Let’s say that you’ve got one of those ol’ fashioned web browsers at home that only let you have one starting page.  What would that page be?  Chances are, it would be the Student Reference Portal, Yahoo! or Google or Hotmail or even just a blank page.

Let me offer an alternative.

Guy Kawasaki’s alltop.com is that alternative.

It’s a very simple concept.  I actually have had something on my own site for a while now and I thought I was really doing something.  At the page, http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/d&g/osapac_news_feeds.htm, I have put together a webpage with all three of the OSAPAC RSS feeds in one place.  That way, you can go to one place and get them all.

Alltop.com is based on that concept but is so, so much more.  We all know of the power of RSS but imagine a single site where you can go and get the best of the best RSS feeds all in one spot.  Furthermore, all of these feeds are categorized so that you can zero in on your target.

From Mr. Kawasaki’s blog:

A good metaphor is that Alltop is an “online magazine rack” that displays the news from the top publications and blogs. Our goal is to satisfy the information needs of the 99% of Internet users who will never use an RSS feed reader or create a custom page. Think of it as “aggregation without the aggravation.” The easiest way to understand the value of Alltop is to try it.

The result is ingenious and yet so simple that it’s got to be one of the quickest to load and most useful reference resource that I’ve seen to date.

Now, at home, I don’t use any of those single start page browsers.  I have a number of my favourites all set to open when the browser does.  You’ve got to believe that alltop.com is on one of those tabs.  In fact, it’s on the tab on the left.

I would encourage you to check out this and consider making it one of your start pages.  Don’t be fooled by its simplicity.  Open it, use it,  You’ll enjoy the power and there may just come a time when you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

How to use Alltop? It's simple.

1 - Mouse over a category to get a flavour for what's there. Here, I'll check out Education.

2. Check out the various feeds that are brought together. Mouse over the title of an entry to see a popup with more details.

3. Click to read the entire story.

You'll want to make this a starting point for lead stories in so many ares on a daily basis.