6-11-2007 at 4:16 am
boingboing.net, because it’s always good to start your day with yarn and yetis(and other sufficiently funky things)!
posted by Jen on 6-11-2007 at 4:26 am
Like you, I often have different reasons for starting my browser; but unlike you, I really only use one browser: Firefox. (On the rare occasion that I find myself needing to visit Microsoft’s website, I’ll use Internet Explorer, but that’s it.)
Therefore, my homepage is The Blank Page. That way I don’t spend time loading a page I have already read or really don’t want to read that day.
posted by William on 6-11-2007 at 5:18 am
Google. Loads fast. And I am instantly ready to search the world and find out information… Did I mention I am a reference librarian? Information access is a necessity!
posted by Jill on 6-11-2007 at 5:28 am
about:blank.
I keep a bookmark folder on my quicklinks bar in Firefox which contains 4-5 pages I almost always have up (gmail, google rss reader, a forum I browse often… and myspace.). Middle click that thing and all the pages load in separate tabs.
I’m sure I could automate the process so that they all load on startup… but I’m lazy.
If firefox didn’t have the quicksearch box built in, I’d probably set my default homepage to a search engine.
posted by Jess on 6-11-2007 at 5:32 am
Right here! What better way to jump in than a quick review of the blogs?
posted by Hal on 6-11-2007 at 5:44 am
Drudgereport.com, I need an update on what, if anything at all, is going on in the heads of those right wing wonks.
posted by Travis on 6-11-2007 at 5:44 am
IE opens four tabs for me… Mental_Floss; Yahoo; My Webmail; & eBay.
I like random info; News; Staying in touch with folks; & Selling Stuff!
posted by Amy on 6-11-2007 at 6:13 am
mental_floss (The fact that the page usually takes an insect’s adult lifetime to load is a testament to how cool you guys are!)
posted by Tealynn on 6-11-2007 at 6:14 am
I have iGoogle. Thanks to the “add stuff” feature, I have my mail and my most important feeds on the first page. Thanks to the “add tab” feature, my home page is five pages deep!
posted by Miss Cellania on 6-11-2007 at 6:26 am
I use Google of course, but visit cricinfo.org, then stansco.com/netchess as my first morning activities.
A recent close third is this site – love your work man.
posted by Dave on 6-11-2007 at 6:41 am
i used to have mental_floss as the homepage, but i had to change it because i always got sidetracked from what i was actually on the internet to do. (because, if it were up to me, i’d spend all day here reading the updates)
now i have the NY times theatre page–that way i can get ben brantley or charles isherwood’s latest insights on the theatre world and/or be reminded that the theatre really isn’t dead and the playwriting career i’m hoping for isn’t completely foolish…gotta have that inspiration to keep plugging along!
(but i do have a quick bookmark for m_f should i need my fix!)
posted by kay on 6-11-2007 at 7:01 am
As a Firefox user, I have numerous websites as my “home page”. Whenever I boot up Firefox, six pages pop up. The Web Comic List, Zug, Gaijin Smash, Mental Floss, Google Calender, and Facebook.
For any news needs I have an RSS feed from the BBC, and emails from the NY Times.
posted by Samantha on 6-11-2007 at 7:41 am
iGoogle – on both safari and firefox. It has my mail, google reader, news headlines from all my favorite sources, weather, a list of my bookmarks – everything I need.
I also like the new theme feature – my city scape looks different depending on the weather and time of day. Amazingly cool.
posted by Emily on 6-11-2007 at 7:52 am
I have iGoogle in one tab, Google Reader (Best thing ever!) in another, and Vitalist.com in a third.
Oddly enough, I have the Google Reader and Vitalist widgets on my iGoogle page as well, so it’s a bit redundant.
posted by Phillip on 6-11-2007 at 9:04 am
My son is a meterologist for the USAF
( 17 years an counting ) and I have become somewhat of a weather junkie. I find it interesting to check the conditions whereever in the world my children happen to be at that moment in time.
posted by Alex Nych on 6-11-2007 at 9:04 am
I was complaining that I was sick and tired of seeing all of the negative stuff that came up when I would start our Internet Explorer Browser. (I had stopped watching the news on TV some time ago. We now use the Firefox Browser.) My hubby aka Mc Smarty told me that I could change it to anything I wanted to. “Really?!?” I said.
So Mental Floss has been my homepage ever since :D
posted by CropTillDawn on 6-11-2007 at 9:06 am
Google. I’m mildly ADD, so it’s really handy to be able to hit “home” and search for that really random thing I just thought of.
Used to have cnn.com as my homepage; now I just look at it for funny headlines and videos.
Oh, and I had the original AOL too (talk about the Internet generation, I had my first email address at 10, when some of my friends didn’t even own a computer-I’m 22 now). I hated waiting for that thing to load….especially when the line was busy and I couldn’t get on…..
posted by Kate on 6-11-2007 at 9:41 am
DeviantArt. It’s nice to start the day with pretty things, and I get to see if anyone has done anything recently.
posted by Sarah on 6-11-2007 at 10:05 am
Mental_Floss! :) I agree with kay, though–it does tend to distract me from the work at hand….
It’s interesting to see what everyone else is using for their homepages. I’ll have to go check a few of them out.
posted by Kristen on 6-11-2007 at 10:30 am
Google. I am an info junkie.
posted by hifidigitalboy on 6-11-2007 at 1:38 pm
Opera opens to my gmail with m_f and the Onion directly above my main tab for easy opening. IE opens to a page I created that is just a list of webcomics that I read on a regular basis so I can keep up with some of them. (Too many to actually keep track of them all. I usually have to catch up later…)
posted by Sara on 6-11-2007 at 7:17 pm
Why would you want to use NSA’s Google? At least if you use Scroogle.org your search results are YOURS, private. I switched a couple of weeks ago when I found out about it.
posted by chelle on 6-12-2007 at 4:27 am
stylus magazine. I am music junkie.
posted by Zeljko on 6-12-2007 at 6:32 am
My computer opens up to http://www.goodsearch.com
It’s a search engine (powered by yahoo’s search engine), that donates a penny to the charity of your choice for every search you do. You can keep the charity you’re donating to the same all the time, or change with every search if that was what you wanted to do. It sure is nice to be able to do something nice by just doing what I’d be doing anyway.
posted by Melissa on 6-12-2007 at 2:21 pm
del.icio.us/popular
And if you used AOL, you’re not “one of the first web geeks.” My first internetting was strictly though shell accounts, thank you very much.
posted by jhn on 6-12-2007 at 8:39 pm
my space :P
posted by JESSICKA on 6-15-2007 at 11:51 pm