If you like just a little distraction when you start up your browser, if you find Twitter and news sites too in-your-face, but a blank page too mundane, try Wikipedia. Yeah that's right, we just linked to Wikipedia, like it's some obscure site we found. Because if you only end up there through Google results, you might have never noticed their elegant, calming home page.
Want to mix up your browser-opening experience by rotating your home page? WhatPage.org, a free service with seemingly no ads or restrictions, lets you paste any site into a list that can hold more than 100, and provides a custom URL to set your home page to. Open your browser and hit home, and one of your pages opens. You control the numbered rotation of the pages, and can re-order at any time. As the site points out, it can also turn your home button into a favourite site click-browser. It's a great free service, but let's guess that our readers have their own solutions for rotating a home page—so let's hear them in the comments. Thanks Mike! what page
Google's launched a new gallery of iGoogle themes by 70 artists of various stripes, including the Beastie Boys, Anne Geddes (!), Reg "Mambo" Mombassa and Jackie Chan. I'll stick with the gorgeous solar system theme for now.
The subtitle of this post should have been "Tabs versus Home Pages: The Showdown". :)Aka Mike posed the question 'how many tabs do you have open for your main web browse of the day'. I always have too many tabs open, so I thought I'd check out his post and the comments to get some ideas for better tab management.Here's my current morning browsing ritual - it basically boils down to 2 Firefox windows - one for writing and the other for reading.Each morning I open Firefox and hit the "Work Time" folder of links that I've set up on my bookmarks toolbar. That opens up my CMS, the Lifehacker AU website and our internal photo gallery - everything I need to start work with one click. Next I open up another Window in Firefox (because I like to keep my work page separate to my reading page) and hit the "Blogs" folder I've also got set up on my toolbar. That opens up my Bloglines page as well as IT Journo (a subscribers-only website for journalists) which gives me access to all the blogs I read. From there I'll open individual stories as tabs if I want to put them aside to read later, or if I want to read the comments on them.There are a few other sites I visit on a daily basis, which include my iGoogle home page (which, if I'm honest, I'm just using to read Twitter via the BeTwittered gadget). I also have Google Talk and Google reader set up on my iGoogle page, as well as the Don't Break the Chain motivational gadget and the Activity Tracker gadget. Apart from Twitter, I also check in on Livejournal and Facebook each day. I'm thinking I should look at centralising my social networking through Friendfeed or Netvibes.So, Lifehackers. How do you manage your daily browsing? Do you lean towards tabs or home pages? Have you centralised through a social networking aggregator or a home page? Tips appreciated in comments.Daily Browsing Tab Count
Want to create an easy-to-navigate home page for the browser on your Wii or any other? Wii Browser, a free page creation tool, lets you create a page full of big, easy-to-click links to set as your homepage. You can also easily edit or rearrange your links from inside your Opera-powered Wii browser, as the site uses a number-based passkey system instead of requiring a login/password, which can get a bit tedious with a Wiimote-controlled keyboard. The main value here is in being able to edit your links from your computer browser rather than through slow screen typing, but it also gives you a Wii-friendly page you can browse to from any system. For another Wii homepage idea, check out Google's Wii-formatted Reader. Wii Browser
