The options that are currently provided pale in comparison to services like Netvibes which have been able to test and shape their product in the last years. Users can add RSS feed contents to tabs on the portal page to access the latest feed contents promptly.

It is possible to add preselected feeds that come in various categories like sports, technology or stocks and money market or to add custom RSS feeds by providing the RSS feed url. Registered users can also import opml files so that all of their RSS feeds are added at once.

The modules on the pages can be moved around (even across tabs) named and deleted. The only other options that guests get are the selection of a different color scheme, changing the country and language and disabling advertisement.

Users who want to register an account can signup with their Opera, Google, OpenID or Yahoo username. Registered users on the other hand are not offered any more choices to customize the startpage than guests. Opera Portal is definitely a beta product at this time as it lacks features that go beyond adding and viewing RSS feeds. It should also be noted that the portal continued displaying German content after switching to English and the United States.

It could become an interesting alternative to established personalized homepage services if the developers continue working on the project and start adding additional features to it. The prime advantage of Opera Portal at this point in time is that guests have access to all functions and features of the portal.

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That is basically what Ecletic for Internet Explorer does. The add-on installs itself to the right-click context menu of Internet Explorer and as a toolbar button which when pressed changes the cursor into a tool that can be used to draw a rectangle around the desired information.

The snippet that has been marked that way will be shown in a preview window where the user has to make the decision if he wants to add it to an existing page or a new one. That page opens afterwards and all elements on that page can be moved around and resized to fit the screen.

It works similar to tools like MWSnap that can take a screenshot from part of the computer monitor by drawing an rectangle around the part that should be included.

The first custom page that is created by the user will be the homepage of that user. Additional pages like weather, news or sports are available by default that have been created by the developers of the application. New pages can be created in the preview window and are afterwards accessible by clicking on the white paper sheet in the main menu.

Each element that has been added gets updated automatically be the service. The user has the option to press the Refresh button manually to update the snippet immediately. The service lagged a bit during tests, it usually took a few seconds before a new snippet got updated and shown on the pages. Pages can be bookmarked like usual websites and opened at a later time again.

The application contains a link entitled Upgrade to Professional which leads to the homepage. The homepage however does not contain any information about upgrading or buying the Internet Explorer plugin.

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Freehostia.com has been providing me with a reliable cluster-based, extremely well-featured, really fast and AD-free freehosting for some time now and that’s the reason I decided their services would deserve to be mentioned here. Freehostia offers 4 individual plans in total with increasing amount of space and features. I won’t describe all the features here, because they offer a lot – check the links below if you’re interested in more info about their plans.

Freehosting
I could praise the hosting for a long time but I’ll simply say that it’s the best freehosting I’ve ever had a chance to hit on. You get free:

• 250 MB space
• 10 MB SQL Database
• 5 GB / month bandwidth limit
• PHP + Perl + Elefante scripts support
• 99.9% uptime guarantee*
• No ads at all
• …and (really) much more

Webhosting
As for paid webhosting, you get more storage space, better support, more features, more management possibilities etc etc. The first paid hosting plan starts at less than 2 dollars a month and the last one ends at less than 8 dollars a month. Ain’t bad, is it…
For more info about the webhosting plans, follow this link.

* I must say that I personally haven’t been investigating the 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, I can say that whenever I checked or edited my website, it was always up and very fast loaded. Maybe also that’s the reason why Freehostia won a very nice 3rd place (out of 35) in a benchmark comparing webhosting servers’ response speed. If you’d like to test how fast it really is, you can try to visit my personal website here.

Once again I’d like to point out that I reviewed this service because it’s been impressing me for a long time, not for money.

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Create a website that is valid for a maximum of 90 days before it expires and gets deleted. The basic editor gives the user some options to add tables, links, images and paragraphs. What puzzles me at the moment is the use of such a service. The only use that comes to my mind would be a temporary homepage for a project that is also expiring after 90 days.

The option to issue editor keys to friends to give them edit rights as well seems to point in that direction. It is furthermore possible to set the expiration time of the homepage to an earlier date. The maximum however is 90 days.

Can you think of any other applications for this service ? I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

Read More:

Disposable Website
via Digital Inspiration

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