Pointless Question of the Week #9

[sqdge]

Well, it went away, but it's come back again!

 

The new term brings a new series of pointless questions, designed to take your mind of everything and anything.

 

Today's question is not related, but I think it's a good way to know more about each other. The question is:

 

What is currently your homepage....and why?

 

I've attached a picture of mine. I use iGoogle - and the interesting bits you can see are:

1) Some interesting facts/fictions (factions?) in the top left.

2) The EduGeek feed

3) A quote of the day

4) A countdown to when I get to be in America with my gf (pictured against her will...I'll deal with any legal issues she may have with that)

5) A minimised widget that gives me the nice background pic of Oilseed Rape

6) The moon. I have no interest in astronomy, but I like to know whether I will be able to walk home from the pub safely or not.

7) Two clocks. I'm not very good at working out time differences.

 

OK, your turn.

[_Bat_]

Plain old google

[FN-GM]

Nothing special just good old google!

[webman]

Personally - YubNub. It's also Firefox search keyword so I normally just type commands straight into the address bar.

 

Everyone else at work has our bespoke Intranet page with links and stuff on it.. soon to be Web2.0-ified

[FN-GM]

beat me to it!

[_Bat_]

The reason I use google is because it is quick to load (and the fact that I use it more then any other website).

 

Seriously, nothing is more annoying then a slowish loading home page... like the bgfl website (which my schools have... argggh)

[Joedetic]

Google UK....not .com

[srochford]

At work I have our intranet (it's forced out to everyone by some mean IT manager :-)) - at home I have a blank page.

 

I probably use Google most as a starting point so I have the toolbar for that; I don't want stuff loading unless I'm really going to use it (but then I also have an empty desktop with no icons or wallpaper - minimalist is good!)

[Norphy]

I have mine as Opera Speed Dial

[FN-GM]

Google UK....not .com

 

What?

[Joedetic]

google.co.uk.....not .com.

 

 

What's hard about that :S

[russdev]

Here go IGoogle all the way...

[FN-GM]

google.co.uk.....not .com.

 

 

What's hard about that :S

 

But what do you mean?

[Joedetic]

My god you're a complicated person!

 

What i mean is that my home page is google.co.uk. Not google.com.

 

How do you not get this?! LOL

[FN-GM]

Sorry I just didn’t understand why you put "google.co.uk. Not google.com". When you go on google.com in the UK it takes you right to google.co.uk.

[Joedetic]

That never used to happen............

 

Showing my increasing age obviously....apologies. When i first started using google as my home page it hadnt used to.

[sqdge]

Sorry I just didn’t understand why you put "google.co.uk. Not google.com". When you go on google.com in the UK it takes you right to google.co.uk.

 

Not always. I have used Google.com in the UK and found that it thinks I am from another country - which gets a little annoying if you didn't originally notice, and then you realise that all your results are coming from Uzbekistan. So, I'm with the J-man on this one - typing those extra 2 characters can save some bother as well as meaning your homepage is fractionally faster to load (every second counts in the heady world of Edu-IT).

[webman]

Sorry I just didn’t understand why you put "google.co.uk. Not google.com". When you go on google.com in the UK it takes you right to google.co.uk.

 

Only if you have a Google account, and your locale is set to UK, and you are logged in to Google in that browser.

 

I rarely use IE for obvious reasons, and I don't sign in to Google in IE. Going to http://www.google.com goes not take me to http://www.google.co.uk.

 

I use Firefox all the time for even more obvious reasons 8) and I usually stay signed in to Google. Going to http://www.google.com does not take me to http://www.google.co.uk but it does load my iGoogle page.

[Joedetic]

YAY!!!!

 

I'm not an utter moron after all. (debatable i know )

 

I've also remembered that i only recently started telling firefox to remember my username and pass for my gmail and JZNet.org.uk e-mail accounts.

 

That'll be why it does it now.

[FN-GM]

Sorry I just didn’t understand why you put "google.co.uk. Not google.com". When you go on google.com in the UK it takes you right to google.co.uk.

 

Only if you have a Google account, and your locale is set to UK, and you are logged in to Google in that browser.

 

I rarely use IE for obvious reasons, and I don't sign in to Google in IE. Going to http://www.google.com goes not take me to http://www.google.co.uk.

 

I use Firefox all the time for even more obvious reasons 8) and I usually stay signed in to Google. Going to http://www.google.com does not take me to http://www.google.co.uk but it does load my iGoogle page.

 

What about the firefox memory leaks, thats odd becuase were i am it takes you to .co.uk if your not signed in. Could be soemthing to do with ip?

[webman]

Firefox doesn't have memory leaks. It just uses memory "creatively"

 

You probably still have the Google super-cookie.

[Joedetic]

Memory leaks is a small price to pay (and probably a patched fault by now!) for not having to use a crappy browser like IE. I only use IE for exchange.

 

But yh it could be something to do with geolocation. Who knows? (aside from the google guys obviously)

[FN-GM]

I use firefox sometimes i am trying safari on windows, but i dont use it on mac. Oh by the way the memory leaks havnt been fixed yet.

[sqdge]

But yh it could be something to do with geolocation. Who knows? (aside from the google guys obviously)

 

As far as I know, Google has a huge database of which ISPs come from which country - and which range of IP addresses they use. So, when it fails to detect which country you are from, it's probably because it doesn't recognise your ISP or because you are hiding behind some sneaky IP Mask.

[_Bat_]

There were problems with using google.com with the BGfL network at one point. It took you to google in a completely different country.

 

I'm not exactly sure how they got it fixed in the end.