Thing #66 Directory 2.0

I like the idea of customisable start pages which is basically what allmyfaves and 43marks are.

Previously I'd toyed with allmyfaves, netvibes, pageflakes, clutterme, and mysurfpad before deciding on mysurfpad.

What I liked about mysurfpad was the clean lines and the way I could customise to suit me. Having said that though I tend to have my 'must check' sites as home pages (tabs) in my browsers.

I've blogged previously about my own version of browser wars - when I log onto the web I open:

IE7: (home tabs - gmail, my website, yahoomail, hotmail, blog 1)

Firefox: (home tabs - bloglines, twitter, facebook, gmail, my website blog 2,)

Flock: (home tabs - my surfpad, gmail, blog 3, blog 4, webmail)

These are the websites I use regularly - and I have other favourite websites set up in mysurfpad so that I have minimal clicking to get to where I want to go.

I'd looked at allmyfaves previously - I didn't really like it as it didn't suit my style of working. It seemed way too cluttered to my eye and I found it quite busy & distracting. I would/could use it for one-off search categories although it is very US based (which could be good or bad depending). I'm sure it did everything I would want it too but I just didn't take to it (personal taste I guess).

43marks was new to me but after looking at it for this exercise I think I will stick with mysurfpad.

43marks is basically lists of bookmarks that you can customise - I didn't mind the look and feel of it and might have been tempted to use it had I not already found mysurfpad.

Sites I haven't used before.

Under shopping I had a look at shopzilla which is a US based shopping comparison site - having seen a Halloween party today I looked at Halloween costumes - couldn't decide between wonder woman or catwoman.

Under dating I looked at plenty of fish - before I even needed to register it had produced a list of men (and women) either in Australia or looking for Australians to meet.

I think maybe a novice user might find this extremely useful mainly because of the exisiting categories which give a very good indication of the sorts of lists you can create/personalise.

Once again I have nothing against 43marks - I just didn't like it enough to switch to it instead of mysurfpad.

Thing 65 - It's hard to think about anything else

I was curious about exactly why the US was teetering on the brink of depression and why (or how) the US economy had got itself into this position.

I started with the msnbc timeline - reasonably good but it did seem to assume some knowledge that i didn't have.

I then moved onto how stuff works - this was an excellent explanation of mortgage backed securities - how they work and what happens when home loans are defaulted on in record numbers. It also helped me understand the msnbc timeline a little better.

I finished up with kiplinger.com's 15 things you need to know about the panic of 2008.

Of the three - I found how stuff works to be the most useful for a non-us reader - I understood it all a lot better after that. (and some of the stuff I heard on the business news this morning suddenly makes a lot more sense.)