start.io
start.io
start.io
Anyway, outside of the marketing-counter thing, I would suggest that the initial layout for a user's start page is the same as the one that is so prominently displayed on the sample images (with the grey background and color bars). Not that it was difficult to change, but it was a little disappointing when I found just a simple white layout with my single forlorn link to HN on it instead of the stylish advertised one... I almost took off right there. Perhaps selecting a layout could be a more prominent initial setup step?
Why do you need my email when I sign up? The signup doesn't ask for a password re-entry as well, which I found strange.
What do the ampersands mean?
Nice work. Looks great, too.
[edit] Why should I use it? Chrome and Safari (and FF in the near future) offer close to the same functionality.
Email is for password recovery.
In that theme, ampersands mean it has updated content. That's just part of the template language. Some have bullets, some highlight the text. It's up to the theme.
It's simpler and you can access it from other computers [and your iphone (i.start.io/jacob)]
Sorry about not putting a description. Forgot! Looks like everyone else sort of did for me though :)
<!--
_ _ _
___| |_ __ _ _ __| |_ (_) ___
/ __| __/ _` | '__| __| | |/ _ \
\__ \ || (_| | | | |_ _| | (_) |
|___/\__\__,_|_| \__(_)_|\___/
so much cooler than pHome.us
-->
The RSS reading is a little spotty. Some sites update when there are no updates. Additionally, sometimes Start.io just doesn't recognize an RSS feed, and there's no option to manually input one. I also find I can't delete links, so I have a thin column of "about:blank" links that are painted white so I don't see them that I get from removing bookmarks.
That said, this really takes the pain out of RSS. It's comfortable and functional and all the themes look really, really good.
@jacobbijani: I'm not sure if you care much, but Firefox users can remove the start.io menu from their pages by adding a display:none tag to it in their layout. Also, users can write javascript in the layout editor. Mine is currently redirecting all visitors to google... Perhaps the layout editor should be restricted to css?
We were actually pretty surprised to see users sharing their startpages on their blogs and such. At first we didn't really get it; I mean the only reason we made them public was so that you could access it from where ever you were without having to log in. Basically, we made start.io to act as an attachment to a browser.
But some people really do like sharing their links. Maybe it's just that they're used to sharing all their content online. One of the most visited start pages comes from a ministry sharing belief-oriented links to their visitors.
I'm not sure what un-prepped signups will use it for, but I don't really care, either. We developed this to be a flexible platform from the beginning. That's just what happens when you made a product customizable, and for a general purpose. People will shape it to their needs. The obvious example here is Twitter, which began as a service to publish away messages to the web. Then people wanted to group their thoughts to channels, then they wanted to message, now they want to network and expand their names and products. Twitter is a good example of a platform that made getting information from the users brain to a public domain incredibly easy.
Thanks for all the comments so far, this is great.
Also: when non-logged-in users click a link, does it reset the bookmark?
there's a few annoying bugs with the RSS bot that i've been meaning to get around to. and i swear i've fixed that delete bug like 5 times!
Regardless, it's a perception thing. I'm not questioning your reasons for putting it there or whether it's a close enough to accurate representation. I'm just pointing out that others might see it the same way I did.
I don't see what the big deal is. Gmail does (did?) this for the inbox limit.
Why do I need to give you my email address?