Filed under: Internet, Web services
Schmedley start page, nothing new here
Start pages are great to gather the information you check out frequently, and take a quick look at them in one convenient location. There are many Ajax start pages on the market including Netvibes, Google Personalized home page, Yourminis, and Pageflakes that all seem to do the job. So what makes Schmedley different? Nothing really.
Its pretty, ajaxy, and just another player in this ever expanding market. But there is one cool feature that sits at the bottom of the screen. That OSX style dock that adds schmidgets, as they are called, to your screen. Schmedley's quicklinks at the top allow users to add stocks to watch, search for images, check out movie times, and subscribe to feeds. As far as organization goes, there is nothing new here, the other start sites on the market beat this one out. It does seem cluttered, and not the first thing I want to look at in the morning, but it was worth a shot. It might need a bit more work in order to compete with the market leaders.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Patty said 12:18PM on 3-02-2007
Ah, did you bother checking this out fully? Their site is customisible (you can add or delete their "Schmidgets"), and the pages beyond the start page provide actual value. I'm thinking you passed judgement on them much too quickly.
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Kin Lane said 1:07AM on 3-04-2007
I don't think you are passing judgment too quickly. This is a crowded space and hard to distinguish yourself from the big players.
They have some nice visual differences from the rest of them, but really not enough to distinguish themselves and really draw in the crowds.
In my experience I think people really haven't fully adopted home pages, at least not mainstream customers.
So they have a ways to go. Keep it up!
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Steven Burns said 6:58PM on 3-04-2007
I agree with Patty. I've read other articles from other writers about this new startup and their assessments were a lot more accurate. Had you made it past their homepage or even glanced at their "about" page, you would have seen that they are not just a startpage but they have a full "suite of web services applications" (their words) lurking in the background. I've used several of them and i think they are great. The movies page and stocks page have a great interface and are full of features. This company is doing so much more than just widgets. For you to say "nothing new here" either means that you just have a negative attitude towards startpages in general, or that you really didn't take the time to see what's under the hood here. I believe that schmedley has what it takes to be a contender in 2007 against some of the other sites in their genre.
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Cory Anotado said 12:39AM on 3-08-2007
I think you've passed judgement too soon also. There's more than just the ajax-bar and Schmedley is more than just a start page. Check out the movies button. Check out the SMS page.
Give these guys a worthy review, not this half-assed effort of a glance of their main page.
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schmedley said 11:49AM on 3-09-2007
As a developer of schmedley, I'd like to thank Patty and Cory for pointing out the half-hearted attempt at a review here.
While I appreciate the few good things that Mr. Gilmer had to say, I had to ask myself after reading his review if he had indeed surfed around through all of our pages, or just took a summary look at the homepage and made some inaccurate assessments.
I also particularly liked the broken image reference to "file:///C:/DOCUME~1/CHRIST~1/LOCALS~1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg" he left in there as well - it aids in showing how quickly this post was slapped together.
- the schmedley team
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Chris Gilmer said 11:52AM on 3-09-2007
Thanks for the comments. Looks like I will have to look into this one further.
schmedley - what broken image are you speaking of?
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schmedley said 3:02PM on 3-09-2007
Hi Chris,
the broken image is right before the screenshot - on Firefox all looks fine - but on IE and Safari you can see the generic browser-driven broken image icon.
- the schmedley team
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