Time-Saving With Pageflakes

Simplify your day by starting your web browsing with Pageflakes

I visit Pageflakes first whenever I go online. Here's why you should, too...

When I switch on the PC, I check my email, search on Google, read the weather forecast, catch up on the news and maybe view a video or two over at YouTube.

This means visiting half-a-dozen websites and accounts, and firing up my email software. The free Pageflakes service puts all these things on one single webpage.

So my new emails, the Google search box, the local weather, news headlines and featured videos all sit next to each other on my personalized Pageflakes page. Which saves me a heap of time and effort every day.

Here's a sneak peek at part of my Pageflakes page - you can see that it was sunny the day I made the screen capture!

Pageflakes screenshot

Each of the different things you can add to your page is known as a Flake and takes the form of a box. So there's a "manage your email" box, a "world clock" box and dozens more.

You build your personal page by selecting the Flakes you want and using your mouse to drag each box to wherever you want it. Your custom page and layout is saved automatically for you for future visits provided you remember to register (free) with an email address and password.

Try it for yourself (but register first, so there's no risk of losing any changes you make to the page display.)

You can modify each of the flakes to fit your own needs.

So my "world clock" Flake shows local times for LA, London, NYC, Vienna and Tokyo, because that's where my friends and colleagues are. My "weather" Flake shows weather information for my local area. New emails to my Gmail account get displayed in my "email" Flake, where I can reply, write new emails etc. without ever going over to the Gmail site.

You can add as many different Flakes as you want. If it gets too much for one page, you just move some Flakes to a second page. Some of my particular favorites...

Another bonus is the feed display feature. Your personal page displays the latest posts from any blog you choose. You just give it the relevant web address and it builds an appropriate Flake for you.

The only downside to the tool is you can end up playing with it a little too long at the beginning. There's almost too much choice. And it can take a while to figure out how to customize everything (hint: the spanner icon on every Flake/box is the "customize this" button.)

But once everything is set up, it's a great time saver! And when you get used to the system, you can decide who can share your page or whether you want to keep it private and personal.

For more information, check out the Pageflakes site (don't forget to register so your customized page is saved for you!)

 

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