I agree with 2. What's wrong with you, Becks?
I like google for it's "blank page" quality. I almost never perform a google search immediately after opening my web browser, but hvaing google as a home page will never distract me from whatever I had in mind when I opened the browser -- also it loads quickly.
You're reasoning well. For me, I prefer the stright up google page to the toolbar, which I prefer not to intrude on my screen, so utterly unadorned google.com is a natural choice for my h/p. But the real reason is much like yours: it's been what I've used for the last, what, 9 years?
pwned by 1,2 & 3 but I will note that the one advantage of not having a blank page is that it gives you a little extra warning if you have lost internet connectivity for some reason.
The thing about slashdot is that it's not even hip to the geeks.
I think it's actually a way for Becks to subtly suggest to her coworkers that she's looking for someone to command her taco.
I've been using and liking a personalized google homepage since December; prior to that I'd used the NYTimes for about seven years.
Customized Google News with eight point font - who needs productivity!
(Actually, the immediate sensory overload pretty much causes me to ignore everything on the page).
7: The only time you wouldn't get that warning is if you were opening a browser for the calming effect of looking at a blank window and weren't intending to go anywhere.
Consider the benefits of randomness.
A blank page?! That hadn't even crossed my mind as an option. That's ridiculous. You're all freaks.
Seriously, I thought only oldsters (like, grandma and grandpa oldsters) used an actual home page anymore. Come on, Becks.
Go with Jimmy Choo:
http://www.jimmychoo.com/pws/Home.ice
This has been my homepage ever since humanity developed Google toolbar technology.
There's a disturbing image -- what's she supposed to be: the zombie that ate the dead guy's brains? That's some unsettling eye makeup she's got on.
Wait a minute ... Slashdot is unhip?
First you all dis my khaki pants. Then my spandex riding shorts. Now this?
Please have mercy on the terminally uncool!
If you insist, against all reason, on loading a home page, use this.
What's wrong with a little kohl?
Yeah, I use google as my homepage. Partly for the 'quasi-blank page' reasons given above and partly because I use some of the google features not directly driven by the search box in Firefox.
I love love love that gold lamé swimming suit.
20: I think that shot is titled "Don't buy lots of insurance".
24: Right, but she's bringing kohl to Newcastle.
google features not directly driven by the search box in Firefox
Like what? Shouldn't you be using "quick search" or "keywords" or whatever they're calling them nowadays anyway?
I use a blank page myself, but maybe Becks can use this to pull down a never-ending stream of kittens and tits.
I intermittantly use Google's "to-do list" feature.
re: 28
Newsgroup searches (best source for a lot of photography related info) and also Froogle (occasionally).
Newsgroup searches
Yeah, I just use the quick search feature for that, so I type gg "search terms" in the address bar and off I go.
JM, love it $30 worth?
http://store.americanapparel.net/rsac303.html
Sadly, I've seen the American Apparel version in real life. It does not inspire confidence.
Eeeech at gold lamé. There's a trend for silver/gold metallic looking shoes and bags at the moment and my wife keeps showing them to me (she works in that area) -- horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible.
Hey wanna know what I've been doing for a couple of months and am finding way more fun than launching to a home page? My home page is my GMail and Google calendar in tabs; whenever I want to look at a web site I get to it from my command prompt (which is Cygwin). So I have links and scripts in my /bin directory:
/bin/firefox -> the Firefox executable in its directory
/bin/google -> /script/google.sh, which is
firefox "google.com/search?q=$*"
and similar scripty links to other search engines and some of my fave pages -- I'm thinking of them as "script bookmarks". It's faster than using the search box in Firefox since my command prompt is generally in the foreground. I set external links to open in new tab so my home tabs don't get affected.
Also I set up so I can use Thunderbird in a limited way from the command line, with this script:
/bin/mail.l -> thunderbird executable
/bin/mail -> /scripts/mail.sh:
if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
mail.l &
elif [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
if [ $1 = "-c" ]
then
mail.l -compose
else
mail.l -compose "mailto:$1" &
fi
elif [ $# -eq 2 ]
then
mail.l -compose "mailto:$1?subject=$2"
elif [ $# -eq 3 ]
then
mail.l -compose "mailto:$1?subject=$2&body=$3"
else
echo Too many parameters
fi
Oops, that did not format itself like I wanted it to. Shoulda previewed. Sorry!
(If you're not using Cygwin, you ought to -- it makes using Windows a non-frustrating experience.)
ttaM, do you dislike the Jimmy Choo swimsuit linked above? I agree that not all gold lamé is good, even that most gold maé is nasty.
I'm changing my homepage to Twittervision.
That's ridiculous. You're all freaks.
I'm no freak, lady. I just got tired of seeing tubgirl every time I opened my browser.
Seriously. Blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.
For people who want to do the Clownae thing on a Mac without bothering to learn bash (and thus earning yourself hearty mockery from Becks' coworkers -- you're not even geeky enough to read Slashdot), there's a nice little freeware app called Monocle. Whang a hotkey, type a search term, flip between search engines as needed, and press return.
re: 40
I don't like it. I pretty much don't like gold lamé anything, and, for what it's worth, I also don't like the specific cut of that swimsuit.
re: 46
Heh. There's something a bit odd (to my eyes) about the shape of the suit around the upper thigh/legs -- and not in a good/quirky way.
Hmmph.
To be fair, he hasn't seen it on you, JM. That might make the difference.
See, that's exactly what I liked about it. Gold lamé and slightly frumpy. Perfect for me!
47: Try using that picture (unaltered) as desktop background. Talk about tall and anorexic at 1280x1024!
49.--True. I'll be so relieved when I find out it's way above my price range.
I'm sure w-lfs-n will be happy to buy it for you, JM.
Gold lamé inevitably brings to mind an anti-drug film, featuring Sonny Bono wearing a suit of the same, supposedly shown in schools beginning in the early seventies. My wife claims to have seen it, but I never did. The ones I was shown in the sixties had been made in the fifties, and featured punks looking just like they do in West Side Story.
Aren't purchases of chocolate and flowers more traditional when one wants one's hotkey whanged?
Becks, I think Digg would be the hip slashdot substitute (although I like Slashdot better). Or what about a netvibes homepage with a slashdot feed prominently displayed?
I've got the firefox google page set as my default, but it may as well be blank -- I never use it, instead opting for the quick search keyword (thanks, Ogged!).
No way; if I got JM chocolate and she ate it, she'd quickly become too fat for me.
How often does one start one's browser anyway, in a windowed environment? Mine is always running in the background so I can get to it quick. So it doesn't really make a difference what my home page is, since "home page" = "the page that is displayed when the browser is initially opened". And I suppose when you press that little house-shaped button on the toolbar, but I've never done that that I can recall.
(At least since the advent of tabbed browsing.)
All the models in the Choo ads look like zombies. One of the zombies looks to have 10 ft legs, is wearing at least 5" heels, and looks like she's strapped into some kind of BDSM bathing suit.
Appalling. Yet strangely hot in an undead way.
I would take offense at 58 if it didn't take too much effort to figure out how the hell it follows.
In the corporate environment I'm working in, ie7 is months away from most desktops, and firefox is out of the question. So I've got mutiple copies of ie6 open—4 at the moment. Feels so 2004.
I thought only oldsters (like, grandma and grandpa oldsters) used an actual home page anymore.
Gee, this is one area where I am so un-hip that I was not even aware of a hipness standard. At work, my two homepages (I.E.7) are Unfogged and the NYTimes.
Just so I can figure out what the young people are thinking these days, since I start my day on those two sites, why is it uncool to have them as homepages?
My homepage is the main site of my school. I've been wondering what I should replace it with when I graduate.
slashdot jumped the shark last century.
This reminds me that I need to set my homepage to the North American Review again.
Naked, petrified
A shark darts inside your pants
To get the hot grits
A shark might get petrified from time to time, but is "naked" a meaningful modifier as used here?
Being hip isn't very hip anyway.
Of course, what do I know about being hip, I still read Slashot....
What possible excuse can y'all have for not having Unfogged as your home page?
71: Because Ogged keeps embedding YouTube videos and I'm too impatient to wait for them to load.
is "naked" a meaningful modifier as used here?
"Naked and petrified" is a pat phrase in Slashdot patois.
SB failed to work in Natalie Portman rocking a Beowulf cluster made of Amigas.
Hot grits implies Natalie Portman.
They cut all the nude scenes from the Portman movie in which she played a stripper. Wasn't that gratuitous non-nudity? This was a movie about a stripper.
Actresses are always saying that they're willing to appear nude if it's required by the part, but doesn't the Portman movie pretty much tell you that nudity is never required? I don't think that Mike Nichols realizes the harm he's done.
JM's right and y'all are wrong; that frumpy gold lame suit is great. the low cut on the leg makes it look like a 60s bathing suit.
Every once in a while I get the fool idea in my head that I should go read /., and every time I end up killing the window in disgust because the comments are so poisonously misogynist.
44: Mac folks who aren't using Quicksilver ought to seriously consider using Quicksilver.