JC - Technology and Stuff

When the Internet first came out (that makes it sound like some product you buy), the concept of a ‘home page’ was a pretty non-existent thing. In my case, back in 1995, I usually opened the Internet to yahoo.com. Things have come a long way since then! Things have come a very long way come to think of it. When I first discovered the Internet I was amazed by it. There weren’t millions of general things available like there are today, in fact most sites were really niche sites, but it was amazing nonetheless. It took a couple more years for the Internet to really become a mainstay, but by the very late 1990s it had established itself as here to stay. Also in the late 1990s, websites started to compete to have you ‘bookmark’ them as your ‘homepage’. I went with Yahoo. I can’t remember when Yahoo first introduced my.yahoo.com, but ever since they did I became a huge fan of it. The ability to keep ‘pages’ of personalized content always at my fingertips was a great win for me. As they continued to roll out improvements, I sucked them up and for many years my.yahoo.com was my homepage. Sure I tried other content providers (like Netvibes) but they never managed to hold my long term attention like My Yahoo did. Up until as recent as 2 years ago this was ‘the’ page that my browser (Firefox of course) opened up to.

Then a funny thing happened. Yahoo seemed to lose the plot a little. Other companies were really starting to liven up the Internet experience a little, offering widgets, mini-feeds, playlists, and all sorts of other things, but Yahoo basically kept to the old interface and slowly slipped behind. For several months I neglected my.yahoo.com and I didn’t really miss it. Instead I went through a period where I had no real homepage. My browser would open up to Yahoo but from there I went all sorts of places and never kept a copy of my.yahoo.com open in a separate tab.

About 18 months ago I started to use iGoogle when they first rolled it out (of course I may be a little off on my recollection of timing). I immediately liked the themes they had available to pretty up the pages you could set up. I also like the fact that there were widgets from all sorts of companies available to further enhance your pages. Very soon I had a new homepage; something a little more up to date and something I kept on coming back to. Time passed and Google continued to roll out updates to their portal. Now with the latest version of iGoogle, the possibilities are endless.

There’s even a feature to expand individual widgets to the complete page (and then shrink them back afterward) which is really convenient if you have your calendar for example as a widget on the page. Suddenly there’s a useful home page again. Sure, the functionality of it’s changed a little. I don’t use it so much for reading the news now like I used to. But now at a glance I can easily see the weather, the time, my email, my calendar, the traffic, my horoscope, my todo list, have a notebook handy and read some comics. Pretty impressive. I could also add some online music, and some videos if I wanted (come to think of it, I may even do that at the weekend). I actually have several ‘themed pages’ on iGoogle, organized by topic. I like that!

But you know what’s weird? I’ve found that I don’t have or use just one homepage any more. The Internet has diversified and I too use it in a diversified fashion. My browser at home is set to always open with the set of pages that I last closed it with. And guess what? I usually have at least half a dozen pages open at once. What are they? Well for the record they probably include:

• Google reader
• Yahoo email
• iGoogle
• Facebook
• My blog admin page
• Either my online banking page or my work email
• A couple of articles that I’m currently reading

As you can tell, I spend a lot of time hooked up to the Internet!

So, a few final thoughts on this topic before I close for the day:

• The Internet is only as useful as we want it to be
• The way in which we use the Internet evolves over time
• The Internet is not a substitute for real life

I am confident that in another 5 years time the way I use the Internet (well actually my computer) will be totally different than today. My needs will change and the content available will change too. The day that a 3-D virtual library is available on my desk is fast approaching. On that day I will be able to network with anybody whenever I want to while simultaneously glancing at the weather and having my email read to me. The movie I was watching will be automatically paused and the meal that was cooking in the kitchen will notify my PC that it is ready to eat.

On that day I’m not going to need a ‘homepage’ any more!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Home, Technology, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.