Personalized webpages are all business when it comes to the New York Times personalized My Times page.

Like other start pages, Netvibes, iGoogle, PageFlakes, MyYahoo and Windows Live, MyTimes allows users to pull in all of their important everyday RSS news and build a single resource. Widgets like weather, Flickr, stock quotes and crosswords can also be added to pages. Sections can be dragged around and reorganized like the other offerings as well.

Where MyTimes differs is that readers can choose to have their pages set up by Times journalists for news and entertainment. Offering a first hand look into their sources of information.

Yahoo is the original Internet location. Back in the early days everyone had their Hotmail email address, and had Yahoo search directory set as their start page in Netscape Navigator. Things have changed drastically since then. Google is in the spotlight for search, and Yahoo has branched out to offer some important services for todays internet users, (insert Mozilla fan boy comment now) and we should all be using Firefox.

Taking a queue from Richard MacManus' post on the Top 10 Yahoo! Properties, we would like to highlight some of Yahoo's services that are making a difference in our lives in this Web 2.0 landscape.

If you are a big fan of custom start pages like the new MyYahoo, and a user of a POP mail account, you might get excited about a new feature Yahoo has added.

In iGoogle, you can only pull in your Gmail account, well, Yahoo thought hey, why not, let's make it so that any mail account can get imported into our customers start pages in the new MyYahoo. So they came out with the POP Mail module that launched yesterday; Pull in mail from any mail account, Yahoo or not, as long as it supports POP.

Yahoo also added in a Gmail module, because hey why not allow Google's Gmail users the ability to pull in their mail. If you want to get hooked up with the new My Yahoo beta that serves this content, sign up for an upgrade if you haven't already, and you'll be on your way. The page is clean and as easy to use at Netvibes. However, even though I enjoyed having the Gmail/POP modules preview my emails, when emails are clicked out to read more, you will have to sign into your email account. A little hassle, but that could be easily forgotten about. Yahoo is on their way to building a serious contender here, and it's definitely one you might want to consider. Netvibes is still a leader in this space, and is for sure a location that Yahoo and other "start pages" want to study when finding out what works, especially when it comes to a clean and uncluttered space. In other words, if My Yahoo got rid of that giant ad, and tightened up the top of the page so that we could fit in more content, it might get a little higher on the list.

MyYahoo has also updated their Scoreboard, Weather and Shopping modules.

Personalized start pages are all the rage these days, but Yahoo!'s been providing users with access to a customizable "My Yahoo!" homepage for years. Hot on the heels of Netscape, Yahoo's launched a major upgrade to its My Yahoo! service.

First up, the new interface makes much more use of AJAX than the previous version. But essentially it works like the old My Yahoo! You can drag and drop modules including RSS feeds, weather forecasts, and TV listings across the screen to arrange the page the way you like it. You can add or remove those modules, and you can create multiple pages.

But perhaps the biggest change isn't what you can do. It's what you don't have to do. The first time you open My Yahoo! you'll find a personalized page designed just for you, based on how you've used Yahoo! in the past. If you frequently use Yahoo! to look up movies or TV listings, you'll have access to those items. This is a pretty handy feature if you don't feel like spending hours customizing your start page.

You can also share your start page with other users by sending a message through Yahoo! Mail or Messenger. If you don't see a link atop your My Yahoo! page asking if you want to switch, you can sign up for the new version.

[via ReadWriteWeb]