By Mark Bartz

In our hurry-up world, anything that saves us time is invaluable. Recall the days before computers were mainstream and someone suggested that computers would free up our lives: give us more of a work/life balance? Far from it. Now those of us who (seem) to have the best work/life balance are either: a) On Prozac, or b) Pretty darn organized.

A quick question. When you open your computer each day, where do you typically go first? Your e-mail? Facebook? Linkedin? Google? That’s really where your day begins, isn’t it? As most of us would like to be “b” above (pretty darn organized), I want to share something with you that can get you to that promised land. I recently researched and tested several “homepages”; these are the customized pages you open on your computer each day. I’m guessing you currently use Google or Yahoo.  But there other – frankly better – options. Here’s the list of fully customizable homepages I studied: Eskobo; Favoor; Netvibes; Pageflakes; Protopage; Gritwire; Schmedley; Webwag.

And the winner was? Check out Netvibes and Pageflakes as viable replacements to iGoogle and MyYahoo. Let me know your experience.