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Microsoft Unveils New Start.com

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

September 1, 2005, 4:22 PM

MSN on Thursday took the wraps off a new version of its Start.com customizable portal. The new version includes support to indicate what feeds have been read or unread, automatic updates, as well as capabilities to show more or fewer headlines based on a user's preference.

"It's now available without puzzles or obfuscation, at http://www.start.com (although still a "preview")," developers wrote on the project's Web log. The group is asking people to send their comments to startfb@microsoft.com.

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By vmirage

edited Sep 13, 2005 - 8:24 AM

gee... don't like the way it return the search though. and a bit dull in culour.... :P

http://kelvinfoo.blogspot.com

Score: 0

By benj72

edited Sep 6, 2005 - 7:40 PM

I've done a little comparison of the Google and Start.com offerings.

http://teamaskins.net/pivot/entry.php?id=101

Score: 0

By reidyn

posted Sep 4, 2005 - 2:12 PM

Although I prefer the more comprehensive customizable pages such as Yahoo, these new drag-and-drop pages are nice. What is a shame is that Microsoft can't design their stuff to be as attractive or functional when viewed with Firefox as with IE. Other sites can do that, why can't Microsoft? MSN isn't even draggable with Firefox, Exchange webmail is crap with Firefox, and now start.com looks like crap with Firefox. There is no reason for this other than to make it appear that IE is more functional.

Score: 0

By robocellkid

posted Sep 3, 2005 - 4:32 PM

Wow...similar to Google's customizable homepage...little too similar

Score: 0

By ThePain

edited Sep 3, 2005 - 6:47 AM

haha .. this is golden
start.com works perfectly on FF/DP....
http://img376.imageshack.../5161/ffstartcom0yd.png

...but causes a js error on IE6 XD
http://img376.imageshack.../7748/iestartcom3nc.png

Score: 0

By UTAKER

posted Sep 2, 2005 - 10:02 AM

okay it looks nice so what, no support for opera browser so there it goes out of my test drive

Score: 0

By dumaiso

posted Sep 1, 2005 - 11:59 PM

It doesn't open in Opera, at least here.

Score: 0

By sflorack

posted Sep 1, 2005 - 8:44 PM

There is always www.myway.com; excellent personal startup webpage.

Score: 0

By netwiz562

posted Sep 1, 2005 - 6:49 PM

Start.com is not a copy of Google, they were developed independently, infact Google had more chance to copy Start.com. Start.com came first.

Also, IMO, although I like Googles personalized page, theirs is not that attractive looking, just a little to much color clutter. Googles UIs are usually nice, but that is not one of their impressive ones. IMO, Start.com looks better, but its customizability is not that great.

SBC Yahoo has had a pretty nice customizable portle page for a while, lots of stuck, but useful and cleanly designed.

Score: 0

By PhoenixPath

edited Sep 1, 2005 - 5:29 PM

Wow.

Just visited. Is it just me, or is it a blatant rip-off of Google's? I mean....

wth?

My god...it's like a friggin mirror, only with that nasty feeling of dread that MS seems to radiate.

I guess a little competition for Google can't be bad, but a nearly exact copy? Did they think people would miss this, or just not care?

Can't seem to get headers from my MSN account using this service. I suppose there's an RSS feed somewhere to get your email headers...

Also can't seemt o find out where to adjust the amount of headlines for the specific feeds.

And why the hell does clicking a headline on my betanews feed not lead to the article, but instead, an annoying pop-up with an article 'preview'??? [EDIT] have to click the little ">>" thing at the end of the headline...*shudders again*[/EDIT]

Wow... Google's beta was better, but that's just my opinion. *shudders*

Score: 0

By ClydeJ2

edited Sep 1, 2005 - 6:43 PM

This has been in development since before Google's site was released. Here is one of the Start.com developers comment on the topic:

http://slashdot.org/arti...pl?sid=05/08/03/0016223

Neither site is exactly doing anything revolutionary here so claiming one copied the other is pretty silly.

Score: 0

By PhoenixPath

posted Sep 6, 2005 - 12:16 PM

Lots of silly folks around here. And you linked to a comment from a slashdot article. C'mon ... gotta do better than that.

:P

Score: 0

By THZGryphon

edited Sep 1, 2005 - 5:55 PM

Why should they not be the same? It is a format that is obviously is attracting users. Applications come out all the time which are similar to existing products because they believe that they can provide a better service than the one that came before it.

Quite a few things I like about it, mainly the ability to add/remove columns and collapsible modules.

(Disclaimer for the fan-boys: I'm not saying they are providing a better service than Google, I prefer Google myself, just saying that they have the right to use the ideas for themselves to try and provide a better service than someone else.)

Score: 0

By PhoenixPath

posted Sep 1, 2005 - 6:34 PM

It just bugs me that it's so blatant...the interface is nearly an exact duplicate.

*shrug*

Add/remove columns I will never use, but it's probably useful to some folks. The collapse thing is actually a good idea and I'd love to see that in Google.

Score: 0

By drumcat

posted Sep 1, 2005 - 5:13 PM

Portal? Puhleeze. Don't insult me.

Score: 0

By pafinator11

posted Sep 1, 2005 - 4:37 PM

If you ask me I don't like msn or google's start pages. I like the idea behind personalized homepages but disklike the way its being done. It needs more organization and a sleeker interface that sort of connects all the items together.

Score: 0

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