Isn't This EXCITING?!?!.... Alright, Terrible Title I Know, But Good Review I Promise
Written: Feb 25 '01
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The Bottom Line
The search results are decent, but use it for its home page capabilities. It condenses the entire HUGE internet into a manageable plethora of information, all on one page.
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Well first of all before I get started I just want to clear something up quickly. I basically use excite for its "home page" characteristics as opposed to its main purpose as a search engine. Now I know that sounds like it defeats the purpose, but I think you may find what I have to say rather interesting, especially if you are not familiar with excites capabilities.
The thing about excite that really attracts me is the way you can alter the settings of the front page and change it to fit your wants and needs. This is what gives it a home page look and feel.
By simply registering with the website, you can start up your own home page. And I know what some of you are thinking. The whole junk mail thing. Every time I register with a website I get 400 pieces of garbage e-mail over the next few weeks telling me all about how I am eligible to win a trip to Singapore or something. NO THANKS. Well you don't have to worry about that with excite because I registered probably about 2 years ago and have yet to receive any garbage mail from them.
Now on to the interesting stuff. The awesome, incredible, outrageous OPTIONS. Starting with the basics, you can change the colors very easily. You can change the background color, the text color, link color and a few other things. Hmmm... nothing else seems to fit in that "basics" category other than colors so I'll just get to the specifics.
Stocks
Excite allows you to keep track of your stocks in portfolios based on the portfolios used by "Quicken". Clearly, that means nothing to most people, but the bottom line is that the portfolios are very convenient and easy to use. You can change the categories you want to view for each stock such as volume, daily percent increase/decrease... ok, unless you are a broker, you don't care. So yeah, the portfolios are good stuff, trust me. Also you can have tables on your front page that show you the top 10 most active stocks each trading day and the top 10 biggest gainers and losers. I find this to be a pretty cool option because in a glance I can see if any stock went way off the charts or if it was just a basically normal day.
Sports
The sports options are few, but they are effective and they are all you will really need. You can set your "scoreboard" to have only the sports you want on it. For example I am big into the NBA and MLB, but I do not care much for college hockey, so I choose not to have the college hockey scores on my scoreboard. Another nice option is choosing which teams scores you want to see. For example again, I am not really into college soccer, but I like to follow Rutgers soccer team, because they are the local school by me. So i set it up so only Rutgers games will appear on the scoreboard. Along those same lines you can set it up so only televised games will appear on your scoreboard, or only games involving nationally ranked teams ( i.e. Top 25 college bball games ).
Reminders
This is definitely one of my favorite options. Sadly, I was not blessed with the world's greatest memory. In fact some people tend to think I have a down right bad memory. Now, what was I saying? HAHA.. just messin. Anyway, the theory behind the whole reminders thing is that if you use the page often enough, you will see your reminders and remember to do it. You can type in a brief message and a date and then set when you want it to appear on your list. You can have it on all the time, or just a week or 2 before the date itself to save space. This option serves me well so I can the number of days I have left before assignment x is due and how late assignments y, z, q, and f are.
There are tons of other great options that I could describe forever but instead I'll cut down a bit and just describe them briefly.
Daily Fortune - self-explanitory
Rise and Set of Moon/Sun - odd, yet interesting
Local Weather - nice graphics, pretty accurate
Famous Birthdays - celebrities who were born on whatever day it happens to be. Hey, what do you know! Veronica Webb is 36 today.. yeah, whoever that is.
This Day In History - I think you can catch the idea of that one.
TV Guide - You can set it for whatever channels you have.
Bookmarks - Set up one click links to your favorite websites.
News Headlines - Choose the topics of your choice. World News, Political News, Sports News, Odd News, etc.
Lottery Results - You can choose whichever drawings you'd like to see the results of.
Those are the options I use and there is a list of some others that you may find useful. BOTTOM LINE - check out excite.com if you're looking for a cool page to go to when you sign on that has all the daily info you will need. Its the first page I go to everyday and I am a better person for it. Well maybe not really, but it definitely makes the internet experience much less frustrating. I hope you found this review informative and helpful. That's all folks.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Member: Michael O'Rourke
Location: East Brunswick, New Jersey
Reviews written: 55
Trusted by: 76 members
About Me: "I've got a head full of ideas, that you wouldn't believe" - 311
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