Continuing the Perfect Start Page Quest

This is a bit of a wandering post, just like most of my other articles here. In an attempt to add some clarity, I’ll first set the stage by explaining what brought this post to life:

What am I really after in a (web) start page? My goal is to come up with a personalized dashboard via one single site that I can use on all my machines and browsers. I want to have a start page that shows me my digital world at a glance. Yes, I realize that’s a stretch goal, but I have hope and boundless optimism. And, apparently, lots of patience.

So what brought this latest incarnation of windmill tilting?

iGoogle, Google’s personalized home page, doesn’t support feeds that need authentication. What sorts of feeds need authentication? How about one that tracks new email in a Google Apps account? For those curious, the URL would look like this:

https://mail.google.com/a/yourDomain/feed/atom

When using that feed, I need to provide a username and password. Netvibes handles it just fine. iGoogle barfs. I find this annoying.

If that wasn’t clear, I’m trying to add the ability to monitor my Google Apps hosted email to iGoogle with little success thus far.

Here’s the thing: I’m truly bemused that iGoogle doesn’t offer any good gadgets for me to monitor those hosted email accounts. Come on — they’re the same company! And don’t even get me started about the Google Apps start page (blech!). That’s not a valid alternative. I thought maybe this feed idea would get the job done, but no dice.

I get close with Netvibes — it’ll at least help me track hosted google email. I find Netvibes vaguely Teutonic: Strong and functional, but not necessarily pretty (yeah, that probably just pissed off the French owners. Sorry!)

I get close with iGoogle — I love the Twitter and FriendFeed gadgets I found for it and the general “feel” of it is groovy. When using it I smile at strangers for no reason.

Both are similar and both have their pros / cons. I’ll confess that lately, for me, iGoogle has the edge for almost everything I do except for this little detail. (well, that and the fact that it seems to get a bit goofy over time when using Firefox3 beta.)

I’ve been down this road before. I’ve yet to find anything that can hit all of what I’m after. I wonder what it would take to host my own little IMAP gadget…?

Here’s a small bonus for those still reading: Just now, while researching, I found this Google OS post on a similar topic from earlier this week. Check it out for info on some other feeds you can get from your Google email.

I’m curious what other folks use for browser start pages. I might have to figure out a poll thingy some day.

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