[steve666]

Why doesn't Apple have anything to counter MSN.com and Outlook.com?
I would love to have an alternative to Yahoo and Yahoo mail but would rather not use a microsoft run site.

[Cold Warrior]

They have iCloud, which provides email.

[steve666]

Yes, but it isn't a homepage with news, weather and sports, plus a finance page, etc etc

[shifuimam]

Have you not heard of gmail?

For everything else, I'd recommend using a good RSS service like Feedly and aggregating your daily data from different places.

[steve666]

gmail makes me nervous for privacy issues. Thinking about Outlook.com.
I really want a full featured site like yahoo, where I can put up a portfolio of stock quotes, check sports, link to email, etc.

I guess Yahoo and MSN.com may be the only ones

[reader50]

Outlook.com has a backdoor for the NSA.

[shifuimam]

Doesn't pretty much everything hosted in the United States have a backdoor for the NSA?

Seriously, though - use an RSS reader. You can add everything to that.

Or, use a smartphone or tablet. Google Now in Android automatically notifies you of all kinds of fun stuff - stocks, sports scores, weather, news, etc.

Oh, also: the Windows 8 start screen is great for this.

[steve666]

OK, so much for outlook.com
I don't have a smartphone. I'm starting to think I'm stuck with yahoo

[mindwaves]

Originally Posted by steve666 

OK, so much for outlook.com
I don't have a smartphone. I'm starting to think I'm stuck with yahoo

I use yahoo finance on a daily basis.

[shifuimam]

I wouldn't be so quick to trust Yahoo over anyone else, BTW.

How Web mail providers leave door open for NSA surveillance | Politics and Law - CNET News

Yahoo didn't even start using HTTPS across the board until 2013.

If you're particularly concerned about the government seeing your email, don't use email. Period. You have zero control over what happens to a message you send once it's sent - if it's sent to someone who uses Outlook.com (and you won't necessarily know that, since you can use Outlook.com with your own domain), you can't control what happens to it.

Also, since iGoogle is being retired, this has popped up:

http://www.ighome.com/

And these:

http://www.netvibes.com/en/individual

http://www.protopage.com/

Might be worth looking at for a one-stop-shop for your daily information needs.

[Spheric Harlot]

As for e-mail:

When I got started on this internet communications stuff back in the mid-90s, it was common knowledge that you shouldn't use e-mail for anything you wouldn't feel comfortable writing on a postcard.

[steve666]

Originally Posted by mindwaves 

I use yahoo finance on a daily basis.

Me too, but it's started acting strange on safari. dow and nasdaq quotes don't show up unless I add them to my portfolio and news comes out in one block, not separated by day

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I wouldn't be so quick to trust Yahoo over anyone else, BTW.

How Web mail providers leave door open for NSA surveillance | Politics and Law - CNET News

Yahoo didn't even start using HTTPS across the board until 2013.

If you're particularly concerned about the government seeing your email, don't use email. Period. You have zero control over what happens to a message you send once it's sent - if it's sent to someone who uses Outlook.com (and you won't necessarily know that, since you can use Outlook.com with your own domain), you can't control what happens to it.

Also, since iGoogle is being retired, this has popped up:

igHome - iGoogle Alternative

And these:

Netvibes – Social Media Monitoring, Analytics and Alerts Dashboard

Protopage RSS Reader and Start Page

Might be worth looking at for a one-stop-shop for your daily information needs.

Thanks, I'll check those out

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

As for e-mail:

When I got started on this internet communications stuff back in the mid-90s, it was common knowledge that you shouldn't use e-mail for anything you wouldn't feel comfortable writing on a postcard.

I guess it doesn't matter much for me, just a little creepy

[steve666]

Netvibes and Protopage look the best so far

[jmiddel]

Have you tried yahoo in Chrome or Firefox? I understand why you like yahoo, my best friend has it and when he checks his email all sorts of interesting stuff pops up.

[steve666]

Yahoo works fine with chrome on the PC at work.
Doesn't work well at all with safari on my mac, and only slightly better on firefox.
Not sure if I want to use chrome at home, with google's excessive tracking and all

[jmiddel]

rats! there has to be a browser that that works without the Google taint. Opera?

[P]

Firefox is probably your best bet. They're on a path to make the interface completely unusable, but you can still modify it to work.

[steve666]

Firefox is better than Opera

[shifuimam]

I think you're taking the Google thing to an extreme. A lot of the scare about Google is really just hype.

The fact is, any site on the Internet is going to use cookies and the like to provide targeted advertising. Facebook in particular provides pretty much any data you put on Facebook - even stuff marked private - to advertisers for the purpose of giving you relevant ads. If you think Yahoo ISN'T automatically parsing your email for ad purposes, you're just being naive, IMO.

Keep in mind, too, that unless you use an anonymizing service like ToR, your ISP can log everything you do just as much as your browser can (and more).

I wouldn't be scared of Chrome if I were you. It's a pretty great browser.

[steve666]

OK, maybe I'll give it a shot and see if Yahoo works better on chrome.