Those of you who have been reading MakeUseOf know that Google isn’t the only search search engine on earth. We have talked about some cool search engines to remember and also how you can create your own search engine with ROLLYO. Hittery is a new app which joins this league of websites. It isn’t a new kind of search engine but in fact a custom search dashboard with some unique features which could prove to be super helpful.

There’s a test version of the new Google customizable homepage (startpage), iGoogle, available to play with. When you start it up, the first thing you’ll notice are the pretty rounded corners on all your gadgets. The second thing you’ll notice are the tabs along the left side of the page, rather than across the top.

Here on Make Use Of, we’ve talked about start pages several times before, and we’re doing it again now. This time, it’s about Feedly.

Nick mentioned Feedly in the comments of this Make Use Of article and the fact that it’s just a Firefox extension caught my eye. I checked it out immediately and I was pleasantly surprised. Feedly is like a browser start page – but it works from your local computer. It’s touted as a social and magazine-like start page and I must say it lives up to its name.

With all the hype and user interfaces of Web 2.0, it seems ridiculous to go back to the old fashioned command line. Ask a geek and you will always find that he prefers the keyboard over the mouse simply because its “the damn fastest way” to work.

For our dear readers who are back in time from Year 2050’s multitouch interfaces and voice recognitions and don’t remember what a command line is, I would like to remind them that the command line is the allegedly boring but the all powerful geeky way to work, where you write commands and your system says, “yes master I will do it!” (of course it can say bad command or filename too!).

We have previously discussed browser start pages and we have found that there are many options from which we can choose from. However ClutterMe is a start page which intends to stand out from the crowd.

I think ClutterMe is certainly one of the simplest yet very effective start pages available. Instead of just praising on it, I’ll immediately start with its features so that you can see what exactly I am talking about.

1. Write anywhere, everywhere

That’s right. ClutterMe allows you to just click and write anywhere on the page. Once you are finished writing, it will save it for you. Therefore you can take notes on your start page in the simplest possible manner.

For quite some time my personal browser start page has been this:

The Google / Firefox Start page in the upper and my own favorite sites mix in the lower window. I love the look, but it has become a pain to keep it updated. Links have changed, my favorite sites have changed, some don’t exist anymore, and thus the time has come to try something new.

Fortunately, there are many services out there that will do much of the work for you, and in my quest to find the best replacement I tested a few and will share my experiences with you. Let me just say that any personalized start page requires a bit of work - constantly. That’s pretty obvious.

My current web obsession (and productivity drainer) is iGoogle. For those of you who don’t know what this is all about, this is Google giving you a free personalised search page, instead of the standard “no-frills” search page that you are normally confronted with when you go to Google. By using iGoogle (the Artist Formerly Known As Google IG), you can give yourself some spiffing artistic headers as well as install some productive - as well as some not so productive - widgets on the page (or as Google likes to call them, “modules”).

I really like for the sites and tools I use frequently to be kept together in one place, and not just as shortcuts on my desktop or in my Favorites (who’d ever find anything there?)

Two very useful and time-saving web services I use for this purpose are Only2Clicks, which was profiled on MakeUseOf before, and Hyperigo, both of which allow you to organize your favorite websites on one tab-supported page. They come equipped with a few token sample offerings in place, but both are easily customizable for the main purpose: adding your own stuff!

If you’ve got the desire to master the English language, the web is one of the best resources that’s available to you. Knowing the right sites and devoting some time, you can easily take the way you read, speak, and write English to the next level. Even if you’re a native speaker, it doesn’t hurt to improve your grammar every now and then. New words are being invented all the time courtesy of the Web, a prime example being “to google” for something.

Here, I have listed the resources I have used in the past, and those I’m currently using, for your own benefit.

Whether you already have an iPhone or thinking about getting one, here is a list of links to make your life with the iPhone better. Below you’ll find Top iPhone startpages, couple of excellent iPhone Tools, over 10 HowTo’s, huge collection of iPhone reviews (in-depth, video, comparative, stress-tests, etc.), and some fun stuff in the middle to give you a break. Enjoy!

iPhone StartPages

The idea behind the iPhone startpage is to bring all essential applications on one iPhone-friendly page. These apps can be anything, ranging from news sites to To-Do lists, Office apps, IM clients, VoIP services, Calculators, and more. All iPhone friendly and easy-to-navigate through.

Today I want to reviews a cool website known as Netvibes. Actually I was waiting for this post for a while, this is my favourite service out of all. It also belongs to second generation web (web 2.0) products, like Flickr and Delicious that we have profiled before.

So what can you do with Netvibes ?

It lets users createall-in-one online start page (not a personal profile page) that will display latest updates from their favourite websites, freeing them from visitng these sites individually.