08 Feb 2005 | Blake said...

Used to be blank until Firefox set it to the Google/Firefox Start with the 1.0 release. I've left it there since I do actually make use of the search box every once in awhile.

08 Feb 2005 | chris rhee said...

Mine is blank as well. I don't think there is one page that I need every time I load up my web browser, so I just start from scratch each time.

But then again, I rarely use Bookmarks, either. I type out (or partially type out) most of the URLs I frequent.

08 Feb 2005 | Jeremy Flint said...

At the office, mine is set to my task list on our intranet.

On my laptop, it is set to my blo.gs listing.

08 Feb 2005 | dmr said...

I find it useful to create a multi-colum html page of bookmarks I visit on a frequent basis. This way I'm not messing with drop-downs and folders for bookmarks I visit all the time. Organizing them by subject helps too: online docs, forums, design dailies (ala K10K), news sites, blogs and things I'll research to review at my leisure. Also handy are a few input boxes for useful sites like dictionary.com and the like.

Better would be if Safari generated this kind of thing with drag & drop functionality. Multi-column bookmarks, at a glance...how cool would that be?

08 Feb 2005 | Bob H. said...

I've got mine set to my personal intranet. I have 5 columns of information which include resources I have listed on the server, frequently visited web sites, search boxes for favorite sites, admin tools for web servers, etc.

08 Feb 2005 | Craig Bedard said...

I set it to Google even though I have the toolbar installed which makes it redundant.

08 Feb 2005 | Matt Haughey said...

I've set mine to google.com for about the past four years. I realized I was constantly spanning new windows (before tabs were around) to do searches for more info while doing blog posts. The habit of always doing research became a more regular thing as google continued to get better and so many times I started a browser with "I need to find info on..."

08 Feb 2005 | Erik Simmler said...

My browser picks up wherever I left off, whether that be with a ton of pages, or nothing. Usually nothing.

Muscle memory makes it trivial to start up Opera, hit ctrl-n and then type g-space whatever to start a Google search (my usual first step).

I've thought about creating some sort of dashboard (for lack of a better term) that monitors stats, sites, whatever. I'm just too lazy.

08 Feb 2005 | Josue Salazar said...

I've got SessionSaver installed, so it always loads the tabs i had when i closed it.

Good enough for me.

08 Feb 2005 | Jaime said...

I have had mine set to blank ever since I can remember. I like to start with a clean slate. It also decreases my start-up time, and my frustration level when I start to type a URL and then the browser overwrites it because it just got done loading a new page.

08 Feb 2005 | R. Marie Cox said...

"Multi-column bookmarks, at a glance...how cool would that be?"

Funny you should mention that, actually, my homepage is set to my bookmark app scribble and that is basically multi-column bookmarks at a glance. I sort of hid the set cookie functionality and should probably make that more obvious (it's buried in account settings now) since it is the key to using it as a homepage but I use it on every single browser at work. I don't have a persistent connection at home, however, so I do use about:blank; there.

08 Feb 2005 | Benjy said...

At work, it's set to my company's site. At home, it's set to ESPN.

08 Feb 2005 | Phil Dokas said...

I've set mine to the random page on Wikipedia. Yeah it's a random city in the middle of Kentucky 9 times out 10, but that 1 time... what a time that is.

08 Feb 2005 | Brendan Avery said...

I personally like it set my PC's to blank default start page. I don't need the aggravation of waiting for some default connection to a remote server to before I can start using my browser. Plus I like the feeling of that emptiness -- it doesn't distract me from the intention I have when I opened the browser in the first place. (I can get distracted or sidetracked very easily and I try to take defensive measures where possible.) I also like the ability to click HOME to clear the page and start fresh. At work we have it set to the intranet homepage, which is useful because it has status/alerts that are not sent via email.

08 Feb 2005 | Scott said...

In Safari I use a blank page; Firefox I use the Google/Firefox start page.
The Google/Firefox page is pretty lightweight so it doesn't take long to load. More times than not, I'll just use the Google search box in leu of the start page.

08 Feb 2005 | Casey Gollan said...

Its a bit of a heavy load but being a machead mine is set to apple.com i've just never bothered to change it, although Google Suggest might be better. Its unnerving for me to see a blank screen when the browser loads. I like to know that it's working. (p.s. is there a way to skin the file http://37signals.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi? Because when you do a comment preview it goes there and its definitely not the SVN template.)

08 Feb 2005 | Ryan C said...

For any laptop I take to a client site, it's blank. At work it's set to myway.com as it's the only site I've found that I can customize with the news that interests me, add my own links, loads insanely fast, and is free. I set my home computer to the same, but my wife keeps setting it back to MomAdvice.com. *Sigh*

08 Feb 2005 | Magnus said...

When starting Safari or Firefox I have Google. Opening a new tab I have blank page.

I miss a nice, fast loading, good looking fully customizeable portal, with news, weather, stock index etc. etc.

08 Feb 2005 | Dan said...

Google. It loads quickly and the best thing to have right in front of you in a new window is the best search engine there is.

08 Feb 2005 | Larry Burningham said...

My homepage is an auto post login to basecamp. Why, because I use it all the time.

08 Feb 2005 | josh said...

OK, at the risk of coming off like a terrible suck up...

My homepage opens to my Ta-Da list. The reason for this is that the browser is my productivity enemy. I am too easily sidetracked reading user experience sites and justifying it as research when I need to be doing work.

Having the browser always open to a to-do list helps me stay on track.

08 Feb 2005 | Eric Lunt said...

Google News. It's the one time of the day when I connect with the Real World!

08 Feb 2005 | Keith said...

On my home profile it opens blank.

On my work profile it opens to our Basecamp install. Which, to be honest, I think I need to change. It drives me nuts that the focus shifts from the address bar to the login box. I don't think this is a fault with Basecamp, just the way that I usually browse. I should probably just have it open blank...

08 Feb 2005 | Wes said...

I'm surprised there are no mentions for this yet, but I have mine set to a web based RSS reader. This way, when I open a new window I can see if there is anything fresh. This 37signals entry just had the number 1 spot (newest listing).

I use Kinja.com because it does not require a login once you set your feeds up and there is no distraction to get to the listing of posts. I have a Bloglines account, but it requires logging in and then selecting a feed or feed group to see the posts. Scanning the new posts from the homepage needs to be easier than that.

08 Feb 2005 | Chris from Scottsdale said...

I can't believe I'm the only one that loads the Drudge Report.

08 Feb 2005 | eliot said...

I have mine go to daily dose of imagery. The first time I open it in the morning, it's nice to see a great new photo. Then, when I open a new browser later in the day, I enjoy revisiting that great photo. Nice alternative to PLC code and evil Operator Interface screens (doesn't this industry know anything about good HMI??).

Most of the time I use tabs to see new pages, and that is set to blank page so I don't get sick of daily dose.

08 Feb 2005 | Dave Strus said...

I have my home page set to an online feed aggregator, but I have the browser configured to show a blank page rather than the home page when a new tab or browser window is opened.

So it's really blank, but the "home" button still goes somewhere.

08 Feb 2005 | David said...

Same setup as dmr. It is especially having a page of links with Firefox since I can quickly follow one with only a few keystrokes (type ahead find is the best feature ever).

08 Feb 2005 | David said...

Oh, and my page runs on localhost, so I don't have to worry about having a net connection when I start my browser. That's one thing I cannot stand, especially when my laptop isn't connected to any network.

08 Feb 2005 | Pete Prodoehl said...

My work machine goes to a page served by itself via Apache that has links to everything I need to get stuff done. (3 column page of links and forms.) At home my machines point to my main machine (again running Apache) and get a page full of links I need, though only new windows or a browser launch goes there, for a new tab in Firefox, it's a blank page, and I set it up this way long ago because of speed issues. On the kid's machines it's set to Google, though I might change that to Yahooligans...

08 Feb 2005 | Chris Vincent said...

Mine was Google until I became too annoyed with the fact that it automatically put the search box into focus when I wanted to do something else.

From then on it was blank until I found this:
http://www.marktaw.com/getbacktowork.htm

I've been contemplating a custom start page for some time, but I've yet to get around to it.

08 Feb 2005 | monkeyinabox said...

Machines at work -> intranet site
Personal machines -> Google.com

08 Feb 2005 | Aaron said...

I built a custom start page about 3 years ago - it's got some horrid code, but it works, and has bookmarks, searches (google, wikipedia, thesaurus, encarta, dictionary), weather, the Onion, and a calendar. I only really use the bookmarks, because the rest I can really access through Firefox's address bar. However, I haven't found a site that displays bookmarks or things like that more interestingly than mine does, and I haven't built one myself, because what I have isn't so bad. It is very helpful for being unproductive.

A side-note, while I'm commenting, is that ta-da lists are fantastic because it is within my browser - when I'm off surfing elsewhere, I can instead go over to my list and be like, "aha! I need to do that"

08 Feb 2005 | Bryan Haggerty said...

I have mine set to ClickMates.

It's a roommate management suite that I developed with my roommates (ya kinda geeky). But basically it manages our communal bills, grocery lists, to-do lists, and messaging.

08 Feb 2005 | Peter said...

new windows are news.google.com.
new tabs are blank.

08 Feb 2005 | DaveMo said...

At work, mine is set to my employer's homepage.

At home it's blank. I then use the bookmarks/favorites to access my most often used links such as bank, email, netflix, web design links (like SvN), etc. A blank page loads quicker and I don't have to be online to get to it.

08 Feb 2005 | Matt K said...

Drudge

08 Feb 2005 | John Hritz said...

I have mine set to my del.icio.us bookmarks. It seems helpful to look over what was interesting the last time I was at the computer.

08 Feb 2005 | geeky said...

my home/start page is my custom portal page. i like it because it has everything i visit / use frequently, such as a google search and frequently visited websites. 9 times out of 10 when i open a new tab, i'm going to one of those sites anyway, so i just save myself some typing :)

08 Feb 2005 | Steven Urmston said...

My start page is very often google (not quite sure why!), but I often just set it to something I'm working on. I find I can gain inspiration by the site just flicking up, you can see instant/obvious problems you might not have noticed otherwise.

08 Feb 2005 | Lance E. LEonard said...

My Feeds at Bloglines. I'm an information junkie and feel disconnected from the world when I can't read whats going on in the world.

08 Feb 2005 | Stephen said...

Mine is set to a couple of sites using the | thingy to separate urls in firefox. So it opens a tab for google, two internal stat pages, kinja and the BBC news site.

08 Feb 2005 | Garrick Van Buren said...

My home page is blank. Has been for years. Though I go to the same dozen sites whenever I open a new browser window, I don't know which one that's going to be ahead of time. Then again, perhaps my subscribed-to-the-gills NetNewsWire can be considered a 'start page'.

08 Feb 2005 | TechMount said...

I used to have a web page with links to all my required resources online. Later I moved to a blank stage, than to my blog and after the Firefox 1.0 upgrade I just left the Google/Firefox start screen.

08 Feb 2005 | Patrick Kelley said...

On my laptop it is blank.

On my desktop it goes to a page I created on my site. It has my bloglines blogroll, some listing stuff, and a bunch of other things I like to look at. Basically my own little portal of things I feel I should see.

08 Feb 2005 | lalitre said...

I had mine set to blank for a long time, but now it's set to my TaDa list. This helps me to remember to get to work rather than putzing around on the internet.

08 Feb 2005 | Randy said...

Josh and Phil,

You guys are geniuses and I wish I could set my homepage to the same as both of yours but for highly converse reasons.

08 Feb 2005 | Ste Grainer said...

Hrm, interesting discussion - I never realized so many people started out with a blank homepage. I think all that white would overwhelm me.

For a long time, both my home and work homepages were set to a handrolled page similar to the multi-column bookmark pages people have mentioned. It included favorite sites on one side, news pulled from RSS feeds in the center, and important personal sites (coded only to show for specific IP addresses) on the other side. It took more work to maintain than simply saving bookmarks and using a feedreader, so I've switched to my website's homepage at home (to encourage me to update often). At work, I have two tabs open: BlogLines and my work site (which will be switching to our Intranet as it progresses).

I'm also curious how many people leave their web browser open all the time. Mine stays open pretty much from whenever the computer is turned on (it's one of my startup items) until it is turned off. The only time I close it is if for some reason I need to quit or it crashes.

08 Feb 2005 | Brad Hurley said...

blank. I've always hated having anything other than a blank page as my home page, although I tried having Google as my home page for a while and that worked okay. But I prefer blank. Or as Internet Explorer likes to call it, about:blank

08 Feb 2005 | seth said...

blank is the way to go...screw the browser trying to load anything upon every new window that opens. that would drive me insane.

08 Feb 2005 | Joe said...

google.com. I highly recommend it. Worth checking out. :)

08 Feb 2005 | Robin Hastings said...

I use the bookmark group feature in Firefox - bloglines, my friends' discussion board, gmail and my work intranet are all the first pages that pop up into my browser when I open it each morning. At home it's bloglines, my friends' discussion board, gmail and my online college homepage. I chose those pages becuase I invariably use them at some point during the day and it saves me a click or two to just open them up and get it out of the way!

08 Feb 2005 | Robbie said...

Can't believe no one else is using myhq.com.

It's multi-column bookmarks that you create using a simple (if a bit tortured -- could definitely use a 37signals redesign) user interface. It's free, you can customize the color scheme, number of columns, re-arrange links, put them in categories, etc. You can make your list of bookmarks public, if you want.

I put this as my startup page on every computer I use, so I always have access to the same set of bookmarks no matter where I am. And, if I add a new bookmark, it's instantly available on any other page that I use.

http://www.myhq.com/

...and some examples of the Public bookmark pages people have made (some are ugly and disorganized, others are clean and quite nice.. it's up to the person!)

http://www.myhq.com/public

08 Feb 2005 | MojoMark said...

I use my.yahoo.com for my homepage, heavily edited with AdBlock on Firefox to make it lighter and less obnoxious. If I can't hit it, then the net connection is probably down. I like the three column layout; 8 news feeds in the wide middle and numerous portlets on the narrow left and right (bookmarks, stock prices, weather, mapping, search, MyTeams scoreboard, calculator), and it refreshes every 15 minutes keeping me informed when news breaks. New tabs go blank though.

08 Feb 2005 | jxhndxe said...

Used to be google, then myway.com, and for the past several months it's been bloglines.com

08 Feb 2005 | One of several Steves said...

Whatever the lastest spyware infestation has set it to.

Seriously, I wander around from blank (not for a while, though, now that I think of it) to one of a couple different customized news/resource pages (my.yahoo.com, etc.) that I have set up.

08 Feb 2005 | p8 said...

A new 37 project?
I also have a page with the most important bookmarks. It also has a search field for google and my own knowledge base.

Now I'm using Huevos for search. I just have to press command-space and command-g to search on google from any application. To search wikipedia I press command-space and command-w...etc

08 Feb 2005 | Greg said...

A handrolled, multi-section page with all the sites I visit on a regular basis, links to all the admin interfaces for all the web apps I use (local and hosted), sprinkled throughout are search boxes for various services: google (search, groups, local & maps), a local business finder (not used much since google local was added), wikipedia, etc. It's hosted locally for speedy startup times and no errors if my connection is down.

08 Feb 2005 | beto said...

Mine's still blank after all these years.

I guess I just don't want to be "sucked in" by some given site first thing in the morning. I keep all my daily bookmarks handy though.

So, blank it stays.

09 Feb 2005 | YoungHistorians said...

You know what I really need?
A firefox extension that syncs my bookmarks with a web based app.

That would be sweet. And useful!

09 Feb 2005 | sloan said...

Blank. No browser is going to tell me where to go!

09 Feb 2005 | Mike S said...

Been happy with www.mypip.com for years. Easy to update three-column portal-like bookmark manager. I also use the browser Links toolbar to manage another set of Top 10 sites I visit every week/day.

http://www.mypip.com/

09 Feb 2005 | Peter Cooper said...

Since the advent of RSS, I almost never load my browser manually, it loads itself when I view some items. Then it's open for the rest of the day :-)

09 Feb 2005 | Regnard Kreisler Raquedan said...

Blank of course. The practice started when I was still with dial-up. it was pretty annoying to load a page for every new windows, it really sucks the bandwidth.

09 Feb 2005 | heretic said...

I have a custom startup page (just loads off hard drive).

At work it has a set of forms/searches (including a google search) and frequently used links. Other people on my team started out by getting copies of it (one time my manager asked me to email a copy to the team email list), now many of them have customised it to their own needs.

At home it's basically the same with a different set of links.

09 Feb 2005 | Will Hayworth said...

Mine used to be (in the very recent past) my Kinja. Before that, it was Google.

Now, it's my aggregator on my server (Feed on Feeds).

09 Feb 2005 | Steve said...

Believe it or not, I use the default MSIE home page (unlike most people here, it seems). I even keep that as the default for Firefox.

I like the little fun articles they show in the home page; there's usually something of interest on it. I find it a nice diversion. It's easy enough to ctrl-k if I want to search, and ctrl-t doesn't go to the home page anyway.

09 Feb 2005 | Chris Griffin said...

I thought somebody would of already mentioned it but nobody has. The "other search engine" Yahoo. Some people dont like all that crap on the front page and prefer to use google. The only thing I use Yahoo for is the News section. When ever I get to work or home and fire up firefox I want to see what is going on in the world. I have the Google toolbar on Firefox and IE so it renders Google as my homepage useless.

09 Feb 2005 | James said...

I see the localhost, because a) that tells the network is up (loopback works, anyway), b) Apache is running okay, and c) it doesn't require a lengthly roundtrip to a remote server, which might be down.

09 Feb 2005 | Ken Walker said...

Ditto on the tada list. Right now I'm in the midst of a job search, so it's a very helpful reminder before I go spinning into the time-sucking vortex that is the web. ;-)

09 Feb 2005 | Blingo said...

What is this tada?

09 Feb 2005 | jason said...

basecamp dashboard

09 Feb 2005 | Dan said...

This is a very popular subject. I must take part or else I wouldn't be cool.

I actually have google news as the homepage on Safari... for my other computers I have it set to blank or my college's intranet.

I gotta say, I like the "dose o' imagery" idear... to steve who likes the MSN homepage... I gotta say I really hate it. I have a hotmail account i send spam to, and when i check it monthly I loath clicking "Sign Out" for risk of going to the worst major web portal in existance.

to that other guy, ta-da is like to-do... tadalist.com ...it's neat.

09 Feb 2005 | Lee Dale said...

Nothing brightens a dreary winter day better than a little summer.

09 Feb 2005 | Mike Piontek said...

I've never used a home page. While I do often visit the same sites at the beginning of the day, setting a home page isn't that useful to me, for a few reasons:

- I often open new windows while I'm in the middle of browsing. No way do I want my browser loading the same page every time I do that.
- Heck, I don't even close my browser that often, so it's not like I launch it first thing every day. It's already open, often with something there.
- In Safari at least, you can't set multiple home pages. It might be useful to have it load a few different pages when I open my browser, but it's a lot less useful to just open one.

At best it only saves me a single click, and at worst it's a major annoyance. So I don't see much benefit. I like the Firefox start page (simple is good), but on the other hand you've already got a Google search box in the toolbar.

09 Feb 2005 | seth said...

Reading all of this kinda motivates me to go write a firefox extension that only loads your start page once a browser "session"....

09 Feb 2005 | david said...

weather.com local forecast... in the midwest, it's essential to have the most current weather information... it dictates what you'll wear that day, how much time you should alot for your drive home or drive to work... it determines your mood.... i never really looked at weather.com when i lived in california....
geography still matters...

09 Feb 2005 | Kris said...

Mine is blank too. I however have some bookmarks sitting in my Safari Bookmarks bar that are easily wielded with Cmnd-1 to 9. Google sits at #1; I don't use Safari's build-in Google field.

09 Feb 2005 | Zelnox said...

My homepage is yahoo.com

It is a remnant from my early adoption of YahooMail. It is funny, but I rarely use their search engine.

09 Feb 2005 | Dale Gillard said...

You're not collecting URLs for the next Signal vs Noise app, are you? ;-) Maybe some sort of customisable home page web page?

Anyway, mine is macsurfer.com, though I don't have it load when a new window is displayed. With the advent of RSS I can keep in touch with most new content. But macsurfer still manages to catch a few stories that I haven't seen.

09 Feb 2005 | Matthew Pennell said...

Can't believe nobody has said http://localhost/ yet!

09 Feb 2005 | online drugs said...

Mine is blank too. I however have some bookmarks sitting in my Safari Bookmarks bar that are easily wielded with Cmnd-1 to 9

09 Feb 2005 | s said...

buy Drugs

09 Feb 2005 | John Hunter said...

I set the start page as blank. Where the browser allows setting the home and start page separately (e.g. Safari) then I also set the home page to http://localhost/~[username]

...one for Matthew at last :)

09 Feb 2005 | Lite said...

http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

i like Firefox's choice for a homepage.

and it's Google to boot!

09 Feb 2005 | Dean said...

Blank on the two machines at work and my photos page on the machine at home.

Using Firefox with the Google search built in at the top. I will often open a new tab and search from there for research and info. I now always open links in new tabs and not a new browser window.

09 Feb 2005 | Adam Michela said...

Used to be blank until Firefox set it to the Google/Firefox Start with the 1.0 release. I've left it there since I do actually make use of the search box every once in awhile.

Same.

I had been using "about:blank" since the dawn of time... then Google/Firefox teamed up... and there was just something I found incredibly pleasing about it. So I kept it.

09 Feb 2005 | Kelby said...

portable favourites

09 Feb 2005 | Jacques said...

I've mainly been using the default Google search page currently as I found that I do more searching and it's pointless loading up my personal website when opening a new browser window. Previously I was using about:blank before that when I was on a slow link to the .net via UUnet South Africa. I tend to find at one job I had a customised homepage with links which I was going to often which was useful at that stage when I was into hardcore PHP programming.

09 Feb 2005 | Don Schenck said...

Why, of course, it's set to my home page, which is here.

09 Feb 2005 | Allen said...

At work I have it set up for my project management timesheet... its what I use alot, nice and easy just to create a new window or launch Safari to log in and out of projects.

At home, on my desktop, firefox is loaded for gmail and on the laptop its loaded for bloglines... the two web apps I use most often.

I used to have K10K as a homepage, but now that I blogline it, I didnt need to look at the whole site all the time.

09 Feb 2005 | Matt said...

BBC News Online - I like to see what's new in the world when I fire my browser up.

09 Feb 2005 | Jamie said...

Wow. Nearly 100 comments already. I figured since everyone else is doing it I might as well chime in my boring homepage: My Yahoo!.

So what if I'm old school?

09 Feb 2005 | mathew said...

i have mine set blank at work. at home, it's set to a (cue spooky music) mystery page, hosted on my web server. the content of the page is database driven. on this page is my weblog (with recent comments to come), my "hot list", and a "remember this" list as well. i use the remember this list to post myself messages about things i have to do. silly, but fun.

09 Feb 2005 | Greg said...

blank

09 Feb 2005 | Josh said...

Google - I'm constantly using it during start-up.

09 Feb 2005 | runtime said...

My home page points to my personal wiki/bookmarks site, but I really like Phil Dokas' ideas about the random Wikipedia page! I'm going to try that for a few days.

09 Feb 2005 | Joshua Kaufman said...

Mine's been blank for as long as I can remember. I never understood why people waited for a site to download every time they opened their browser when they'll just type in another URL in the address or immediately search with Google. With Google now built into Firefox, Safari, IE (with the Google bar) and others, who needs a start page anymore?

09 Feb 2005 | Jon S said...

I set mine to my install of Alex King's Tasks 2.0 install. A very excellent hierarchical task/notes manager.

I'll leave the link out as it's a "sortof" competitor, but not really. Basecamp and Tasks are two entirely different beasts.

09 Feb 2005 | Ashley said...

I have a livejournal that I use as a feed reader. So, I have that as my home page with Firefox, so I can quickly check the latest postings.

Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, and IE all point to localhost.

10 Feb 2005 | Ian said...

Google.

Reduces the chance of loosing a train of thought if I need an answer.

10 Feb 2005 | salas said...

I use my blog site, with my blog site setup available through the favorites/bookmarks links folder and so just a click away. All my 100+ most-used links are on there, as is whatever I'm doing now (often dynamic pages show up in an iframe).

And if I want to test some HTML/JavaScript/CSS I just click on that link - if I want to test PHP, I write it in my web host and iframe it onto my blog. You'd be surprised how often I see something I want to change as soon as I pull my browser up.

10 Feb 2005 | AK said...

I keep mine blank. I've trained myself to quickly use shortcut keys to get to the Address bar and type in the site I want to look at.

I have thought of a "personal homepage" of sorts but I can't figure out how to make it recognize the mood i'm in and give me what I want immediately! :)

10 Feb 2005 | Bryan C said...

Work home page at work, to set a good example.
Instapundit.com at home in IE (lightweight, often updated).
My Bloglines page in Firefox at home.

10 Feb 2005 | internet guy said...

mine is set to http://www.linkwhores.com
its a bookmark storage site

cant live without it

10 Feb 2005 | Fred said...

I have mine set to google. Nine times out of ten when I cold-start a browser I'm going to be searching. So, nine times out of ten with one click I'm doing exactly what I intended.

10 Feb 2005 | kristoff said...

At risk of tooting my own horn, I have my home page set to Lilisto, a home grown 'smart' bookmarks manager. I'll spare everyone the feature list, but I can say it greatly surpasses any other alternative - except for the utter cleanliness that is about: blank.
(Though still in development, I invite you to try it out though: new.lilisto.com u/p test / test)

10 Feb 2005 | Brian said...

news.google.com

A nice quick overview of what's going on in the world before I wander off to spend the rest of the day on less important but less depressing things.

10 Feb 2005 | pv said...

del.icio.us/popular

10 Feb 2005 | Jack Vinson said...

My "home" page is simply MyYahoo news page. But I hardly see it anymore with the SessionSaver extension that remembers all the pages I had open before I closed Firefox. No more bookmarking tons of pages before shutting down the browser, just to forget that I've bookmarked them.

iRider for people stuck in the IE world does the same thing (and costs $25).

11 Feb 2005 | Mike Rivera said...

Blank baby. It's like starting a new design with a blank Photoshop page: full of opportunity.

11 Feb 2005 | pyc said...

Same as few guys above. It used to be blank - but then you launched the " tadalist". So now anytime i browse, i say to myself: Oh dear, do you really want to go out surfing when you have some much to accomplish. It's quite handy - really don't when i get back to blank again... (thanks for the app Jason. Next time you're in Paris i pay you a beer - that's the french version of Paypal!)

11 Feb 2005 | greg said...

apple.com

i could probably pick something more useful or informative, but i never gave it much thought. and when the new products come out i'm greeted w/ a surprise of sorts.

12 Feb 2005 | Sheldon Schwartz said...

man, i load up anywhere between 10 and 20 tabbed pages everyday as a "homepage". do others do this as well? i read about the blank thing... what about the opposite?
i change the selectionsa often, but it usually holds true that i include:

• current work
• inspiration (anything from flash&film to art&amazon )
• my basecamp all projects page
• an article i am reading online
• a page that uses a technique i am dazzled by (and want to learn)
• a blog site or two

12 Feb 2005 | Stephane Deschamps (nota-bene.org) said...

I was lurking here and learning from different approaches, although I've used a blank for as long as I can remember.

And today I stumbled upon BookmarksHome, and this coupled with your TadaList may well become my new Home.

12 Feb 2005 | Thomas David Baker said...

I start my browser from the run box with the URL I want to go to or auto-google-search. I have shortcuts named "i" for internet (url) and "s" for search.

So I do Win-R, "i www.37signals.com", Enter

or

Win-R, "s blah blah", Enter

which takes me to google.com/search?q=blah%20blah

So I never see my home page, which is blank.

14 Feb 2005 | Carl said...

A couple of questions for those of you who've rolled your own homepage...

What technology have you used, simple HTML? Some in-page CSS? Some Javascript?

Have you used some server-side, maybe ASP or PHP and therefore the page requires hosting on a local Apache or IIS Web Server?

If you want to add a URL to one of your multi-column URL lists, do you fire up your fave text editor and get down and dirty by editing the HTML directly or have you been "cleverer" than that (DB-driven)? I say "cleverer" because sometimes the best solutions are the simpler (edit the HTML).

Great thread, given me lots of ideas over and above the about:blank that I use for my homepage.

Carl

14 Feb 2005 | Mark said...

news.google.com

I like to check in with the world periodically.

15 Feb 2005 | Shiang said...

I set Google, too. But that's a page I merged Google's main search features for myself. And loading it from my hard disk, it's very fast when I just need search.

15 Feb 2005 | Don Schenck said...

Hey Thomas David Baker ... you are a prime candidate to download and try ActiveWords.

17 Feb 2005 | Leftsider said...

I left my startpage blank as well--before I got hooked on Google News.

Google News guarantees that it will be no less than 5 minutes before I actually get to task. Talk about productivity killer.

17 Feb 2005 | Meri said...

This is going to sound bad, but I use my blog as my homepage. Since I have a long blogroll and links to essentially every site I regularly read on there, it's a good starting point for me to catch up on the news, read my online comics, etc. Also reminds me to blog about the interesting things I find on a fairly regular basis.

22 Feb 2005 | Sebhelyesfarku said...

my homepage is www.jesuslovesporn.net

23 Feb 2005 | PJ said...

I have always had my browser point to a blank page too. Just recently I have changed it to the homepage of the company I work for. I have an Alexa toolbar (www.alexa.com), and hitting our homepage every time I open a browser adds to the counts on Alexa worldwide site rankings. The reason to do this is that some of the large search-engines use the Alexa site ranking to sort their search results in a way that is relevant to surfers.

23 Feb 2005 | wes said...

I have mine set to google.co.uk, it's not like ti takes for ever to load. altought i never stay there, when ever i want to google soemthign i jsut open up a new tab a press home to get to google saves typeing it in all the time.

there is a google bar on firefox but i never like thous things i dont even use my quick links, i guess i jsut like to type everything, that why when my pc dies I know all the pages i use in my head and i dont have to relai up my my favrites. altought i am now using del.ici.us.

But you neve know how lonf that will last.