ChaseandSam.com

Thanks for watching Tech Check on Fox6 - before you read the post on tonight’s episode, please allow me to invite you to listen to our weekly radio show - Tech Talk - this Saturday at 11:00am on WAPI 1070am. We will be talking with our resident Apple guru (Tollie Williams of MoreTechTalk.com) about the iPhone - can it possibly live up to the hype? Is it worth getting? Tune in!

If your internet service provider’s page is the first thing you see when you open your web browser, then chances are you’re not being as efficient as you can be.

Tonight’s TechCheck, we’ll show you how to maximize your time on the web with a personalized home page.

How can personalizing my home page make me more efficient on the web? EASY! Imagine you clicking on that blue E on your desktop or that Firefox (which we hope you use) icon and …BAM! With one glance you can get a preview of your e-mail, see the top headlines from your favorite news sources, see what’s on TV or playing at the movies tonight, check the weather in your area, learn a new word and its definition….. you get the idea.

Personalized home pages are a great way to put your frequent things you do online summarized on the first page you see. Very handy if you ask me…. now… where are the best ones?

Well, here are four we’ve used, still use, or hear great things about.

MYWAY.COM has been around for a long time … in cyber years that is It has an e-mail client that incorporates into its personalized homepage. You can put all of your common routines laid out on the page before you. It’s not completely content order friendly, but does the job. It’s what I used for a long time until…. Google came out with a fantastic one.

iGOOGLE.COM is wonderful especially if you already use their calender, e-mail, and other online resources. I use this currently and it is more customizable than you can… well customize. You can place any of your personalized content any where on any of the 3 columns they provide you… and their add-ons are almost endless! The all in one ness that iGOOGLE provides is worth switching to for sure…. However there are other 3rd party home pages just as cool and even trying to be cooler.

The one Chase uses is Pageflakes (CLICK HERE) and it can work with Gmail also, if you so choose not to use iGoogle. It is also, feature rich and completely customizable. It also looks very sharp. (FYI: Chase actually uses iGoogle, but is considering Pageflakes)

MY.YAHOO.COM is the other internet giant’s personalized home page and if your main e-mail account is yahoo, you might tend towards this one… that’s okay.

The bottom line is: It takes a little effort to set a personalized home page up just the way you like it, but that time invested is quickly returned - with interest - once you start using it.

To set a page as your home page in Internet Explorer, read the directions here: CLICK HERE
In Firefox (the better browser), click on Tools, then Options, then “use current page” to set one of the above as your homepage. (Be sure you are signed into the service first)