Back to Google

Well, I've given yourminis.com a decent shot (see my previous post). But I am switching back to Google's personalized start page, mostly due to performance issues.

Yourminis looks way better and has some great features, but it just seems to run a tad on the slow side. Believe me, when you use a page several times a day, just a few milliseconds of delay to find what you want becomes annoying.

I'll keep my eye on them, since they are still very new and could actually optimize their platform for better performance. But until then, I'll stick with the lean, mean, HTML machine.

And to my friend Roy, I agree with your comments. Flash is a great platform and any company basing their product on Flash could be an innovation leader, if they know how to balance power, performance, and usability.

YourMinis...a flashy, widgety start page

I recently discovered YourMinis, a Flash-based start page/RSS feed reader/widget platform. My first impression is favorable, but time will tell if it deserves a space as my browser's home page.



What I like:

• Easy RSS feed addition


• OPML file import/export


• Interesting widgets built in (calendar, Gmail, clock, to-do list, Digg feed, calculator, notes, bookmarks, full browser, search, video, etc.)


• Beautiful default look


• Drag & Drop windows, lock 'em down, change opacity, colors, etc.


• Publish your "minis" or your whole tab of minis.


• Social feel. Very Web 2.0.


• Multiple tabs


• Inline web browser makes loading a news story convenient


• The ability to load any image as my tab's background

My questions:

• Is Flash going to be too heavy for my browser's start page?


• Are more interesting widgets coming?


• Do we need another widget platform? Can't we all just get along?


• Will we be able to further customize the look of our minis, or the basic mini windows?

So far, I really like what I see. It feels more polished to me than Netvibes or Pageflakes. They apparently have over 800,000 users so far, which is not bad, but still lags behind their competitors. But I still question the use of Flash...it's a great tool, but there are many people who would prefer to stick to standard HTML for a much lighter weight start page. We'll see!