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February 28, 2006

Fold.com - Why?

Michael Arrington

40 comments »

It’s been just over a month since I wrote about the last Ajax home page, and I thought I’d get through February without writing about a new one.

I was wrong.

Fold.com has entered private beta. According to the site, “Fold is the Web 2.0 application.”

I checked out the beta and Fold.com looks about as good as other Ajax home pages (an API to create third party widgets is in development). Fold.com only works with Firefox, at least for now.

I wish them luck. Blog is here.

Ok, who’s next?

Here’s the current list of Ajax and Flash homepages:

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Lee

    February 28th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    How can they claim it is “the” Web 2.0 application when it’s exclusive to Firefox users?

    Firefox is great on Windows, but in my opinion it’s just not the same on the Mac end of things.

    I have to seriously doubt the vision of any of these “Web 2.0″ startups that can’t deliver their product across multiple browsers reliably.

  2. Michael Arrington

    February 28th, 2006 at 10:14 pm

    Lee, I’m actually ok with it only working with Firefox…but I just don’t understand why people are continuing to spend resources developing these things.

  3. Lee

    February 28th, 2006 at 10:36 pm

    True, as there is now a bit of a conundrum as to which service to seriously use (if at all)… seeing as how 5 or maybe even as little as 2 or 3 years from now, I’d bet only 3 (maybe 4) of the sites on that list up there will still exist - and that’s with 2 of those being Microsoft’s and Google’s.

  4. Eric Rice

    February 28th, 2006 at 11:24 pm

    I read the homepage with a ‘but, I use My Yahoo!’ thought in my head and then, I pretended I worked at Yahoo! and realized that they’re actually talking to Me-as-fictional-Yahoo! and not me.

    Of course I could be reading too much into that, but then again, I’m just sayin’.

  5. Axel Wolf

    March 1st, 2006 at 12:22 am

    Just wanted to add that Fold is extensible, an API is in the making, allowing for Konfabulator style widgets.

    Support for other browsers (i.e. IE) may come at a later time - if I get around to actually buy a Windows machine, currently everything here is Mac and Ubuntu.

  6. Robert Nyman

    March 1st, 2006 at 12:33 am

    Personally, I don’t like the name AJAX homepages; it focuses too much on the technology being used than the concept of personalization.

    If interesting, I wrote a review about the four biggest services in A war of personalization.

  7. Michael Arrington

    March 1st, 2006 at 12:45 am

    Axel, thanks for pointing that out. I missed it. I’ll clarify in the post.

  8. Pascal

    March 1st, 2006 at 5:06 am

    Axel, what about some Techcrunch readers invitations…?
    Thanks, Pascal.

  9. Axel Wolf

    March 1st, 2006 at 8:27 am

    The private beta is closed. A public beta will start in Week 11, see roadmap in the blog.

  10. Christoph Janz

    March 1st, 2006 at 8:38 am

    Axel, one of my personal goals for 2006 is to convince Mike of the viability of the personal startpage concept. Ten months left… I chose Mike because I think he’s more bearish about it than anyone else I know.

    I’d appreciate your support. :-)

    @Mike: Did you have a look at Pageflakes lately? We released a number of cool new features since our Beta Release three weeks ago. Congrats on the edgeio Release!

  11. Pete Cashmore

    March 1st, 2006 at 8:57 am

    Hehe. Totally agree. See also:

    http://mashable.com/2006/02/28.....bblicious/

  12. Bill Minton

    March 1st, 2006 at 9:17 am

    When will there be a solid open source one with taggable bookmarks, rss feed modules, and weather modules similiar to Netvibes?

    I’m familiar with Backbase and http://www.myiosoft.com/ but neither of these really fit the bill.

    I love Netvibes, but I also have no way of exporting my bookmarks, etc. They were down for a while yesterday and had they stayed that way, I would have been SOL. I would feel much safer with everything being ran/backed up by me as opposed to some company that may get bought out or go away soon.

  13. Axel Wolf

    March 1st, 2006 at 9:52 am

    Christoph, maybe we should invite him to Europe for a fact finding trip; after all, with regard to start pages this is where the actions is (Pageflakes, Protopage, Netvibes, Fold…)

  14. Michael Arrington

    March 1st, 2006 at 9:54 am

    Guys, I’d love to do it. Think we can get everyone in one place, like London, for a summit? I’ll be there. Early April is perfect.

  15. Axel Wolf

    March 1st, 2006 at 10:05 am

    Talk about snowballing… ;-)

    London in April is fine by me.

  16. Michael Arrington

    March 1st, 2006 at 10:07 am

    I seriously think it’s a great idea. Let’s find a sponsor. Microsoft? :-)

  17. Chris

    March 1st, 2006 at 11:11 am

    How many search engines were there before Google came around? How about classifieds before edgeio? Does that mean that these were/are wasted efforts. This niche isn’t really one were network effects are particularly strong (other than encouraging more developers to create more/better widgets) unlike niches such as IM, photo sharing, classifieds, etc. I say bring them on. Let them feed off and build on each others’ innovations. Some won’t survive but surely a few will find a great enough share to stick around and consumers can choose whichever service they prefer. Currently I use MyYahoo! because it integrates with many of my Yahoo! services but as these startpages improve I’ll be more inclined to choose one of them. MyYahoo! is simply starting to get stodgy to me in comparison to the new kids.

  18. Michael Arrington

    March 1st, 2006 at 11:13 am

    Chris, I don’t disagree, and that’s why I keep writing about these companies, even while poking at them. There are a ton of startups that I don’t write about - there’s a reason that Fold.com is on my site and you nailed it.

    Let’s discuss all of this at the London event…

  19. Dave Moor

    March 1st, 2006 at 11:14 am

    Why? Because people use them! I don’t know how else i’d keep stuff in a central place to access from all my computers without my Protopage

  20. Christoph Janz

    March 1st, 2006 at 11:52 am

    Axel, Mike - great idea!

    @Pete: Yeah, I know, you are the second hardest critic, right after Mike. I’ll convince you by 12/31/06 too. :-)

  21. Haarball

    March 1st, 2006 at 3:03 pm

    Another dodgy Web 2.0 thingy with its official blog on BLOGSPOT? What is up?

  22. Axel Wolf

    March 3rd, 2006 at 10:52 am

    Here’s an update on the latest developments in Fold:

    We can now use Flash content within the portal, see here for screenshots and a QT video:

    http://foldblog.blogspot.com/2.....ntent.html

  23. ben wang

    March 8th, 2006 at 2:09 am

    just got a couple of questions:

    (1) do people really need a startpage? (how many yahoo users get thier my yahoo personalized? how many my yahoo users take it as a startpage ranther than a personalized page?)

    (2) is ajax crucial for startpages? (in china merely 20% internet users set http://www.hao123.com, a static html page which contains hundreds of links to portals and ohter sites, as their startpage.)

    (3) what are the necessary components of a startpage? (rss, gadgets, links …)

  24. ben wang

    March 13th, 2006 at 2:33 am

    one more thing

    is startpage different with web desktop?

  25. Axel Wolf

    March 14th, 2006 at 5:43 am

    The Fold Public Beta is now online:

    Fold Public Beta

    The beta requires Firefox 1.02 or higher. Have fun.

    Cheers, Axel Wolf

  26. tim

    April 12th, 2006 at 3:54 pm

    Im a little late in this but im a big yes for a ’start page’. They’re in there early days, but once you start to use one like Netvibes you’ll always have it open in the first tab of your firefox. We’ve been integrating web applicatiosn for years in teh same system, Netvibes and others let you integrate web applications across the web.

    Its your single window into your business or life on the web.

  27. Kogun

    May 31st, 2006 at 11:54 am

    Well, the FOLD start page has ‘folded’ without even an announcement on its main page, just an ugly redirect to Axel Wolf’s BlitzTools stuff. How incredibly rude. That’s the way to establish your rep as a flakey web developer. His blog site for Fold basically says. “I’m currently busy working on other stuff so Fold is deactivated for the time being.”

    Hmm… This is how he treats potential customers? I’ll be avoiding his stuff from now on.

  28. Olivier Amprimo

    June 28th, 2006 at 5:00 am

    Looks like Zoozio is now Zimbio …

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