New: Remove your broken links

startme 1 Comment

We just released a new exciting feature… the Broken Link Checker! The Broken Link checker will tell you which of your links are (most likely) broken, so you can remove them. This will help you keep your bookmark collections organized and stops you from visiting dead ends.

How does it work? Links that we’ve identified as broken will now be displayed as Link title in your bookmark widget.

Example bookmark widget:

Broken Link Checker helps you identify links that are no longer working.

Upon clicking the dead link a new menu is offered with the following options:

For each link we identified as broken, we offer a menu with various options.

  • Open anyway – Open the link in a new window (to check if it’s really broken or not)
  • This link is not broken – Mark link as normal (e.g. not broken)
  • Delete bookmark – Remove this link from the bookmark widget
  • Edit bookmark – Correct this link manually
  • Search for an alternative link on Google – Try and find an alternative webpage on Google
  • Visit homepage of link – Go to the homepage of the link

We hope that this new feature will make it easier for your to clean up your old bookmarks. Happy housekeeping!

Please leave a comment below or e-mail your suggestions/feedback to [email protected].

Premium-only
The Broken Link Checker is only available to PRO subscribers. Not a PRO subscriber yet? For just $20/annually or $50/lifetime you get access to all premium features and an ad-free experience. For more information: https://start.me/pro.

New widget: Trello Boards

startme 0 Comments

Today we’ve launched a new premium widget: Trello Boards.

Trello is a popular web-based project management application that allows you to organize anything using boards and cards.

With the start.me Trello boards widget, you can now automatically add deep links to your Trello boards on your start.me page. This gives you one-click access to the various boards that you frequently use.

Instructions

To add the Trello Boards widget to your page:

  1. Hit the green “+” in the top of the page
  2. Click “Widgets”
  3. Select “Premium” tab
  4. Add “Trello Boards” widget
  5. Authorize your Trello account, so that start.me can access your Trello boards

In the Trello widget settings you have the following options:

  • Filter boards

    • (Select what kind of boards you want to see: Personal-, Starred- or Team boards)

  • Visible boards

    • (Select the number of boards you want to see by default)

This widget is only available to PRO subscribers. Not a PRO subscriber yet? For just $20/annually or $50/lifetime you get access to all premium widgets and an ad-free experience. For more information: https://start.me/pro.

Search: a new way to find your bookmarks on start.me

startme 2 Comments

Especially when you have many bookmarks stored on start.me, you don’t always remember the name of the bookmark or the page/widget where you saved it. Chances are that you waste precious time to find the bookmark you are looking for.

For this reason, we have added the ability to search inside your stored bookmarks. Simply enter the name or URL of the bookmark in the main search box and a list of found bookmarks will appear. See below:

Search in bookmarks stored on start.me

In the near future we will further expand and improve the search capabilities on start.me. Please let us know your thoughts on this new feature. Leave your comments below or e-mail us at [email protected].


Update:
Based on the feedback we received from various users, we have released the following new features today (June 8th, 2017):

  • We added the page and widget title for each bookmark, so that it’s clear where you saved the bookmark.
  • We added an ‘edit’ icon so that you can immediately edit/delete the bookmarks from the search results list.
  • We improved the search algorithm so that it provides better search results.

New on start.me: soccer results & league tables

startme 1 Comment

We have some good news for all the football (aka soccer) fans out there… In partnership with WorldFootball.com it is now possible to  follow the latest results & standings of your favorite leagues and teams right from your start.me paqe.

Premier Leagye widget by WorldFootball.com

Instructions

We have added several widgets for the most popular soccer competitions to our content library. Simply search for a league name (e.g. “Premier League”, “Serie A”, “Bundesliga”, etc) in the new Content Adder and select the widget from the list of widget suggestions. You can also go to this page for an overview of the pre-configured soccer widgets.

Don’t see the league you are looking for, or do you want to adjust the styling of the widget? Go to http://www.worldfootball.com/syndication/widgets and create your own custom soccer widget. You can choose from over 400 leagues and customize the styling of the widget. Once you are done, simply copy the embed code, paste it into the Content Adder on start.me and click on the “Embed” link.

Please let us know your thoughts on these new widgets in the comment section below or e-mail us at [email protected].

 

Easier bookmark and content adding

Michiel de Wit 4 Comments

Its’ been a while since you’ve last heard from us. That’s mainly because we have been very busy. Behind the scenes we are working on all sorts of cool things. Today we launched a very cool new feature. We call it the ‘Content Adder’. What it does? It makes adding stuff to your start.me pages a lot easier.

Adding bookmarks with the Content Adder

In its most basic form, the new Content Adder is just a sidebar you can use to quickly paste a URL in and have it added as a bookmark. Simply click the green  button on the top right and tell us what you want to add. Some examples of what the Content Adder will understand:

  • http://cnn.com – A full web address, including the http part;
  • cnn.com – Just the domain name, without protocol; saves you some typing!
  • CNN – Just the name of the site; we actually know a lot of sites, so just try us!

Simply press Enter to add the link. You will be asked to which bookmark block you would like to add the link. The Content Adder remembers your last choice, making it easy to add multiple links.

Other things you can add

We tried to make the Content Adder smart. That means that it tries to guess what you might be trying to add. So, if you would enter CNN, it would offer you a number of options:

  • Add a new bookmark to CNN;
  • Add a news feed with the latest news from CNN;
  • Create a new note with the text ‘CNN’;
  • Create a Google Alert to get news about CNN.

The most likely option is always directly available by pressing the Enter key. Try and enter different things and see what suggestions you will get! Some suggestions:

  • Enter the URL of a RSS or Atom feed to quickly add a News widget (e.g. http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss);
  • Paste the address of a Youtube video to embed it in your page (e.g. https://youtu.be/-DvKYXacI_Y);
  • Embed a Twitter Tweet by pasting the tweet URL (e.g. https://twitter.com/startme/status/819489101791555584)
  • Add a web photo to your page by copying it from your Facebook (by right clicking it and selecting Copy image)
  • Want to add a Google Analytics to your page? Just type ‘Google Analytics’ and be surprised;
  • To add multiple links at once, just copy them from notepad or Excel into the Content Adder and presto!

Convenient shortcuts

For those who prefer to use the keyboard, we have some good news as well. The Content Adder can be operated with the keyboard entirely. To open it, use the new Alt+Insert hotkey and start typing right away. Or even better: if there is something on your clipboard you want to add, simply press Ctrl+V and the Content Adder will open automatically.

Empty widgets

We often see user pages containing empty blocks. Sometimes you just forget to remove it or perhaps it is not clear how to configure a particular widget. To help, we changed the way empty widgets look. You will now always get a hint of what to do next or the option to directly remove the widget.

Smaller changes

Finally, we made some smaller changes to some parts of start.me. Just minor touch-ups to the overall look and feel and some usability improvements.

We really hope you like the new Content Adder and the other improvements we’ve made. To read more about what you can do with the new Content Adder, please check our Support page about it. And of course your feedback is very welcome: [email protected].

 

 

New name for our paid plan

Michiel de Wit 1 Comment

When we introduced our Premium subscription July last year, we did not give much attention to the naming of our premium subscription. We figured Premium would be fine. The main reason we introduced the paid plan was because users were asking us for it.  A year and a half later, the Premium subscription has become an important part of start.me. That’s why we decided to give its name some more thought.

Continue reading →

Cookie bar

Michiel de Wit 1 Comment

European Union (EU) law is rather strict when it comes to privacy. The union requires website owners to show a so called ‘cookie bar’ to all EU citizens, warning them about the use of cookies. We believe transparency is a good thing and were always open about our use of cookies (cf. our Privacy Policy). To comply with EU law we had to add as so called ‘cookie bar’ to formally announce the use of cookies, giving visitors a chance to opt out.

Continue reading →

Happy World Hello day!

Michiel de Wit 1 Comment

Today is the 44th annual World Hello Day. This day celebrates the power of communication to resolve conflicts. We would like to celebrate this day with you. That’s why we have a little bonus for you. Say Hello! to 10 of your friends, and we will award you with a free 1 year start.me Premium upgrade.

So go ahead, say Hello! to 10 of your friends and enjoy one year of extra fast, advertisement free, Premium-widget packed start.me fun!

Say ‘Hello!’

Need Inspiration? Add a Motivational Quote to your start.me page

startme 0 Comments

Sometimes all the inspiration you need to uplift your spirit can be found in a few simple words of wisdom. You can now get a daily dose of inspiration by adding a Quote Widget to your start.me page.

ThinkExist - Daily Quote

Several quote widgets are available, covering a variety of topics, including: Arts, Business, Life, Love, Management, Motivational, Nature and Funny Daily Quotes.

Quotes are provided by BrainyQuote, The Quotations Page, Quotes Daddy and ThinkExist.

 

Adding a Quote widget to your start page

To add one of the widgets, follow these steps:

  1. Go to your start.me page
  2. Click the +icon in the grid to open the Browse Widgets dialog
  3. Search for “quote” and browse through the list of Quote widgets
  4. Select the widget your choice and add it to your start.me page

Do you miss a particular Quote Widget? Leave a comment below or simply e-mail us at [email protected].

Easier bookmark adding and discovery

Michiel de Wit 2 Comments

For most users, the main purpose of start.me is to store bookmarks. That’s why we find it important to make adding and managing bookmarks as easy as possible. We already offer a browser extension to add bookmarks directly from your browser. Today’s update enhances bookmark adding from within start.me and helps you discover interesting new sites.

The bookmark-adder

BGB

You have probably used the big green button (BGB) in start.me’s header bar. It is the quickest way to add a bookmark. Until today, this only allowed you to add multiple URLs at once. Even though that is often quite handy, this approach would not let you enter a custom title or description.

That’s why we added a ‘Single URL’ mode, that allows you to add a new bookmark, directly specifying its title and description. Adding multiple bookmarks at once is still possible. We added a button that allows you to switch between single and multiple URL modes.

It’s so simple, you may wonder what took us so long to invent it. Well, there is a good reason for that, actually…

Browsing suggested sites

On the above screenshot you may have noticed the second tab in the Bookmark adder: “Suggestions”. This new tab houses a really exciting new feature that allows you to quickly add well known sites and… discover some more!

Our team or content curators has silently worked on building a huge collection of sites, cataloging and indexing them. This collection is instantly available to you through the suggestions tab.

You can choose to browse the list of suggestions, filtering based on your interests or the country you are interested in. Or you can actively search the database by entering one of more keywords, like ‘sport’ or ‘cloud’. The filters help you narrow down the results.

Adding sites you like is simple: just select them and click Add. The sites will appear as new bookmarks in the widget you selected.

Did you know?

To quickly add bookmarks to a specific widget, you can just use its widget menu and select ‘Add bookmark’. Also, the bookmark adder will remember to which widget you last added a bookmark and automatically suggest that widget next time.