Creating A Custom Homepage With Xerpi
Xerpi provides a hassle-free way to create a customizable homepage. With Xerpi, you can organize and save your favorite links, access those links from anywhere – home, work, internet cafés, etc., and quickly search links and find relevant results. Con Way Ling, the founder of Xerpi, is using this ReviewMe review more for feedback than for promotion. He would like comments and recommendations on what Xerpi can do to provide a better user experience.
In his Email to me, Mr. Ling said, “We know one of the things we need to improve is the sign up. Comments there are welcome but the real benefit of the sites comes from just using the site after your links are stored and saved.” I found the sign up extremely easy. However, the spam question should be made simpler. Most of the time it’s just an easy math questions but one time I got, “Who was the first president of the United States (last name only)?” You’ll be amazed at how many Americans don’t know the answer. Xerpi offers three sign up methods.
- The Quickie: Choose your areas of interests and Xerpi sets up your page! One click and you’re done (5 seconds).
- The Set Up: Pick out specific links from categories for a custom page! A few clicks and you’re done (1-2 minutes).
- The Real Deal: Full control for building the perfect Xerpi page from your own links (3-5 minutes).
The Xerpi Homepage
My first impression of the Xerpi Beta homepage was it looks a lot like a Google personalized homepage. The main difference is Google displays mostly RSS feeds while Xerpi provides a nice easy way to display all your favorite websites.
The concept behind Xerpi is a nice one. Many web users have dozens (some have hundreds) of sites stored in their browser favorites. By storing and organizing these favorites in Xerpi, you have access to them from any computer, anywhere in the world. This is great for a mobile techie or someone who works from multiple computers or locations. The homepage is very clean and extremely easy to use.
How Does Xerpi Make Money?
According to Xerpi About Us page, “Xerpi makes money through partner agreements. These agreements bring you services you already use like search. Our partners are world-class providers bringing you the best services while keeping our operating costs low by not re-inventing the wheel.” Right now, it looks like Xerpi sole source of income is Google search. We’ll just have to wait and see what other partners bring to the table.
The Xerpi Search
In addition to offering searches by Google, Xerpi offers their own search engine. The searches are based on tags. Tags are keywords that describe links, and help you get the most from Xerpi. When you create a link, and associate tags to it, you are enriching the Xerpi experience for yourself and all other Xerpi users in two ways:
- Tags power Tags Links Blocks, which let you dynamically view all links saved by Xerpi users to a particular tag
- Tags power Xerpi Search, which lets you search for all links associated to a tag.
Right now, the Xerpi search feature is very limited because of a lack of users. As more users start using Xerpi as their favorites organizer, their search feature should be a lot more useful. Xerpi supports both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox. Using a non-supported browser may find that some functions of Xerpi do not work as expected.
Looking For Feedback
As I’ve stated at the start of this review, Xerpi is still in beta and looking for feedback. Who better to provide feedback then fellow webmasters and bloggers? Give Xerpi a try and let them know what you think of it and where you think they can improve.
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- Posted in Reviews, The Net
- 71 comments what's your take?
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- Xerpi: a cool homepage | Cody Staub - May 7, 2007 at 1:03 am
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Will definitely try it out; I’ve been looking for a reliable site like this one for a while now — thanks, John!
Can we make money from this?
Hahaha, what a nice question! John is doing with the review, but the rest of us?
I’ve yet to see a personalized homepage type site that interests me enough to sign-up, this is not different
Looks too much like Google Personalized Homepage for my liking
$999,999
Hah, Eric I was thinking the same exact thing. I don’t like the look of it too much but is a pretty interesting concept. It’s still in beta so I guess we’ll just have to wait it out and see!
Btw, another great review John!
Great concept. Suerly webmasters will use it a lot.
Trying it now, tell you soon
Ok, half way through making the homepage, Its GREAT!!
One Suggestion:
There are no good instructions on adding friends or managing them.
i might give it a try. ive been using netvibes for this kind of thing but this looks like its pretty good as well
So far so good…set-up was a breeze, although it takes a while for the pages to load (could be just me, but what do you guys think?). I see what they mean by needing more users; it has become more evident that you get to maximize the use of the site if you actually ADD friends yourself. The tags could be helpful as soon as more users populate Xerpi. Just a few observations in the 10 minutes since I signed up.
So how is this different than using Bookmarks in your browser?
Or am I missing the concept of this?
Customizable homepages let you put a lot more than bookmarks right on a homepage. For example, you could have your mail, weather, recent posts of blogs, bookmarks, and more that are easy to access right on one page.
sounds like Google’s personal page.
It can display my gmail, horoscope, RSS feeds etc.
One of the benefits is being able to access your bookmarks from any computer.
That could be handy, I do notice my bookmarks on my other computers are all different.
Plus, you learn about new sites that spark your interests through friends who also happen to use Xerpi.
So it can also be used like a networking tool too? Or a bookmark sharing site?
Yeah, pretty much — so it could be good for “business” in the long run I suppose.
Tyler, the thing is that you cant have your browser wherever you go.
ok, but… why should I use this and not delicious?
I use delicious as a source to generate traffic, not to keep my bookmarks.
Was never really a fan of delicious…
I don’t know about you, but I find delicious to be kind of confusing to use for just keeping track of and organizing my bookmarks. I really like using the Google homepage, but it only lets you do RSS (that I’ve found anyway), so this is like the perfect marriage in my opinion.
I agree.. the ability to show web pages not using RSS is a key advantage to Xerpi
Exactly — I think Xerpi is just much simpler to use and very easy to organize.
True I can’t take bookmarks with me wherever I go but the sites that I find I need to visit when I am else where on a machine that normally isn’t mind I tent to have memorized their URL.
I can see this service being useful, but I guess personally it wouldn’t be useful for me
It’s interesting, but it doesn’t appear to have anything really different that iGoogle, or whatever it’s called. Personalized google page.
Clean design though,
-Sam from MarketMatador.com
I have to agree, it doesnt seem to be offering anything new or ‘unique’ that i couldnt find elsewhere
That’s a really hard thing to quantify unfortunately.
If everyone could come up with the unique product feature that sets them apart…
true
I like how iGoogle can be themed. I’m running the bus-stop theme. It also changes the weather of the image based on the weather in the city I live in.
Great review, however I dont really see why I should use this over other customizable homepages that are more, well “established”.
I like it
. I agree the above comment about the loading time being a little slow…especially when adding links. It kind of detracts from the whole AJAX feel.
It could get better once they’re out of the beta phase — for their sake, I hope it does.
Thanks for a wonderful review..
And congrats for another ReviewME
Seriously… at $400 a pop you are making so much money from ReviewMe. Seems as though you could ditch reviewme and do it independantly… maybe you could make more that $400 a piece.
I personally use iGoogle
the loading time is quite slow. does the country of origin matter when it comes to these things? I’m in Singapore right now and I hope it doesn’t.
I don’t think it matters as much as what/how fast your own connection is. Loading the page on my end is OK, but when it gets to adding your preferences/friends then it gets a little slower than usual.
I’m using igoogle too, but it does worth trying?
Give it a shot and see if its for you. Probably the best way to find out
I don’t think I’ll be trying this, nothing against the site…just doesn’t interest me.
just stick with igoogle… there’s not much of a difference. save yourself the time
You have nothing to lose anyway, right? Just choose the quick set-up (it takes about a minute) then you’ll have a pretty good idea what it’s all about. It’s possible that you won’t ever come back to use it, but at least you gave it a shot.
It’s kind of cliche – i’m referring to their source of income. a good 400 dollar income out of that John. =)
Its basically bookmarks, but you have them in a webpage. Similar to what Opera browser v9.20 offers out of the box, but doesn’t display thumbnails and isn’t restricted to 9 websites. Also its on the web, so available where ever you are
It’s ideal for people on-the-go; it’s been three days since I signed-up and I’m pretty happy with the service. Slowly building my network through personal and frequently tagged links.
Hmm no offense but the name of this website sounds like an STD…
Just kidding.
Hahahaha… you’re right… it does
Have you been tested for Xerpi lately?
I’m still using iGoogle until NetVibes becomes more stable for me.
I just use IGoogle…works fine for me…might give xerpi a try.
xerpi… heheh
Another ReviewMe review.
John Chow is the ReviewMe Whore!
will definitely take a look…thanks john
like most of the people here I use iGoogle as well and I am pretty happy with it, but it does not store my bookmaks so i guess xerpi will come in hhandy….how did he come up with a name like xerpi?
The logo on my homepage seems a bit rasterized. Maybe they read these comments, and can make a change to that.
– Scot
Thanks so much for all the feedback and suggestions. They are really helpful and appreciated!
We will have the load times fixed by our release this summer.
Do let me know if you have any questions.
Until then if you like it spread it… ha, ha.
-Con Way
kind of neat for some people, not of use to me though
Kind of delicious?
I’m happy with iGoogle. It does store bookmarks if you add them manually as urls. Xerpi does indeed sound like an STD. I won’t risk catching it.
How do you pronounce Xerpi?
I really have not found anything besides google.com that I would want as a browser home page yet.
James I do not think Xerpi serves as a homepage…its more along the lines of deliciuos, just more organized for bookmarks…
i feel the same way. but it was a good idea while it lasted. imo.
…although ya u could make it ur homepage…but since it does not have RSS i doubt people will just like to stare at their bookmarks..
Xerpi. We pronounce it with a ‘z’ like zurpi and rhymes with… yup you all sorted that out already.
Came up with name by… well smashing fingers on keyboard. this is what came up AND the domain was available
I use it as my homepage. I link to netvibes and my bank sign in page, gym schedules, blogs, etc.
Goal is to organize and find ideas (passively), ex. tag block feature is a personalized top ten list — select a tag and as people add related links it self populates.
Think that answers most questions.
Oh and Scot… cleaning up logo now. Thanks
Smashing fingers on keyboard LOL that’s classic! I do that sometimes, too — when I’m raging mad!
Yeah, I think the site has a lot of potential in terms of spawning creativity and organizing helpful links. Good luck and more power to Xerpi!
I tried xerpi, not to my liking … rather do it ‘old school’ way
xerpi…what does that mean..anyone other than similarity to STD?
look at the spelling above
Thanks but i’ll stick with google