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Microsoft Testing Rival to Google's Start Page
aer0 writes "It looks like Microsoft has quietly put up their version of Google's start page. It's interesting in several ways. First, the layout and use of javascript is strikingly similar to Google's. Second, one of the few major differences is that there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site."
for me, the last line on the page:
kind of says it all... In their hurry to rip off the competition, they even forgot a semicolon... Tsk-tsk!
Note the default picks on the stock ticker: GOOG, MSFT, and YHOO. In that order!
http://www.start.com/3/
Total Size: 264510 bytes
Connection Rate/Download Time: 56K 54.12 seconds ISDN 128K 17.54 seconds T1 1.44Mbps 2.80 seconds
http://www.google.com/ig Total Size: 17999 bytes
Connection Rate/Download Time: 56K 3.59 seconds ISDN 128K 1.10 seconds T1 1.44Mbps 0.10 seconds
I don't know about you, but for me one of the best features for Google is how quickly it loads. For MS to grab my vote they're going to have to simplify their site. The last thing I want when I boot up my browser is for it to spend more than a couple seconds loading my home page
Statistics from WebSiteOptimization.com.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
It looks like crap. Sorry, it just does.
My sig is permanently on strike.
and the missing ; after  
Better than Flickr - Manage, Share, Archive
If it didn't load slow perhaps I would be interested.
Googel==Gay
Boy, is it slow. And I have Broadband!
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
Alright, it's already showing a little lag. Quick! Someone submit this to collegehumor.com!
when Yahoo had a start page long before Google?
Vote for Pedro
It can just never match the simple beauty of google's...
It _looks_ better than Google, but is slow (bad javascript?)
also try http://www.start.com/1/ and http://www.start.com/2/...
It looks remarkably like the sharepoint portal page. Guess they have to find SOME use for that technology...
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
Look at the page, its standards compliant! They coded their pages like crap and now they start coding them with standards... maybe IE7 won't suck that much after all.
Nah.
first post... or not??
What kind of OS are they running their webservers on anyway? ... oh, nevermind
Nice site. I like how minimal it is. Just like this two liner :)
Didn't for me. Wonder why...
GOOG 299.19
MSFT 26.81
It's been a while since I looked at the stocks, but MS is kindof dipping low. Did they just split or something?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Weird. Just a "start" header and then a text box with a submit button. Really exciting. Oh, hang on.. it must be just like their old version which also doesn't do anything on Safari.
And why, oh, why, does MSN always give me results pages in Spanish? I'm in the UK darn it.
I guess not. Sad.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
Aside from the domains and content, the only thing that makes it look like MS designed the page is the fact that it fails the W3C validator. Even then, it fails on rather irrelevant items.
I think MS just hired away some Google programmers out of China without them knowing about it.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
all i get is a banner that say "start" and a text box.. maybe safari isnt supported?
I think it's pretty cool how it doesn't load everything at once. Faster, anyway.
Seems to work with Firefox, but not Opera. Wonder if this is more artificial breakage on MS's part like with msn.com...
To look for the ballmer video dancing like a monkey
Why does MSN always make their sites so that the backspace key doesn't go to the previous page in Firefox?
MSN Maps does this, and so doe this start.com site, Google Maps doesn't seem to have this problem.
Hmm. and they're hiring too.. wonder how many job applicants this Slashdot post will get them?
Even if this is Microsoft, competition is always good for us as it tends to make everyone improve.
i guess their search engine gets good promotion thanks to MSN.net customers, and all the bias turds that simply love their news.. well hell, this wouldn't be the first time they make a killin' off someone elses idea..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
It hasn't been "quietly" put up on the internet - it has been there for a while. MS uses it for testing and research. If you do notice, it is WAY better than Google's start page too - you can actually drag the various sections on the page and place them anywhere on the page. By the way, I mentioned the page before : here
Having a variable number of columns and different "look and feel"s is a welcome improvment. I for one am glad to see this, becuase I wasn't too impressed by the barebonedness of Googles own offering. Now if I could just get this new start page with a google search bar!
I don't like the fact that links' targets don't show when the cursor goes over them. I never quite trust sites/links that do that.
How does Google plan on keeping up with this? Microsoft's rocks!
How is a customizable page with dragable rss-fed news items like the google home page?
Namely, the Shut Down button.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
The MS page is slow and the design really ...erm sucks? I mean, this looks like some 15 yr old got the task to quickly put together a webpage.
... erm ... like MS, never in design.
The google one is at least in the google design, the MS one is
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
I don't know if the problem is the page not being really standards-compliant or if the page is truly standards-compliant but Safari is not, or if it's Slashdotted, but it doesn't fully display for me.
Microsoft rips off everything. Why would this be any different?
It attempts XHTML (although it's invalid) even though M$'s own browser doesn't offically support XHTML, will IE7 support the XHTML content-type?
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
Innovate. v. 1. Imitate.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
As the title says, the site doesn't seem to render anything other than the search bar in safari. It works fine in firefox. Anyone on KDE care to comment on whether it works in konq?
I honestly think the microsoft site looks nicer. Its less cluttered and much more casual. However they didn't properly terminate the nbsp at the bottom. http://www.start.com/1/ is also interesting.
For the Anti-IE crowd (when you click on why preview):
Here are some of the things we're currently working on:
Firefox support
rest assured we haven't abandoned our firefox users and are working on the issues continuously
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Is it possible by the time IE7 is released (and Vista's explorer for that matter) will default to MS content, and provide no way short of "cracking" to have something other than this site as the home page of Internet Explorer 7. A search bar that can't be turned off on the top of the page that only works with their own MSN search engine. Maybe they will have a clippy in the form of a "wizard" or something that is there to "remind" you about Microsoft's own version of different services provided by Google. Like this:
*User goes to www.google.com
Microsoft Helper: A superior search engine is provided by Microsoft, search.msn.com. Would you like to use MSN Search instead?
*User clicks No.
Microsoft Helper: WARNING: Using a third party search engine is dangerous because illegal content or viruses could be contracted. Are you sure you want to use a third party search engine?
*User clicks Yes
Microsoft Helper: Would you like MS Helper to tell you about superior iterations of third party services you use?
*User clicks No
Microsoft Helper: Too bad, I'm going to do it anyway. Have a nice day, and remember to use MSN Search.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
the stocks show it all. google up 7, yahoo and microsoft up less than 1.
best college pickem site ever: pickem.terrbear.org
Is this "" (from the site) standard HTML?
this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. for other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ enjoy!
Lets not jump the gun just yet..though I must say this is pretty crappy.
And how exactly does this relate to the story at hand...?? Don't get me wrong, I loved reading your little slice of life (even though I have to conclude that converting to Linux without planning & testing is downright stupid and shortsighted!).
Note their order, alphabetical. And this site has been up for some time now. See this
Bad naming... "I've googled for it but nothing came up" vs "I've started on it but nothing came up".
bash$
New page same old tricks. Try searching linux ;)
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
clickinng on the "why preview" button, the first bullet is Firefox support rest assured we haven't abandoned our firefox users and are working on the issues continuously
sigbldr is currently in pre-alpha.
does anyone see their footer? "©2005 Microsoft  - privacy - why preview?"...did they have monkeys coding this : )? i mean  ...they forgot their semi colon...did they do this in frontpage?
Hopefully google has some patents they've secured - this is sickening.
(Flattery by imitation?)
I have to say, I'm rather impressed. Everytime I get a look at the so-called 'Start' pages that Microsoft provides, they seem to be doing something relatively interesting.
In this instance, however, I think their offering is better than Google's equivalent customized home. The implementation seems more intuitive, and it definitely seems like they took a look at some of the things people were complaining about with Google/ig and fixed them.
It's not perfect, but it's pretty good looking and seems functional. Kudos, Microsoft -- although I expect this is just something someone made up because they like XMLHttp.
Discworld.
That's because the marketing crew hasn't gotten ahold of this service yet. Wait till it gets filtered through the entire MS camp and then we will see where that current minimalistic approach goes.
>>there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site
Wait... you might see a Google banner there. You never know how far MS can go!
This particular site has been live for over 2 months. Start.com is a MS testbed. There are other versions of portals hidden on their site. MSN Search Weblog: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/default.aspx
-516
I have always made my own start page, simple html programming, a bit of cgi, a google search box, all my favorite links... Its nice to have google as your start page, but if you want it really customized, just make your own little html start page with your daily links and such, maybe a few rss feeds for news and whatnot. The 20 minutes it takes is worth it, considering its what you view every time you load your browser.
Share prices says nothing... market capatilazation is a better indicator:
GOOG 83.11B
MSFT 289.66B
Google has a long way to catch up to Microsoft, no matter how cool their technology is. Google is way overrated for the revenue streams it currently have. Sure, we can all hate Microsoft, but at the end of the day, they got steady incomes from multiple strong revenue streams.
its been slashdotted and no longer loads...
....................
It is extremely slow trending to dead following this /. article.
you just want microsoft to get slashdoted, we see you're plan!
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
If it gets faster, I'll use it. I'd love to use the Google homepage, but when opening the browser it always opens the page logged out and I have to refresh to view it logged in.
MyYahoo rocks both. With the ability to use a number of good tools (mail monitor, weather, stocks, briefcase, addressbook, calendar, etc.) PLUS MyYahoo has RSS support.
MyYahoo is absolutely awesome.
Now, if I could get them to let me upload my own CSS or client-side XSLT so that I could format it my own way, or if they allowed people to upload themes and then review and post them (to prevent ad blocking, etc.) there'd be no competition--period.
I'd be willing to pay a small fee for that.
when I clicked on the link it took almost 2 minutes to load. google takes .2 seconds. I had a bad day today, thank you for posting the link for start.com, it honestly made me laugh so much I forgot why my day was bad. This site is almost as pathetic as Microsoft BOB. Microsoft is really getting sad.
http://www.start.com/1/
http://www.start.com/2/
http://www.start.com/3/
Sure, nameserver MSFT, but tucows as registrar? What's up with that?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I use firefoxes native google search page as my home page, for all the other fruit, I have bookmarks... maybe I am just old, but it just the portal idea all over again.
/.
First thing I do is move away from my homepage, normaly via a search or to a book mark to fark, ars or
Yay, it has the weather on it, I can know what its like outside, no need to look out the window...
Try hitting http://www.start.com/1/ or http://www.start.com/1/ In addition to that page. They're different variations of the same theme, but I prefer 1 the most.
MS simply doesn't get it. They make a page which is allegedly as simple and easy to use as google, but they throw in a bunch of crap that ends up breaking their 'simple' site. Honestly, not even the 'search' button renders correctly in Opera.
I'm sure it's all the IE specific code, too. Afterall, when it comes to actual standards support we all know that IE comes in dead last.
Here I am, thinking "Honestly, how many man-months does it take to put a text field on a web page? I mean, what in the HELL have they been doing all these years." Thanks for clearing up my browser problem.
Not me this user anyway. I wonder if I'd have more luck with IE?
You're right -- I didn't follow any of them quite far enough to see that, eventually, the links' addresses do show. Thanks.
/bitchiness
Their summaries (beginning of the story) aren't nearly long enough to find out if those are links I want to follow, in general.
You must be new here:
n e+for+some+people,+but+it+was+a+disaster+for+us.%2 2&hl=en&hs=g0m&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozill a:en-US:official&filter=0
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Linux+may+be+fi
New no... but I guess I don't read all threads in their finer details :-P Although I do find this all pathetically funny...
From what I can tell, all of the advanced functionality, and better results. Nice! It's gonna be my homepage for a week or so to test out!
If you look at the source code, you'll notice that they're using the IE hack to make transparent pngs work properly... so apparently even Microsoft hates that bug!
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
every link opens in a new window, and middle click doesn't work. bah.
If I someone in google, I start to worry.
This is new kind. Microsoft gonna pound us again.
Why ?
Because it was too customizable, good for normal computer users. You can put everyting what you want.
When WV (windows vista) relased, this thing become start page.
So avarage joe sixpack has start to internet, customize the page, and he was check daily because that page show him what he wants. Not search tons of page or remember tons of url or worry about his bookmarks.
Of course this is not big deal for us.
But wakeup guyz.More than 10 years those machines, softwares not building for us they building for joe sixpack and his friends.
Ohh yess...
Damnit Gates you are to f****g clever.
You beat us again.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
RUNNING ON MICROSOFT SERVERS TOO LOLLERSKATES
Google should be paying slashdot members dividends for this type of industrial sabotage.
PWNT LOLLERSKEET
Even with IE forcing MSN as their start page, I bet most users are not using it. People like Google. This may come as a shock to M$ but some people like to use OTHER companies' software! Yes, there are other competent developers on the planet. This is why I loath M$.
Shame?
Just wondering why M$ doesn't dare to put its logo on its own site...
It's clear that the concept is that you land on a page that "provides you what you (or they) think you need", but I've never really figured out the real value of a fixed 'start page'.
I mean, first of all, I launch me browser several times a day, and pretty much never go for the same page directly afterwards. Having a start page would mean reloading that same page hundreds times a day (or well maybe slightly less than hundreds). During work I might start out with some news, then while I pretend working, I read up on whatever I need to figure out. Later might check out some entertainment site and so on.
Do people actually use a 'start page' for something useful?
Anybody reading, posting after this... I *JUST* saw it change. 10:01 PM, EST
hmm someo appears to have problems reading Or maybe someone did not notice the MS copyright.. Or just maybe coudl you post version 3.. version 2 is 1 month old already.. just change thenumber to 3 and bang ithard
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Lighten up, bunky. If god hadn't wanted men to sleep with each other's wives, he wouldn't have made it feel so good.
Also, what do you mean by her cheating on her child? That sounds pretty wrong.
Google instantly came up with (oddly) relevant seeming hits.
Microsoft came up with all kinds of stuff - only one had to do with "floating cars" (whatever that means) and most just having to do with "floating"...
So, as usual, next time I have a search (even if it is for random odd words), I will use Google...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
OK, I liked the first results... but they literally just changed the page 2 minutes ago. Now I like it even more! So fucking slick. Nice eye candy!
If they are copying google... so far it is a crappy job. Google wins just based on the shortcuts alone. I track packages and look up movie times with google. Using the command Movie:xxxxx (zip code) is awesome. Google also does a great job with measurement conversions and such. Its all those little things that and awesome serach results when I need it make google what it is. I have only tried the movie option but I would assume the other are not working YET. Who knows MS may put that that too.
The page is so overwhelmed by text at the bottom that I complete missed the *main feature* search bar at the top. It took me 5-seconds to realise it's there. Layout and information display is an art: there's more than meets the eye.
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
Has anyone else noticed that Start.com started way before Google? March verses May? If anything Google copied MSN and did a better job.
"this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy"
1. The stock symbols show how Google has the monopoly and is bullying poor defenseless Microsoft.
2. The soothing use of color. I believe more when it looks soothing.
3. The headlines are hysterical. What was it, "King Fahd is laid to"?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
http://www.fuckedgoogle.com/
Call me stubborn will you, but I haven't changed my homepage from the local ISP I was using back in the mid-90s (surprisingly they are still around and growing). Dunno why, force of habit I guess.
To bad the site's been /.'ed. Maybe they shouldn't be running this thing on IIS after all.
I have to say this is much slicker than Google's personal page. The thing looks like it's based off some RSS feed to show the linked articles/stories as well (instead of only the titles).
Also, a slightly better looking implementation but that's just my taste of course.
why run from Vincenzo?
This was out long before Google's was... maybe slashdot should start reporting news rather than.. uh... olds?
...it's hiddeous!
Wow A whole thread a not 1 comments modded above 4! I see about 200 messages, all under 3.
What? Not enough MS bashing to be worth any serious Slashdotter attention? Or Do-no-harm Google is counterbalancing the evilness?
Microsoft blows goats returns zero reults on start.com, however on google there are 20,500!
The first thing I see....
GOOG 299.19 +7.58
MSFT 26.81 +.89
I think this speaks volumes.
This article and its discussion have done nothing but generate interest and meaningful feedback for Microsoft in regards to how they can improve MSN Search. The lot of you intrepid, foolhardy geeks rushing here to suggest bug fixes and various enhancements has made it possible, and without significant cost to them. You've all unwittingly become Microsoft's beta testing bitches. Congratulations.
I mean, the google copying is getting out of control. Had a look at MSN search results lately? They do everything the same, even with similar looking HTML. Its lame.
Yay! We slashdotted friggin' Microsoft!
Yes, all of the sudden when the community provides feedback and testing for software for Microsoft its a bad thing, but when its for OSS or any other company, its A-OK.
Give me a break.
It's almost useful. Quite nice (in a 60 second review). I would not use it.
I simply dont use sites that open new windows when you follow links. If I wanted it in a different browser window I would right click "new tab" or "new window".
The real question becomes the actual power of the search engine behind the singing and dancing starting point - but thats not the point of this article.
The only thing I looked for on that page was the Start -> Shutdown link.
I'm still sticking with about:blank for my homepage, though. No chance of that getting slashdotted.... :)
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
start.com is just so.....boring Plus google earth has pictures of the Apple headquarters of today, not some dirt mound from years ago....which would you say is more up to date?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I can't use this if it doesn't work in my browser, now, can I?
... works! (no surprises there!)
Google, on the other hand,
can i just point out the obvious? that google's concept for a start page was in no way ever original in the first place. this was never made a trolloping big deal over when it was slashdotted either, but this is?
They override browser settings and force underlining on links.
Not everyone has 19-year-old eyes that can read big blocks of underlined text, especially low-contrast text. The only skin that doesn't have the underlines is "granite" but the bright blue is even harder to read.
Let the user choose if they want underlines or not. That's why there's a setting for it. (even in IE)
THEMES:
Ice. Ocean. Granite.
SUCK IT
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Is this a legit beta from a billion dollar company or some kid's high school project? More DHTML cybertrash...
Welcome to The Homepage Of Pure Evil!!!
I mean, c'mon, guys...
Hah!
If you click on the Start Image -> Popular Feeds -> Staff Picks, you'll find a like to Slashdot.
Kinda cool.
When I attempt to close this googleripoff(tm) page, nothing happens.... wierd :(
Microsoft has been doing what you say for years. Ironically, though the masses serve as a free testing ground for they're generally shoddy products they never really seem to get a whole lot better.
They should make the page be perpetually in beta.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Comparing it to google's is like comparing an airplane to a kite. How about some RSS feeds on Google's page? MS page is a lot more dynamic, too, and has better design. Finally, it has _zero_ branding on it which is something I've grown to appreciate.
changing the 3 to a 2 in the url (http://www.start.com/2/default.aspx) shows another version of the page that looks strikingly similar to the google personalized homepage... including adding IE favorites to the page, as well as other "incubation experiments" i.e. Google Lab(ish), see http://sandbox.msn.com/.
Boricle
When the page loads for me, the first stock is GOOG. You know, thats AFTER the page loads... I've seen faster loading from geocities.
Innovation at its finest...
I noticed it first with the huge XBOX launch. Nowhere was the Microsoft logo visible. Would anyone agree that Microsoft is trying to soften their branding in order to get in without people knowing? Even the ubiquitous logo on PocketPC powered devices is now either on the back or not there at all. I think they're either feeling that their reputation out there is not so good, or they're trying to get in quietly. My 2 AU c = 0.152 US c
Anyone see it as odd that the google stock quote is listed above the MSFT/Yahoo stock quotes?
almost as if they couldnt help paying homage to the original...
Google's personalized search still looks slicker.
Insert Sig Here
I like out they have the link and moving ability in the title. I would like to click the title bar and go to the website, like slashdot. I would love to make suggestions to google does anyone know of a site like gmail had? I would like to be able to orginze my bookmarks too. Its still awsome just funny how M$ is always behind.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
In Google, putting in blah, 3.7+ M hits
Ok, use IE - aah - different story but - it wants to set cookies all the time, forget it!
See if Google is cookie hungry: nope.
Maybe I allowed Google to set cookies - delete all cookies and files in IE, try again with Google - no , really not cookie hungry.
Just a bunch of baloney! I have to admit, I am really biased away from M$oft.
Anyone looked at how much Yahoo's search page looks like Google's?
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
So can you go to Start.com to shut down? :)
Sound waves should be free!
I'd say "you must be new here" again (you must be new here is also kind of cliche'd), but it would be a bit redundant...
There's another one of these that was in a thread a few days ago. Bots from M$? I don't know why anyone else would bother, frankly.
Web Results
... is just a very small sampling of the pages around the world that already have the title Microsoft Sucks . A much more extensive and up-to-date list can by generated by going to Google and searching for ...
...
... Steve Jobs positions Microsoft in Business Week Steve Jobs of Apple says, in BusinessWeek, Microsoft sucks . Oh, OK, he didn't really say that, but he implied it. The funny thing is that he's right. We ...
... Wednesday, February 23, 2005 Dvorak says Microsoft's marketing sucks John Dvorak: The Microsoft Marketing Myth . Personally, John is right. And John even has an RSS feed. Sigh. But, let's look at some of ...
... Microsoft Sucks - Death to the Evil Empire WebRing Ring Manager: sunnyray Join This Ring - Visit Forum Home > Computers & Internet > Internet > Servers >
Page 1 of 867,820 results containing microsoft sucks (0.08 seconds)
Microsoft Sucks
www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ewayne/microsoft-sucks.html
Cached Page
Survey Proves that Microsoft Sucks
Survey Proves that Microsoft Sucks A recent survey using the Internet has proved that Microsoft sucks; specifically, Microsoft sucks 14.77 times as much as Apple Computer. Searches using the Alta Vista
brighten.bigw.org/humor/mine/microsoft_sucks.html
Cached page
Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger
radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/10/13.html
Cached page
Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger
radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/02/23.html
Cached page
7/31/2005
Show more results from "radio.weblogs.com".
Microsoft Sucks - Death to the Evil Empire WebRing
On Google, I bookmarked many of my favorite search results. Since this silly page always re-uses the same URL (like all-too-many ASP.NET "web applications") core browser functionality like Bookmarks and The Back Button are Broken.
For some reason, this page doesn't work in Safari. All I see is a light blue word "Start" and a blue bar, with a search field inside it. It makes Google look bloated!
:)
I just tried it again using Camino, and there's considerably more stuff there, like the stock quotes other posters mentioned.
So is Microsoft deliberately trying to make it hard for Mac users to access their page, or could this be a problem in Safari?
Not that I have any intention of visiting this site again, I should point out...
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
They must have paid through the nose for that domain name.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
start.com integrates a plaintext RSS reader for custom feeds; something that has been noticably lacking from Google's start page even before start.com came online.
Here's hoping Google jumps in this feature. It seems like a no-brainer to include the functionality for *reading* RSS feed entry text in addition to just seeing their titles.
--
M
this or that...so what.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
You know I dont even see how this made it on the front page. MS has had that particular page on since June 3. Then they also had a version 2 and version 1. Version 1 dates back to January I believe.
Its got enough errors and hundreds of warnings, and its supposed to be XHTML complaint!!! The twit coding it forgot to put the ; after the & hahahaha!!! Do they even know what W3C stands for?
Since we're on the topic of "start" pages, I thought I would mention my own project, fyuze.com, which was mentioned here on slashdot some time ago. It started out as an RSS aggregator, but in it's latest incarnation is an API aggregator. What does that mean? Well, it means that in addition to pulling RSS/Atom feeds it will also run queries against web-services such as Flickr, Amazon, Technorati, Upcoming.org, and Yahoo (with more to come). It also allows you to post good links directly to your del.icio.us account (hit the settings page).
It doesn't yet sport the nifty Ajax effects of Google and Microsoft, but with prototype and Rico, it is only a matter of time. Anyway, we're trying to push the idea of an aggregator beyond just RSS headlines and weather. So, if you're interested, we'd appreciate it if you gave it try and told us what you thought.
Click here for proof
http://www.start.com/1/ and http://www.start.com/2/ have been out long before Google's homepage (evidence: http://spaces.msn.com/members/startcom/). I would argue that Google is doing the copying here. Google admits that theirs came out in May (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/07/more-of-wh at-i-want.html).
2 9
For a video to see two of only three people who work on start.com, you can go here: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=902
Yes, Microsoft has only two developers on this project.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/detail/stock_quote?Sym bol=GOOG Coincidence? I think not.
man what a waste, how beta is this it, fails for loadup, the custom rss works only 50/50.....back to the drawing board ms.
I won't read anything into this, but the page loads fine in Firefox for OSX, but Safari only shows the logo and the blue bar with the search field in it.
Interesting, but the fonts are bigger than my default and the "add" buttons don't look right..
When I first went to look at this I thought it as a joke, all I see in Safari is a mostly empty page with the word "Start" on in and an input box for search terms. Perhaps the content has just been removed to save bandwidth, but it's hours later and still nothing there for me.
With Google I can see the page and drag content areas just fine (as others have noted).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Answering my own question - it doesn't work at all with Safari, but it works somewhat with Firefox. The "animation", so to speak, is clunkier than Google's - and it tends to leave some odd artifacts around (at least under Firefox).
I am pleasantly surprised that they haven't locked it totally down to IE though.
#DeleteChrome
Start.com was well under way before Google's personalized home page was released. Google's Personalized Page was released in May, but Start.com was up in March. See this post from March 20th by one of the developers.
! 1pk-KGuQJt62IHSwXT8uY1HQ!378.entry
. start.com
r t=140
http://spaces.msn.com/members/steverider/Blog/cns
Also, Bloglines Citations of Start.com dating back to March 9th or so
http://www.bloglines.com/citations?url=http://www
And technorati of course:
http://www.technorati.com/search/start.com/1/?sta
The m$ one looks better than the gooooooogle one, imho.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
On their site they have a legal disclaimer that says: this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy
Followed closely by a "Copyright Microsoft Corporation" tag.
So does anyone know which statement would take precedence here? They are forfeiting their legal affiliation before they claim copyright on it; so what happens here? [IANAL, BMWI (but my wife-ish-person is)].
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I see no difficulty in relating it to MS. In the lower part, its pretty obvious it is related to MS. It says:
this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. for other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ enjoy!
This is another idea. MS has it own personalized startup page within MSN. This start page is very, very interesting way of browsing multiple RSS feeds quickly. Shame that, at the moment, it doesnt log your user session, so you cannot save your settings, but for me, regardless it is MS, it is beautifully done and well thought.
...you can't open stuff in new tabs! If you click a site name it will open in a new window (I tried mouse wheel click and nothing happened) and if you click an article link (again, tried mousewheel click and still did this) it opens it in one of those freaky-ass javascript frames inside the page...
CLEARLY designed for the users of inferior tab-less browsers. It appears to even actively prevent you from opening the articles in a new tab. I tried right click, mousewheel click and CTRL click and none of 'em worked.
Doesn't work in any of my THREE web browsers.
Bullshit from Slashdork, again. We must feel that Microsoft is inferior to everything else in order to feel secure. Nasal chuckles from the peanut gallery - honk, honk, M$ dosent innovateing, har har.
I'm all for giving them grief when they deserve it, but this is bullshit.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Posted for 3 hours, and nothing modded more than a 2. Probably because:
1. You really can't say much about it that's bad...it's slow, but so what - it's an unadvertised (other than Slashdot) sandbox project.
2. The "Micro---- can't invent anything, they must have stolen this from Google|Netscape|Apple" joke is getting a little old.
Could it be that the days of an automatic +5 insightful for any MS bash are gone! Amazing.
And oh, by the way, this has been around since March in its early beta phases. Nice catch though.
....kjhkjhkl
both start pages are boring and uninspired too.
Talk about lame.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Was checking it out and clicked on the boing boing link. I checked out the "Swimmer nearly eviscerated by a crocodile needlefish in Hawaii" story and as it came up, an ad popped up below it. What did it say you ask? "Low Hawaii vacation prices" Not exactly your target market when reading that story...
This is obviously an attempt by The Man to collect information about us so it can be passed onto the Bush White House and the rest of the American Nazi's to oppress us all!
... google did this first?
... then
...
wait
uhh
Those theiving capitalists are trying to steal the good and peaceful work of a decent and hardworking company and ruin a good, benevolent idea with their shoddy workmanship. Only someone of M$s low compentence could ever forget a semi colon!
Oh NOOO! T3h l33t h4xx0rz that perpetuate the good will of Tux would never do something like THAT.
[/sarcasm] I am so going to Karma hell for this
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
but good lord did the Microsoft page open slowly - wow that was appauling.
Then again, I'm using firefox - who knows if they've added some kind of dodgy IE only code.
doesnt seem to work for me in firefox :(
First, the layout and use of javascript is strikingly similar to Google's.
Same.
I just went there with firefox and my google search history showed up.
...neither page passes the Validator. Don't forget though, that you can also add a column to start, if you want to make use of, say, your 1080p screen. Not so with "ig". Also, compare the 60 or so errors across all three versions with the 200 or so on Google's single page.
Besides, start 3's other address has a l33t edge.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Some basic checking of the searches:
MS search for linux: 89,256,231
Google search for linux: 159,000,000
MS search for windows: 135,083,872
Google search for windows: 292,000,000
OK, so MS hasn't indexed as many pages.
MS search for puppies: 8,252,381
Google search for puppies: 3,590,000
Or maybe not - perhaps they're not trying to way in on the Windows / Linux thing via search.
MS search for firefox: 1,234,299
Google search for firefox: 39,600,000
Because they wouldn't do that to us, would they...
It is not an insult to say that the page is similar to Google's. They acknowledge that Google was an inspiration. You aren't calling anyone out by saying so.
2 6
Watch the interview with the development team here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=915
...this "Rival to Google's Start page" (the first version, anyway) has been around longer. Compare the release dates, and remember that My Yahoo!, while not as easy to customize (you can't move sections by dragging), is far older than both.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
that there are, in fact 3 sites:
www.start.com/1 www.start.com/2 www.start.com/3For example, GNOME has applets that show the weather for me, and there are lots of other programs that will do that for you, I'm sure. Quote of the day? That's what fortune is for (or "quote of the login session"--even better!). RSS feeds? I've got Firefox/Thunderbird for that, and for googling there's...well...google (searchable through Firefox UI anyway).
Granted, this page is more useful when I'm using Windows, but in linux it's just redundant.
Again and again, MS amazes me with their focus and resulting speed when it comes to wiping out competition. They did something very similar against Netscape when they fired back with IE. From my brief conversations with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is that fear: how quickly will MS deploy 200+ engineers to kill their new product? Kudos to Google for taking that challenge and thriving.
Charles Jo
Or that's what people might think, because it looks just like those fake "search engines" that only throw ads on you and sneak spyware through IE's holes.
Circumcision is child abuse.
is there...
c h_type=0&q=what+is+this+shit%3F
(What the HELL is this:
"Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.8).)"
What a lame lameness filter... for text?
"Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.0)." (must be the clarity/separation dashes...)
sheesh!!!
Let's see:
http://www.start.com/
just returns a blank, bannerless page, having the words "start" in white, each letter surrounded by a colord disk, followed by same-colored ellipsis
====
http://www.start.com/1
"©2005 Microsoft Corp - Feedback - This site is not an officially supported site. It is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. For other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ Enjoy!"
=============
Hmmm, let's try
http://www.start.com/2
We get:
http://www.start.com/2/default.aspx
which produces:
"Add my IE favorites to this page
Import OPML
Show removed items
Favelet:Add to Start
Loading...
©2005 Microsoft Corp - Feedback - This site is not an officially supported site. It is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. For other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ Enjoy!"
=============
http://www.start.com/4
"The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."
===========
Hmm, while I don't give a rat for ms, the grandparent's reference doesn't immediately jump out as:
"the layout and use of javascript is strikingly similar to Google's. Second, one of the few major differences is that there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site.""
Well, if one goes and plays numbers on the location bar, different things tend to pop up.
As for the original URL in the byline, I typed into the search box:
"what is this shit?"
and out popped to the URL/location bar:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=START3&sr
sigh....
----
Isn't ms getting stale by the day? But, I guess I wasted about 10 minutes adding my 40 cents worth of time. (Yep, added
and changed to HTML Formatted and the lame anti-lameness message went away...a 40-second check)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
i though other M$ search engines would give back top results from M$ pages about migrating from Linux to windoze, or pages about how Linux is going away or something? this page spits back results that are links to linux.org or other legit stuff.
If there were such a concept as objective application of anti-trust laws, would this not be a trigger of an inquiry? Unbelievable. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
http://www.softwareobjectz.com
If you type in "search" Google is the top result. Funny.
If you try to search those 2 words with it: Microsoft sux
the first entry will be linuxsux.org, they are just a bunch of freaking weasels...
Google have earned the trust of the world with honesty, something Microsoft has a lot to learn about.
I think the disclaimer says it all:
"this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. for other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ enjoy!"
-David
...existed because the monoply quasi-governmental companies were simply so much better than anyone else could put together. Is there no lesson to learn here? Everyone in the biz knows this is a government granted monoply, why no regulation as in the case of every other government grante monopoly? When the trial was going on, there was only domainance in a couple product spaces (OS's and desktop software), now it's across the board. Looks like the legislators need some succinct advice in what's going on and how much worse the problem has become. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
http://www.softwareobjectz.com
...at the bottom of the page:
this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy
And you're harping over the nbsp thing? Geeeez man. Shame on the poster for hyping it up so moch too. Sure it is an interesting curiosity in how it copycat's Google, but this start page thingie is basically this:
1. MS gets tax credits for taking on students/interns
2. MS runs out of spots on actual projects so they let the students (probably unpaid interns) fill their time honing development skills doing whatever they want
3. A couple of these interns are Google fans and so use VS.NET to make a copycat site (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery perhaps.
(and possibly in the future)
4. MS likes the idea and either gets their permament, paid staff to add "spit and polish", or they hire the students on contract for a short time to complete the work.
It looks to me to be Microsoft up to the same old tricks they've practised for years. MS is looking for the next "Solitare" that comes from a couple of junior staff/unpaid interns from which they can extract maximum benefits.
BTW--being an "incubator" project I'm sure it hasn't gone through much of a regression test, but according to the lead developer's blog they DID consously put effort into making it "firefox compatible". Curious goal if you ask me--I would've personally set the goal to be "standards compliant" instead. They probably didn't do that because then it wouldn't work well enough with standards-challenged IE.
This is a perfect example of why Slashdot has reached new lows.
0 7&tid=217&tid=1
3 2&tid=217
First of all, this story - though not exactly "this" story - has been on Slashdot before.
Second, let's take a moment to review the Slashdot comments with the facts.
Here's the basic timeline:
A small team at Microsoft releases http://start.com/1 March 6th, 2005. This is a first-generation web-based RSS aggregator, quite slick with AJAX.
The same team releases http://start.com/2 on April 6th, 2005. It's an interesting take on a "bookmar manager." It supports automatic importaing of IE favorites. Later, OPML support is added for other users.
Google releases their personalized home page - http://www.google.com/ig - on or just before May 22nd, 2005. The Slashdot story is here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/23/00222
The Start team releases the third version - http://start.com/3 - on June 6th, 2005. This supports a far nicer version of the first page, although it does not incorporate the bookmark manager ideas of the second site. They tweak it weekly, sometimes daily, over the coming months (and continue to do so).
Google updated their personalized page on or just before July 26th, 2005. The Slashdot story is here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/26/12402
Now, the Start.com/3 site is being Slashdotted as a competitor to Google's Homepage. It is, naturally. However, it seems the person who submitted the document neglected to do any basic research, such as looking up the BLOG of the Start.com team: http://spaces.msn.com/members/startcom/ Now, this blog is referenced in the "Staff Picks" section of the Start.com/3 page, as well as easily located via Google.
This now means a horde of Slashdot people visit the site, and then say that MSN is "copying" Google. Now, I'm afraid that this is simply incorrect. Most likely, there is simply a convergence of ideas. "Brilliant minds think alike", so to speak. However, if you want to resort to the childish claims of "He copied me!", then I am afraid that Google is clearly copying the Start pages, down to the layout and javascript. The Start team has added features, and recently added support for OPML import of feeds. And yes, you didn't guess it, EXPORT OF FEEDS into an OPML file.
What happened to MSN's evil "stickiness" policy?!?! My god! And you can't do the same with the Google page.
I've been following the development of Start.com for quite a while - since the first intiative gained some media attention in late March/early April. Of course, the fact that it spread around the blogosphere and was nifty had nothing to do with Google releasing a version of its customized homepage in late May. Realistically, it actually DID have NOTHING to do with it, and was an element of an overall strategy. However, I'm sure - as this so plainly shows - that had Microsoft released Start.com two months after Google released their Personalized Home Page (and with less features), they'd receive a huge number of "OMG YOU TOTALLY COPIED!" comments.
I suspect I shouldn't be astonised at how Slashdot has reacted to this article. But, really, if you're going to post something - at least make sure what you post is TRUE. This PARTICULARLY applies to the Editors; explain to me why they didn't at least FACT-CHECK this article first? Isn't that supposed to be what editors DO?
The truth IS important, despite what you see on television today.
So you're saying that the guys whose primary job is to design, build and (one hopes) test public-facing web properties have access to only a limited number of browsers, to the point that said web properties are nearly completely useless for a well-defined segment of the online world?
That's mind-blowingly absurd.
How hard would it be for them to get a Mac and dual-boot one of the XP boxes they have? MS has access to scrounge up those meager resources, right? I mean, at least build it so that something shows up. Because, you know, it shows Microsoft cares.
Sorry, the sarcasm slipped through there toward the end...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
What I can't get over is that no one has caught that these aren't interns. Someone mentioned this, it's completely false, and everyone else jumped on the intern train. The two people who worked on this are full time employees of Microsoft.
I know this is Slashdot, but would it hurt to get the facts right once in a while?
Too much mumbo jumbo... you can't win a web surfer's heart with a page that busy.
ogg
Black cat, searing pain, flames...? I must be in Heaven! - Homer Simpson
being able to drag sections of a page is HUGE
This is the first I've seen of it. It's as big of a change in behaviour and thinking as being able to pan around the way google maps lets you.
I mean, on the web you expect to see some dumb navigation compass that moves the thing up or down, left or right, and a slider for zooming. Or worse, sliders for all of those things. That's how it's been for some time. But google made it so that you can click and drag and the damn map moves.
WOW.
This is just as huge. I've been using my.yahoo for a long time, and there is the edit panel that lets you tell it how many columns and what sections, nad in what order with an advanced (for the time) list box that dynamically changes when you hilight the choice and hit the up or down arrow button. (I remember learning how to do that and thinking how far we've come from the old days)
but, man, this ajax shit is cool. click and drag sections! I know some desktop aps that haven't/won't figure out how to do this yet.
Freaking awesome, even if that is their only innovation and all that ever comes from it, that's enough.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Their Javascript is broken, at least so says Konqueror.
Error:
http://www.start.com/extern/wsfw/compat/0.072605.
SyntaxError: Parse error at line 85
Error:
http://www.start.com/extern/wsfw/core/0.072605.1/
TypeError: Value undefined (result of expression window.attachEvent) is not an object. Cannot be called.
Error: http://www.start.com/3/: TypeError:
Undefined value
I do not moderate.
... at least in FireFox. Not sure about Win/IE. Google/ig has a same concept, in that things reflow as you drag, but i personally find that to be a usability bug. It offends me. Google was more subtle in making you drag an outline, which i find a bit less confusing than the actual cloned Node you're dragging on the MSN counterpart. I'm pretty sure both google.com/ig and start are adopting this concept due to technical limitations. Doing drag and drop correctly is a sizable challenge. Note how neither MSN or google make you drag widgets that were below the fold. The reflowing 3-column layout you're looking at, is as such, i surmise, for many reasons not the least of which have to do with accurately calculating mouse and object position on a global document, rather than within the confines of a window object. Also dragging objects beyond the folds would ideally require automated scrolling. Not entirely trivial either to make it all work in Safari, Firefox and IE. But possible :) I find it easier to develop in Safari first by sticking to standards. Making various things work in Firefox and then IE, in that order, is typically a matter of minor incremental tweaks. In most cases, if it works in Safari, it works in FF and IE.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
www.start.com/2/ and www.start.com/1/ for alternate versions of this latest microsoft innovation.
Hmm ... the page works under Firefox but does not get rendered under Konqueror. Whereas Googles page works well with Firefox and Konqueror...
It Sucks!
Not Likely.
Slow, icky, derivative and plain.
"Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
I'd forgotten I'd turned off javascript earlier to test a page, so I hit the MS page and got nothing beyond the word "Start" and a text input box.
"Strange," I thought, "What the hell is this supposed to be?"
Then I went to the Google page and saw it was an old style Web Start page like Excite used to have (1997 called...) (I was real mad when Excite got rid of that circa 2000...)
Google had a message saying Javascript was required for this page. Only, because I got content, I thought this was just a general advisory, not a message telling me my browser didn't have javascript.
Only after thinking about it for a bit did I realize, hey, maybe there's more to the MS page but it's javascript dependant, and hey, I remember now, I turned off javascript!
And indeed, with javascript on, a bunch of crap eventually gets written into the MS page. The Google page, however, looks exactly the same, only the advisory about needing javascript is gone.
Score:
Google 1
Microsoft 0
Its interesting to see that Microsoft as the "innovator" that they claim soo often in media and other sources is really just following and is not really doing anything bleeding edge when it comes to their online services.
"no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site."
Did you see the weather forcast of Redmond, WA?
Your web searches... what you are interested in.
Your email... what you talk about. Why 1GB? Because the more you store, the more info they have to mine.
Google Maps... where you live. Now they can target ads based on the fact you looked for the local pizza joint last week.
Google News.... what concerns you
Google Web Accellerator... what webistes you visit
Google toolbar... more detail on your browsing habits...
Google desktop search... your own personal data...
Google: Just Say NO!
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I work on start.com and am one of the 3 folks on the team, and wow, I thought for sure we would have been slashdotted before this :) This is my first post on slashdot, though I have been reading for several years now. I just wanted to make a few replies to the comments I've been seeing.
:)
:) Seriously, the fun is just beginning.
2 9. We talk a little bit about the history of start and some of the development. The video is really long, but it's a good glimpse of our culture, how we started, and how we do things on the team.
I've been seeing a ton of posts about how we copied google. Man you guys are tough! I'm surprised most people think this since they released their page not too long ago and we released our first version back in March. It was March 6th to be exact. I remember the date. It was my birthday
Here's a basic timeline which I also saw posted in another slashdot post somewhere:
- March 6th, http://start.com/1
- April 6th, http://start.com/2
- May 20th(?), google's personalized page
- June 6th, http://start.com/3
We did notice when google shipped their page in May and I have to admit we were like "darn, they have drag/drop before we do" and "man they have a gmail module, we need to get ours working". But honestly in this space we are both sooooo just scratching the surface here and there are a TON of things that can be done. I have 2 whiteboards full of stuff, like our massive todo list and crazy feature ideas. I bet their whiteboards are full too
There is a video of me and one of the other 3 members of the team at http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=902
Now that I look back I remember that we had shipped live to the web in late February, two weeks before we got discovered. The whole effort started back in November. We were doing a series of prototypes to show how the web can actually be fast again. I mean seriously, we have these huge pipes and fast connections and so many people are on broadband, why are we stuck downloading all this unnecessary crap like flash images, unnecessary UI that I'm not interested in, more ad content than content, just to read 3 pages of an article? So we tried some prototypes, showed it to our boss, then found an old unused domain called start.com that MSN owned and thought it would be cool to just put the code out on the web to show our friends. We put it on http://start.com/1 to make it not totally obvious, then waited to see how long it would take for someone to stumble across it. It took 2 weeks. I remember the day (remember, it was my birthday!) and coming in to work to find a ton of blog posts all over the blogosphere about it. It was pretty cool. Some guy even made a screencast of it a few days later (the site seems to be down now) in the same style that Jon Udell had done with google maps.
Anyway, sorry about the servers running slow. We're an incubation site and we just migrated onto shiny new hardware a few weeks back and we're still working out the kinks. Tonight Slashdot sent us about 15x the traffic we normally get and we've been having fun watching the servers keep up with the load. Seriously, if you got burned tonight, try it again tomorrow.
I noticed one of the posts mention that we use a cookie. Yeah we do, we use it to index your settings on the back-end. The last thing we wanted to do was slap on a huge LOGIN TO PASSPORT page before you can even do anything since a) our target audience (you guys) would probably thing that was lame and wouldn't even try the site out and b) we use start.com too and *we* think that would be lame. We want people to check it out, kick the tires, give it a whirl, etc and a simple cookie works pretty well for now.
Oh yeah and we fixed the nbsp thing. Oops, duh! Sorry about that.
Over and out,
steve
It was a kind of portal, I could customize the soruces of news, horoscope, weather and the page used to have indicator to show how fast it would download in 56k modem. More stuff added to it, indicator would go up.
Here is a sample of what it used to be.
It's too bad moderation seems on the fritz, this post is a bit underrated.
This page doesn't work in safari on OSX 10.3. I am not really sure why, but the javascript on this page seems fairly intense.
On another subject, we find this statement at the bottom of the page:
this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy.
Could this mean that the mountain of Microsoft research money is finally showing fruit?
Qxe4
Second, one of the few major differences is that there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site.
True, but I'm sure the MSN results page will clue most people in...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Because everything else is bloat already.
I've played with Google's page for 5 minutes and then abandoned it. If I'm starting a browser, I probably know what I'm looking for, if it's news or search or whatever. And if something else loads in addition, this means lost bandwidth and traffic quota. And it grows if you start the browser more than 20 times a day.
...or something? Why would they automatically put their stock price against Yahoo's and Google's? Or does /3 make that happen?
On a side note, why is there WAY less modding happening today? Was there a change to modding, a sudden decrease in everyone's stockpile of mod points, and/or is everyone generally apathetic towards the posts today? And no, I didn't change my preferences; I've checked multiple times. I'll be surprised if anyone gives me a useful answer to this, though. (Keep in mind that I'm accessing threads up to a day old, so most modding in them should have already occurred.) Arigato to anyone that cares enough to help me understand this!
Waiiii!!!!!! I have bad karma!
(I posted this as a new topic earlier. I hope I don't end up in karma hell for re-posting it as a reply like I should have...)
:) This is my first post on slashdot, though I have been reading for several years now. I just wanted to make a few replies to the comments I've been seeing.
:)
:) Seriously, the fun is just beginning.
I work on start.com and am one of the 3 folks on the team, and wow, I thought for sure we would have been slashdotted before this
I've been seeing a ton of posts about how we copied google. Man you guys are tough! I'm surprised most people think this since they released their page not too long ago and we released our first version back in March. It was March 6th to be exact. I remember the date. It was my birthday
Here's a basic timeline which I also saw posted in another slashdot post somewhere:
- March 6th, http://start.com/1
- April 6th, http://start.com/2
- May 20th(?), google's personalized page
- June 6th, http://start.com/3
We did notice when google shipped their page in May and I have to admit we were like "darn, they have drag/drop before we do" and "man they have a gmail module, we need to get ours working". But honestly in this space we are both sooooo just scratching the surface here and there are a TON of things that can be done. I have 2 whiteboards full of stuff, like our massive todo list and crazy feature ideas. I bet their whiteboards are full too
There is a video of me and one of the other 3 members of the team at http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=9022 9. We talk a little bit about the history of start and some of the development. The video is really long, but it's a good glimpse of our culture, how we started, and how we do things on the team.
Now that I look back I remember that we had shipped live to the web in late February, two weeks before we got discovered. The whole effort started back in November. We were doing a series of prototypes to show how the web can actually be fast again. I mean seriously, we have these huge pipes and fast connections and so many people are on broadband, why are we stuck downloading all this unnecessary crap like flash images, unnecessary UI that I'm not interested in, more ad content than content, just to read 3 pages of an article? So we tried some prototypes, showed it to our boss, then found an old unused domain called start.com that MSN owned and thought it would be cool to just put the code out on the web to show our friends. We put it on http://start.com/1 to make it not totally obvious, then waited to see how long it would take for someone to stumble across it. It took 2 weeks. I remember the day (remember, it was my birthday!) and coming in to work to find a ton of blog posts all over the blogosphere about it. It was pretty cool. Some guy even made a screencast of it a few days later (the site seems to be down now) in the same style that Jon Udell had done with google maps.
Anyway, sorry about the servers running slow. We're an incubation site and we just migrated onto shiny new hardware a few weeks back and we're still working out the kinks. Tonight Slashdot sent us about 15x the traffic we normally get and we've been having fun watching the servers keep up with the load. Seriously, if you got burned tonight, try it again tomorrow.
I noticed one of the posts mention that we use a cookie. Yeah we do, we use it to index your settings on the back-end. The last thing we wanted to do was slap on a huge LOGIN TO PASSPORT page before you can even do anything since a) our target audience (you guys) would probably thing that was lame and wouldn't even try the site out and b) we use start.com too and *we* think that would be lame. We want peo
anybody notice that slashdot is removed from the list of news site that can be customized on google.com/ig? well now you can import any RSS feed now by specifying the rss url, but it's no longer part of the default list. just click on "add content" on the top left and you'll see what i mean.
;)
(hehe yes, slashdot is a *cough* news site
my blog
S L O W
Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't.
The first thing I tried on both those pages was enter my city, "London, UK", in the weather forecast box. Google let me enter it, but said "Information is temporarily unavailable". Clicking on the link it leaves brings up a search page with all the other weather forecast sites out there, which have no problem finding a weather forecast for this major world city. "Start" let me enter "Londo", then refused to accept any more input. I assumed they must do a substring search, though it was strange that there was no indication of that, so I pressed the Add button, and received the message "Zip code not found." So not only are they not handling non-US cities, they are excluding any future possibility of doing so. Both these sites are irrelevant to me, though Google does look like it could improve, based on their previous expansion of services that are initially released as US only.
Interestingly enough, the page works in firefox but not safari. I wonder whose fault that is? ...I actually am being serious.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Go to start to shutdown the internet ??
Google wins, 10,001-0.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
I'm guessing the mod script must be broke, cos this deserves a +5 surely!
.
As is usual with MS, their Start page doesn't work in Opera. There are no sections, no search queries produce any results. And opening new pages in the same window is fucking pathetic.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
It's really a nice and clean page...
And actually, there's some innovative stuff too. They took the entire "Start Menu" thing, and adapted it to be a CSS bookmark/organizer. Neat!
Not to mention that the page renders perfectly with Firefox under Linux.
This kind of quality makes me think that Microsoft should be divided into several, smaller, independent companies. This way, nice projects like this start.com wouldn't be tainted by corporative "thinking".
Microsoft already is fighting in too many fronts to be effective in every one, a split up would benefect them, as they would became more agile, and benefect the market, as we would get rid of the Microsoft's Godzilla...
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Note that two other versions of this page also exist, with slightly different stylings... one at /1/ and another at /2/. You can see them by clicking here and here.
The Big News Page
Just about perfect... all it needs is a Microsoft logo.
--
Bill
Why do I want a start page?
Even my old dad has his own startpage, he picked a newspaper he like.. I got slashdot.. whats the need for a special start-page on the net??
www.start.com/3 was up before google's version they are just being very quiet about it. There were also 2 releases prior to that that are still available. www.start.com/1 www.start.com/2 There is a Channel 9 video about it here: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=9022 9
Till it had the crap /.ed out of it.
Free Firefox news reader.
While Start's interface is pretty slick, I gotta stick with Yahoo for the multitude of feed options.
1) Is because it's full of all kinds of crap: ;o)
z e/wso.php?url=http://www.start.com/3/
The following is inline javascript to convert http://start.com/3 -> http://www.start.com/3/ (can be seen by "view javascript" in the Firefox Developer Toolbar). This causes an infinite loop in any cache of the page (e.g. google's cache)
----------
var p = window.location.pathname;
var h = location.href;
if (p != "/" && p.indexOf("default.aspx") == -1 && p.charAt(p.length - 1) != '/')
h += '/';
if (location.hostname == "start.com")
h = h.replace("start.com","www.start.com");
if (h != location.href)
location.replace(h);
----------
2) It's huge:
Total HTTP Requests: 47
Total Size: 264511 bytes
Total size does not count "externals" (CSS and javascript):
Javascript: 198459 bytes (why 193 KB of JavaScript on a start page?)
CSS: 49063 bytes
Taken from: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analy
1) Because it's javascript you can't even go back to previous searches. Only the last search can be used.
Using the string "Apple, Cupertino" (thinking of this story), it was interesting see what popped up (note the first result returned).
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
http://www.start.com/3/ have to copy the leader !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
wow this is such a cool page. im going to switch back to ie right now just cus it's so cool.
why would ms do this when they have shares in google? it makes no sense, if not to directly compete.
who knows, its probably got lots of google code in there.
Why UNIX?
Firefox support
rest assured we haven't abandoned our firefox users and are working on the issues continuously
It's OK but no matter what they did they would be hard pressed to make it this bad:
http://www.msn.com/
GOOG
MSFT
YHOO
I know these are just interns, and that the page (a complete rip-off) was done because they loved Google's page. However is this how Microsoft sees the world maybe?
I'm not talking about the order, that's just alphabetical. But, you don't see Apple in that list. You don't see Sony in that list either. You also don't see AOL. I would speculate, these interns may have given some great insight into who Microsoft is focusing on as the real competition... Google and Yahoo.
BTW, the popup window thing. I'm sorry, but it's not an improvement over Google's homepage. The windows don't even drag. Whoever created this uses IE and is longing for tabs. Get Firefox, and get rid of the floating javascript windows.
The positive about this? Google engineers are going to look at it and say to themselves, "Oh, HELL NO!" and get cracking on yet another ground breaking beta update.
I8-D
You've been able to add custom RSS feeds to google's personalized home for a few weeks now.
1. Click "Add Content" in the upper left hand corner of the http://www.google.com/ig page.
2. Click on "Create a Section" on the dropdown list and type in the URL to the feed you want to add. Very simple.
So does this mean it only works with an MS browser?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I'll stick with good ol' Google; it does what I want it to do the way I'm used to seeing it done. I might have another look at 'start.com' if the situation ever changes, but so far Google seems to smart to break a good thing!
Of course, M$ may come up with something truly original which changes my viewpoint, but I can't conceive what that possibly could be at this point.
Oh wait. It's Microsoft. Their engineers built a time-machine, went a few months into the future, stole all of Google's start-page code, went back in time, and launched it first! Genius! Wait...their engineers cant build a time machine...who'd they steal THAT from?
Seriously Slashdot. Start doing some research on your posts. Stop accusing Microsoft of copycatting everyone.
when I load with firefox with no scripting enabled, a lot of stuff doesn't show up, they are relying too much on javascript stuff to make the website useable. (apart from the search box itself) but then I guess most of the javascript stuff is useless crap anyway...
[My Homepage]
Yahoo mail, groups, personalization, homepages, is all very mature and well structured.
Too bad it doesnt get much notice here compared to google.
Doesn't anyone else get as angry as I do, that the biggest software company in the whole world, employing thousands of programmers, have 0 original fucking ideas? 0!
There are 525 posts as of this one and not a single one has been modded above a 3. Odd I tell you.
microsoft innovates again!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I hate to say it but it's very very good. It works perfect on Firefox on NetBSD. That's saying something.
Totally surprised to see sooo many comments for this but not a single rated +4 or above? Come on guys!
I said something very similar to this in my spreadfirefox.com blog. My idea was that since IE 7 has copied all the compelling features of FireFox that the browser neede something really usefull and necesarry to facility a wide scale deployment. The idea I propropsed, and I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, is that someone, perhaps google, should create an word processor with XUL technology. If you've ever seen the Amazon example you'll know that the technology is ripe for this. The odd thing that caught me by surprise is that everyone that replied my blog at the spread firefox website said my idea was stupid and that firefox should only ever be a web browser. To say the least it is not very incouraging that the marketing machine of Firefox is short sighted.
Overall, pushing boundaries in technology is a good thing, and it's obvious MS is quick to copy, both for the browser (IE7 vs FF) and the content (MSFT vs GOOG).
I think it will be interesting to see who will be able to outshine MS's "embrace and extend" philosophy by doing the same with their own respective products. New ideas that push boundaries are important, otherwise MS will just assimilate, then dominate, then stagnate the technology.
Don't know if anyone noticed, because I am not going to read through all 500+ replies but there is also a http://www.start.com/1/ and a http://www.start.com/2/ in addition to the http://www.start.com/3/
In fact, I blogged about this a week ago on Downloadsquad. I was also informed (loudly) that MS's start predates Google's homepage.
/. in the feeds? kinda funny)
And this was the 3rd time it was up on Digg, so to answer many of the same comments on here, I'm going to copy my comments below:
Some facts:
1. yes, MS has owned the domain since 1996, but only launched start 1 in the past year (look it up on their beta page, link at the bottom of the start).
2. the MS start page predates Google's
3. it says it's owned by MS at the bottom and is an incubation/testing area for technologies... RTFA please
4. MS might not like Apple, but you can chalk the incompatibilities up to Safari's crappy handling of the X in Ajax... many other ajax sites don't work properly in Safari (props to Google on going the very long extra mile and getting gmail to work tho)
5. looks like this will always be a preview (and didja notice
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
But where do I find those feeds? AFP feeds aren't free, Yahoo pays for them and hosts the articles. The bottom line is I still can't replicate my Yahoo content on Google or Start.
Site doesn't work in Opera.
Jeez, doesn't Slashdot care about accuracy at all? Start.com is NOT a search site. It is an RSS aggregator (click the word Start to drop it down) built in AJAX. It is a spectacular bit of programming, but an unofficial incubation experiment by some Microsoft employees. It might be a majot part of Microsoft strategy, or it could go nowhere. Still, the AJAX-based search results are pretty fun to use.
Didn't realize that the AFP feeds weren't free so I see your dilemma. Use what works for you.
It can give answer to questions like "what is the population of norway". MSN doesn't have any artificial intelligence. You can read Eric Brills paper about AskMSR question answering system for more info about how it's done.
The start.com page doesn't look like its anything different from the my.msn.com user home page in terms of funcationality.. right down to the draggable boxes.
God Damnit, I swear, the ignorance of some of you is astounding.
The "why preview" link at the bottom reads:
Firefox support
rest assured we haven't abandoned our firefox users and are working on the issues continuously
Being a MS site this looks kinda funny - might also be related to the fact that there is no large banner with the MS logo. Support Firefox, gain user base, then drop support silently? Hmmmm....
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
If you change the 3 in the url it gives you different styles. Like change it to 1 or a 2 and you'll see what i mean.
Still, they could have come up with something a little better than this.
-Pizentios
The page loses user-friendly points, because I couldn't find a way to add menus I removed. There doesn't seem to be any function to do this.
Also note that www.start.com/1/ and www.start.com/2/ include different prototype versions, all a little different, though www.start.com/3/ is the most advanced looking.
"# GOOG 296.38 -2.81 10:13 AM
# MSFT 27.27 +0.46 10:13 AM"
Afcource those listings are removed as soon as Google's stocks rise... And why only MS , Google and Yahoo! Are listed puzzles me...
Thank god they put that up.
Channel 9 interview w/ the dev team here.
It just plain old doesn't work in IE5.5
Doesn't even atempt to degrade grasefuly.
http://www.start.com/5
Its barely, what - 12 lines of XHTML? And they dont even have an alt attribute on the img tag... or bother to close it.
Sigh...
I was cerious to see if they ended up using their own software or is this going to be like hotmail where in the background they are using qmail. http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /start.com
I'm glad the industry is being pushed forward by movers and shakers like that nice little group of kids in Redmond. Good to see the sleeping giants (Google) woken from their laurel-resting slumber.
about:blank as my homepage to this.
The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.
It is intersting to see someone advocating the use of standard-compliant markup language, when they don't even master the english language themselves.
It's called their pages. No need to thanks me :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
How can that be a rival to googles start page. I use goggle to search for things, not read news articles.
Googles page is simple. A google sign, a search box, and 5 or 6 *ONE WORD* links to features of google.
If i wanted to search for news, I would hit up the myriad of news websites, not a search engine.
But then again, MS does have to design for the stupidest of people out there.
No way will this be a problem for google.
Google has name recognition. You can easily say to someone Google it. You cant say goto www.start.com/3 to find what you are looking for... People will jsut stare at you dumbfounded.
Way to go MS, bloat another site, when you are trying to keep it simple.
hah
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... but it looks and works damn good! is this really a non-web-standards M$ we're talking about?? I'm guessing they bought some GMail or GMaps engineers...
Probably, a showcase for their recent AJAX solutions they're trying to sell...
At least, it works very fine in Firefox. But I have a gut feeling that once IE7 is past and WVista is everywhere ( along with XAML ), they'll be dumping all this AJAX "crap" and focus again on selling their proprietary views of how you should develop apps...
I don't feel like it...
Speaking of ignorance, there is no such word as "damnit" (you can check it via Webster). Secondly, this was a terrible sentence. "God Damn it." Should be it's own sentence. Yours is a run-on sentence with a couple commas. If you are going to call someone ignorant, you should look competent yourself... lol
What the default listing of the weather as "Redmond, WA" isn't a clue? How about the copyright notice?
I've been using the Internet/WWW for 10+ years now, and I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care about this type of start page.
In the beginning, for me, I was way more interested in finding new stuff than I was in habitually browsing to any one site; there weren't many to browse to anyway--maybe CNN and Yahoo. Now, due to RSS being directly in the browser, I think the need for this type of start page is gone.
Does anyone really care about having a start page like this? I'm really want to know; I'm not trying to be a troll or anything...
Interesting thing I predicted this. And just how did I predict this, you may ask. Those typos were the first thing I noticed after pressing "Submit" :D
I did however not advocate nor claim that I mastered the english language. I just filed a general request for concistency in my fellow /.er's argument :)
Needless to say, that's borderline to trolling these days.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Any 2nd year college student with a fair hand at HTML/CSS/XML and a dislike for ads could throw a configurable aggregation site together using other peoples content -- that could rival the start page by google or microsoft.
What perplexes me is, I think we can all agree that neither of these "start" pages are a technical marvel, yet while our add and flash scorned eyes can appreciate their minimallistic approaches in contrast to their "nascar like" fueled predecesors -- why is this a big deal?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Or it's really corporate policy in MS to make sites stop working in Opera, even in the research projects like yours?
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
MOD PARENT UP!!!
The RSS integration is brilliant. For me, that's what sets it apart from the hundreds of other versions of the same idea.
The way the search works is great too. Pity they have to use MSN for the engine though. The best interface in the world can't compensate for second-rate results.
Also, kudos for not forcing log in.
fish and pipes
this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. for other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ enjoy!
They're even copying google's beta approach! What's next, indefinite invite-only betas?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
...one of the few major differences is that there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site. Another major difference is that you do not need to sign in to see your preferences, feeds, etc. At least not yet.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Although it's kind of unfair to compare a production site to an experimental site, here it is:
:).
browser - google / start
opera - Y / N
firefox - Y / Y
camino - Y / Y
safari - Y / N
omniweb - Y / N
konqueror - Y / N
ie(win) - Y / Y
ie(mac) - Y / N
Now you can begin wondering how much effort does Google put on making the sites available for every browser... or.... how badly does Microsoft web designer develop, it all depends on your point of view
check out
http://www.start.com/1/
and
http://www.start.com/2/
how original. not surprising it doesnt seem to be compatible with Safari. I dont see any way of adding content. Ill just stick with my google or yahoo custom pages
This is very becoming of microsoft software. Their page, although having an identical layout, and an extra feature (column control) is clunkier, non-standard compliant (? xmlns:msn ...a namespace without a URI?), and simply doesn't really work as well as google's nice streamlined page, although I have to admit...google's page isn't to standard friendly either ( is not approved by the W3C, and element's require a type attribute!).
The point is, I pick google's, because when I click on something and drag it, I get smooth behavior, rather thank chocking, choppy wierdness.
But it wont surprise me if 90% of people don't agree with me or don't find googles page and find microsofts first, since that is typically what happens.