Within recent years, start pages such as my.Yahoo, NetVibes, PageFlakes, and YourMinis have become very popular among web users and have certainly made things more convenient. Instead of checking all of my favorite websites, email, news sources, and blogs, I can easily check my NetVibes homepage, which features all of my favorite feeds. This has certainly has increased efficiency, but it also seems to have increased my Internet browsing time. Even though I can now view more articles in less time, I find myself viewing more articles than I previously would have. Now every time I open up Safari, I’m greeted with 10 of my favorite websites, all with new interesting stories. This has become a major distraction because every time I use the Internet to do something specific, I am instead distracted by a new email or story, and forget what my original intentions are.
My new start page method is to feature only important feeds, including email, on my NetVibes homepage tab, and then I created an extra NetVibes tab with less crucial feeds to avoid distraction. My homepage tab now only features my email feed since it’s time sensitive, and also other boring feeds such as weather, stocks, and a to-do list. Now when I am interested in browsing blogs, news, etcetera, it takes an extra click to get there. At the same time they are all hidden, yet only one click away which makes them less distracting. So now when I use Safari to check or look something up online such as a homework assignment or a sports score, juicy stories no longer try to grab my attention.
Have start pages made me more productive? Yes. Are they a distraction? Not anymore 
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