What's your browser's start page? When you fire it up, is your "home" screen plain-old www.google.com? Or is it some crappy product page from your PC's manufacturer?
As you know, you can set that start page to anything you want, so let's set it to something you want to see. Wait, you do know that you can set your start page to anything you want, right?
Sigh. Okay, in Firefox you click on Tools --> Options on the menu bar. See where it says "When Firefox starts ..."? There's a drop-down list. The "Show a blank page" option is nice for people who want to see nothing when they fire up Firefox. The "Show my windows and tabs from last time" is a pretty cool option for absent-minded people. Anyway, we want the "Show my homepage" option.
Now just type whatever you want into that field below for your homepage. You can type in "http://www.espn.com", "http://www.msnbc.com" or whatever you want.
How about doing the same thing Internet Explorer? I dunno. I don't use IE. Should be pretty similar, though. You Safari users are on your own, too, because it should "just work," right?
You know what I like? Google's customized homepage. Check out mine (click to enlarge):
You'll need to sign in to Google (your homepage will be "http://www.google.com/ig") and then customize the start page so it has what you want -- and how you want it -- on the page.
See, mine has local weather, my gmail account, general news, sports news, tech news, and, of course, the feed for Voices from Main Street. That's what I want. You might a link to your calendar, local gas price updates, local movie time or gardening tips. Do whatever you want. I'm okay with it. Really.
Just click on the "Add stuff" link and customize to your hearts content. You can even rearrange stuff by clicking on it and dragging it to its new spot. You can customize the stuff (called widgets) itself. You can even add themes to your whole start page. Knock yourself out.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Tuesday's Tech Tip: Customize your start page
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4 comments:
More than anything else, I was particularly impressed by the spectacular smudge mark that covered up your email address. Some people might not remember to do that, and then BOOM spam spam spam spam spam. Good boy Jay.
From Yahoo News:
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans have blocked a Democratic plan to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies.
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Democrats on Tuesday failed, 51-43, to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster of the energy package, and bring the bill up for consideration.
Democrats said the huge profits enjoyed by the largest U.S. oil companies should be reined with motorists paying more than $4 a gallon for gasoline and oil prices soaring well beyond $100 a barrel. But Republican critics said higher taxes on oil companies would increase — not lower — gasoline prices and reduce the incentive for domestic oil exploration and production.
I think this is absolutely ridiculous. I usually favor the Republican legislation but this just doesn't make any sense to me. If we want Big Oil to stop screwing us over at the pumps we'll need to reign in their huge profits, but if Congress isn't willing to do that then we're pretty much getting the screw-over from Congress and Big Oil at the same time. Anyone else have an opinion on this?
I think that the Republicans should let the bill pass, so that we can actually do SOMETHING about the rising costs of oil. If Big Oil turns around and finds other ways to make money off of us, I would consider that an "Act of War" against the American people and they'd get what's coming to them.
Doug, I can't believe that. If you think your gallon of gas is expensive now, try slapping on a huge new tax.
I'll say it for the thousandth time: corporations pay no taxes. You pay them. They sell the product for enough to make it worth their risk, time, sweat and hassle to make the product. If you, through your legislators, slap them with a huge tax, then that's just another added cost they must overcome in order to do business at a profit.
Windfall profits are unexpected profits, not profits realized through investment, work and risk in your company's core business. When your company makes a profit on its core business, that is a sign that it's doing its business correctly.
The oil companies' margins aren't nearly what, say, Apple Computer's margins are. Compared to the gargantuan risks taken by these companies by comparison to the computer dweebs who make so much more per dollar invested, the profits made by the oil companies are a pittance--and they are only now balancing out the years of horrific losses taken by the same companies.
The Dems in the senate are simply trying to establish a precedent here. Today it's the oil companies. Tomorrow it's you. THEY DO NOT HAVE THEIR GREEDY HANDS NEARLY FAR ENOUGH INTO YOUR POCKET YET. We guard against them jealously because we do not want to be slaves to them.
The cost of gasoline is only minimally wrapped up in corporate profit. The oil companies are taking 4 percent right now. These greedy Dems are already taking 4 times that in profit from each and every gallon of gasoline and diesel sold--and guess how much sweat they put into that?
Exactly zero. Guess how much they produce for that horrific profit they take on your gas, which is already four times greater than what the oil companies are taking? They produce exactly nothing.
Now they want to increase their take. This is adding an additional cost to the product, not lowering its price.
"They sits around in this place they got,
This big Congressional parkin' lot.
Just sits around on their you-know-what,
Up there they calls 'em their thigh-bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna rise again,
Gonna exercise their franchise again,
Gonna tax us up to our eyes again,
when they gets up off'n their thigh-bones."
When you slap a huge new tax on an industry and expect that to lower the price on that industry's products, that is the very definition of stupidity.
Carter did it in the 1970s. STUPID. Don't let's repeat the stupidity of the 1970s.
Well Steve that's what I'm kind of saying here...we hit them with the tax and if/when they pass the tax on to consumers they would simply be showing their hand to the public, that they don't care about anything other than how they can pad their wallets a little bit more. I know that's a flawed approach but what are the Republicans going to do about it?
It's hard for me to fathom that inaction in this situation would be better than action. I went to buy gas this morning and the station was only selling 89 and 91, so for the first time I had to suck it up and pay $4.09 for gas. I can only do so much to conserve energy...there has to be something done on a larger scale.
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