Websites of the Week - Create a Dynamic Homepage

For this week's Websites of the Week, we are focusing on Dynamic Homepages!

What's your Internet Browser Homepage?  Do you use the NCS Website?  Yahoo?  Google?

Consider making one of these dynamic websites your homepage: Symbaloo, iGoogle, Netvibes, or Pageflakes.

These websites were created specifically with the thought of being a personal homepage.  Many offer the ability to add your own websites and widgets.  Getting access to your important websites might become a whole lot easier!

Symbaloo

Symbaloo is a great site that allows you to organize your favorite websites by topic, using iPhone-like icons, which the site calls "tiles" to access links.  You can easily customize tiles by dragging and dropping them around your page, creating new tiles from your favorite bookmarks, color-coordinating tiles by subject, and more. 

Create a free account to set up your own Symbaloo page.  You can easily make this your homepage on home and school computers.

iGoogle

iGoogle allows you to create your own customized "skin" over the Google search page we've all come to know and love.  Instead of just a simple Google search, you can add your own widgets to get more use out of the page.

Choose a background theme, add customized widgets, like the NYT news feed, Gmail and Google Reader feeds.  Or follow your favorite blogs and websites directly on this page. (Subscribe to the NCS Library blog and get all these great tips directly on your Internet Browser Homepage!)

Netvibes

Netvibes lets you create a personal dashboard by choosing varied widgets and content-channels from dropdown menus. You can easily add news feeds that interest you, and even pre-created feeds regarding certain topics.  Netvibes also allows you to add multiple homepages through tabs, and keep track of other user-created sites.

Pageflakes

Pageflakes is very similar to Netvibes.  It allows you to easily create portals of varied content by selecting modules from drop-down menus. You can easily add widgets, and even pre-created feeds regarding certain topics.  Pageflakes also allows you to add multiple homepages through tabs, and keep track of other user-created Pageflakes.