Year in Review: AJAX Desktops and Homepages

Review: Home pages are making a comeback, thanks to AJAX and Flash-powered "desktop" applications. Inside, a look at seven desktop and homepage apps vying for your news feeds, bookmarks, and sticky notes.

The homepage is making a comeback. But this time, unlike in the mid-'90s, home pages aren't simply lists of links. And, unlike today's typical start pages—MSN, Yahoo!, aol.com—these "Web 2.0" homepages prioritize personalized content and customizable interfaces and offer a variety of applications normally found on the desktop.

The new homepage styles range from personal pages with customizable RSS feeds to GUI-based applications that recreate the desktop metaphor online.

The economics of this space are uncertain, but that hasn't stopped a host of competitors from crowding the field.

Windows Live

Microsoft's live.com is a great example of how a large company can learn from, and even one-up, its more agile competitors. And, judging by live.com's various blogs and their attendant developer photos, Microsoft is very interested in advertising itself as a young, hip company that can move quickly in this space.

Live.com is the public face of start.com. The latter, launched two months prior in September, is effectively a testing space for live.com features. Those core features, which are standard among most AJAX home pages, include drag-and-drop content modules, customizable column layout, e-mail integration (Hotmail only) and the ability to save searches.

Live.com also features the ability to build your own features though Microsoft Gadgets. Think personalized gaming score trackers, iTunes or Amazon lists, photo browsers, etc. Gadgets are created with javascript, XML and CSS, and you host them through live.com. See the getting started page for more details.

Even more features are expected soon, including a new instant messenger client embedded into the site that will also allow you to make outbound VOIP calls.

Robert Scoble hinted on his blog that Microsoft might be opening the API for live.com early next year.

Google

Google IG is a strong and relatively flexible AJAX desktop. The big idea here is to integrate your Gmail account, stock tickers, search history, and local results onto one page.

Perhaps sensing the competition in this space, especially from live.com, Google released the API for the personalized homepage this week.

Also of use: Google IG provides an "edit" button on each module, which, when clicked, reveals additional options. These options, like the ability to show a greater or lesser number of items or to change your zip code for localized movie results, are beautiful in their simplicity. Once again, Google doesn't succumb to feature glut, unlike some competitors in this space.

Google might be well-served by integrating an AJAX-y version of Google Talk, and by offering a few more page layout options. Right now, you're confined to three columns.

Goowy

Of all the competitors in this space, Goowy goes furthest in replicating the desktop metaphor and experience. It's also the most fully-realized Web-based desktop platform, and for good reason: Goowy was developed by the same entrepreneurs who developed the original portal software behind Geocities.

Goowy started out in the spring of this year as a Web-based, Flash-based e-mail client, and Goowy's best service is still its e-mail. When you sign up for a page, you automatically get an @goowy.com e-mail address and 2GB of storage space.

Goowy's GUI (get it?) replicates the Mac aesthetic. Goowy has impressive pre-made widgets, including impressive del.icio.us integration that shows a thumbnail of your saved page. There's a robust gaming interface and contact manager, and several customization options.

Goowy also offers the usuals—draggable windows, RSS feeds—but curiously absent is the ability to change a window's size. You can't change a window's dimensions by dragging, and you can't change the number of items displayed inside via the edit button.

Goowy is a great platform for someone looking to recreate much of their desktop online, but probably not good for someone who just needs an RSS reader, bookmarks and search.

Netvibes

Netvibes is an elegant and functional homepage that provides a lot of extensibility without crowding the page with options.

The standout features here are integration with writely.com and bookmark tags.

The standards are also here, including RSS feeds and draggable modules. Netvibes offers Gmail, and Flickr integration. The module edit button offers simple but effective options; the choice to open an RSS feed on the homepage or directly on the site is very convenient.

Netvibes' search module offers Google, Yahoo, IceRocket and Wikipedia searches. Like Google IG, Netvibes constrains you to three columns. The Netvibes blog contains development info.

Protopage

Protopage is an AJAX homepage on steroids. The site offers a wealth of features, but sometimes those features contribute to a crowded space.

Protopage tries to overcome that problem with two interesting features: multiple pages and full-size windows.

Like Goowy, Protopage also does away with the grid and lets you drag and drop windows willy-nilly. The development blog mentions that an auto-arrange feature is on the way.

According to Protopag's managing director, the site does use AJAX technologies, but also makes use of Javascript Object Notation (JSON), a subset of the object literal notation of JavaScript.

Protopage was a relatively early entrant into this space and does not currently offer integration with e-mail, flickr, or del.icio.us.

Eskobo

The latest entrant to the Web 2.0 home page field is also the poorest. Granted, the service is still in beta, but Eskobo seems little more than a Windows Live knockoff, and most of its features don't work as advertised.

With Eskobo you can add RSS feeds and import OPML files, but neither method was working at the time of this writing. There doesn't seem to be a way to organize your personal feeds into the pre-generated categories of feeds.

It is unclear what engine the search function uses. Regardless, the search function was also broken at the time of this writing. Eskobo did not return e-mails for comment.

Zoozio

Zoozio is still in pre-beta, and its home page only demonstrates a few standard features. Stay tuned for more.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to include additional information from some companies, including information about Google's homepage API, and to correct an error.