posted 2007/03/31 at 20:40
I've mentioned before that I've been a long-time user of Yahoo!'s My Yahoo! customized news/page service. In fact, if anyone ever got hold of my Web browsing history, you could always tell when I started eating lunch just by when I load My Yahoo! up for the first time in a day, it's become that much of an integral part of my daily routine.
Anyway, Yahoo! launched a beta of a new version of My Yahoo! that I've been test-driving here for the past couple of weeks. It's got a much smoother and cleaner interface, but they've made the ads much more intrusive, and I had to change my pages from three columns down to two just to get them to look okay. I honestly don't know that My Yahoo! is necessarily the best service for me at this point, but I've invested so much time into it over the years that I've got it about as close to perfect as I'm going to get, and I don't see myself switching anytime soon.
That being said, I have been toying around with the similar features that Google has added to its front page, but I can't get things on there like I'd like them to be. I'm particularly confused by the selections Google News pulls for their headlines; there doesn't seem to be any pattern to what makes their news module at a given time, either in terms of national/global relevance or things that I might be interested in based on my past use of Google News.
Neither service completely satisfies me, and in the past I would just write this off to the fact that Web technology is kind of limiting and the companies who create these portals have to balance the kind of deep customization I'm interested in with ease of use for other, less computer-savvy users. These days, though, with all the bells and whistles these services have added, I don't think that adding a couple of more design options would be that much trouble. I'm still going to use both My Yahoo! and Google's services for now, but I have a feeling that I'm not the only person who feels like there's a potential market here for a service that offers much more layout customization.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon