Home page

A few years ago, and long before aggregators made their appearance on the web, I made myself a home page. Although I am not a programmer (I just opened up Front Page and played with it), I managed to include in it all I wanted. The design underwent a number of transformations: I experimented with frames, graphics, java applets, but eventually came to the conclusion that simplicity would win the day.

The page now has a news ticker on top and a drop-down menu with useful links such as exchange rates, unit converter, thesaurus, country profiles, etc. On the left of the main body, a few feeds with the latest articles about what interests me (top stories, africa, europe, middle east, technology, science), and on the right, my regular "favourites" (news, blogs, reference, etc.).

For years this has served me well; no site would offer me the same level of configurability. The other day though, I stumbled upon the Microsoft Sandbox site (research projects); it directed me to a fantastic beta portal that I might well - when it is launched - adopt as my start page. Give it a try (use IE to test it for the moment; it acts a bit funny with Firefox, but they have promised full compatibility).