The Internet has changed a lot in the last twenty years as the days of the flat world wide web have been replaced by the interactive live web. Personal homepages, one stop shops for news updates, calendars, email and everything else, have become more prominent as the web has become so much a part of everyday life. This development could explain the influx of Ajax based homepage products that have been recently catching people's attention and getting funded.
Niall Kennedy recently published a brief history of the programmed personal homepage which is worth taking a look at. It offers a good point of reference in determining how far the homepage has come which could lead to a better understanding of direction homepages are going.
One interesting comment by Greg Linden came from the article's ensuing conversation in which he pointed out:
"The vast majority of My Yahoo users do no configuration at all; they use the default, non-personalized page.
The problem with customizable pages is that they require work to set up. The vast majority of people are unwilling to do work."
This is a great point and as homepages continue to evolve this will have to be taken into account.
*Thank you to Brooke Novak for the image via Flickr and CC licensing.
Sphere ItTrackBacks
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/431977/5907710
Nice info... thanks !! :)
Posted by: Balakumar Muthu | Monday, September 04, 2006 at 08:13 AM
The web has changed a lot in the last 20, for example, it didn't exist for the first 6 of those 20.
Posted by: Terry | Monday, September 04, 2006 at 10:03 AM
The internet!=web
Posted by: Fried Google | Monday, September 04, 2006 at 11:56 AM
Ah, but remember, the "Web (WWW)" and the "Internet" are not the same thing.
Posted by: Andy | Monday, September 04, 2006 at 12:22 PM
To clarify for all...
Internet = 20+ years old.
World Wide Web = 15+ years old.
Posted by: Frank Gruber | Monday, September 04, 2006 at 12:52 PM
Thank you for the clarification. You do "know your stuff."
Posted by: Margo | Monday, September 04, 2006 at 09:52 PM
Internet = Internal U.S. Network only
WWW, obviously, the World Wide Web.
In this day and age however there is so much traffic outside of the U.S. intermixing with the traffic inside of it there isn't much differing the two. They are 'virtually' one. As such Internet truly = physical hardware inside of U.S. borders powering the protion of the WWW residing within those borders.
Posted by: Instantly Karmic! | Tuesday, September 05, 2006 at 01:42 PM
I am unfamiliar with this personnal homepage. Is it through Yahoo or anywhere? What can you all do to personalize it?
Posted by: ang | Tuesday, September 05, 2006 at 10:04 PM