I designed a web site called EZ Home Page at http://www.ezhomepage.org. Check it out and forward it to your friends. It has button links to over 1,500 of the most popular websites and is great for PC's and touch-screen phones.
At EZHomePage.org, you are presented with a simple matrix of 48 buttons, which lead to over 1,500 “button links” to the most popular websites for maps, shopping, news, sports, music, games, jokes, videos, movies, TV, magazines, social networking, travel, and financial & medical information.
In addition, in the upper-left corner is a “My EZ Home” button. Clicking on this button the first time takes you to a brief sign-up (they suggest using just the left part of your e-mail address before the “@”), which then takes you to your personal screen of “EZ buttons” that you can create and manage by clicking on the “Add, Change, or Delete” button at the bottom of the page. On this screen, you can go to any website and create a button for it. Also, you can create a “Folder Button” that is highlighted with a black frame and leads to another whole page of buttons. For example, you could create a folder button called “Sports” that goes to a screen of buttons for your favorite Sports websites.
“EZ Home Page” is the invention of Mark Tiddens. He realized that there needed to be a better way to access the Internet. He also recognized that most people only use the Internet for e-mail, which he says “is a shame since there is so much available, but how does the average person find out what is available, and how do they get there?”.
Tiddens considered how people presently get to websites: Some people use the “Favorites” function in their browser, some use a search engine like Google or Yahoo, and some people type the website address into the browser. However, the “Favorites” function is not easy to use or organize (and Microsoft recently made the Favorites buttons even smaller), and when you “Google” something it takes an extra step and you can be overwhelmed by the results.
Tiddens decided that the solution to letting people know where they can go on the Internet is screens of buttons that go to the most popular websites, both websites that the world thinks are most popular, and your own most popular websites.
Other things that Tiddens took into consideration are:
1. There will be an increasing number of touch-screen devices, both mobile and in the home, which are best operated with buttons.
2. Everyone has a hard time negotiating a mouse in the exact vertical and horizontal lines required by drop-down menus, especially with the integrated mouse functions of an increasing number of products.
Tiddens says that the other purpose of the EZ Home Page is to put pressure on content providers to make their content available on the Internet, whether it is music, sports, TV stations, TV channels, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, or radio stations. He believes that everything should be available on the Internet. He says “After all, we can pay for it via advertising, or we can pay directly for uncluttered content”. To this end, some of his EZ Home pages encourage people to complain to the originator of the content if it is not available.
The biggest choice might be whether you use EZ Home Page for your home page for the Internet, or a website like AOL, MSN, or Yahoo which include small frames of the latest news or other information. However, Tiddens says that “going to EZ Home Page first makes the most sense because it gives you the option to go directly to where you want to go, including one of these websites”. He also says that those small frames of information, which are known as “widgets” or “gadgets”, can now be put directly on your desktop. “Widgets” and “gadgets” are exploding in popularity because they get the information to you without you needing to access the Internet. So, Tiddens asks, “How could it not be the easiest way to access the Internet?”
Contact Information:
Mark Tiddens
Mark,Tiddens@EZHomePage.org
(858) 350-9157
Solana Beach, CA
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