But if you have ever been frustrated at the limitations of such pages, you will love UStart.  UStart gives you the opportunity to create your own ideal start page, no matter what you might want on it.  The service is completely free of charge and it doesn’t take long to create a page you will be happy with.

Once you have registered you can customize your page to appear however you want it to.  If you have social media accounts with the likes of Twitter and Facebook you can include those as well.  Email accounts, news pages and various other feeds and items can also be rearranged on your page.  You can also add lots of links to all kinds of sites on the page, making it easy to access your favorite sites whenever you want to.

You can also add events to the calendar and save your page so that you are able to gain access to it from another computer if you wish.  All of this is stored securely online to make this a pleasant  service to use.

In short, UStart.org looks to be a popular new addition to the start page group of sites.

Jotpress certainly falls into this category.  This is a new website which offers a completely free service to those who do not want the traditional kind of blog.  You don’t even have to set up a free page of your own – simply email the jotpress email address and see your thoughts appear on the website.

By emailing your contributions to the Jotpress email address, they do the rest and publish them on your behalf online. You still have a profile, as the site requires you to register an account with them beforehand, but this simple process of emailing your thoughts allows you to publish anything at any time. Of course, you can follow other people’s thoughts as well.  If you do this you can be notified when someone posts a new ‘jot’, as all entries are called.

You can post short or long text entries and also photos or links to videos.  It seems to be extremely new as there is not much material on the site at the moment.  However with that said you should get plenty out of it if you join now, because you can start building a fan base as the site grows.

The best (or worst) thing about the site, depending on your viewpoint, is the sheer diversity of items people post.  You will find everything here, from the bizarre to the useful to the downright strange.  It could well be a hit, but only time will tell.

But you no longer need to restrict yourself to scribbling everything down on paper, because there is a website that allows you to do it all online instead.  The site is called Bubbl.Us, and it allows you to develop any idea you like with the help of bubbles.

The basic concept allows you to put an idea inside each bubble, creating a mind map as you go along.  You can create this any way you like, and if you want to change things this is easy to do.  Click on a bubble and drag it into its preferred position, for example.

You can also use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out on your map.  This enables you to locate specific areas on a larger mind map, while ensuring everything is also in the right place.  As such there is no limit to the size of the mind map you make for yourself.

There are also various ways to use these maps once you have created them.  There is even the facility to embed it into your website, which is ideal if you are creating graphics to use in this fashion.  Otherwise you can email it to whoever you want, and print it out for your own use too.

According to the website there are just three simple stages to making this happen.  These are laid out on the home page so you can immediately see how beneficial this could be for your site.  And since it is free you could apply it to more than one site as well if you wish.

The site is positioned as offering mobile website templates free of charge, and there does seem to be some variety in how you can make your mobile site look.  For instance there are a variety of templates which you can choose from, and you can also customise them according to the colour themes you already have in place.  In this sense the mobile site is very user friendly, both for you and for your visitors who find your site via their mobiles.

This is not the best known new site out there today, but with such a good offer available there is no doubt that Onbile should become better known over time.  There doesn’t seem to be any other offer out there which is offering anything similar, and that is a good selling point – especially when it is available for free.

Normally it means faxing the contract back and forth or sending it via snail mail.  But Signature Confirm is a new service which makes it possible to do all this in a secure way via email.  This means everyone can sign the necessary documents and then get on with the work as soon as is practically possible.

Unique codes are created for each person who will be receiving the contract.  Once the code is received and used they can sign it over the internet and the work is done.  The whole process is also tracked online by Signature Confirm, so if you are the one who has issued the contract you will always be able to see what is happening and when.  If you sign a contract in this way you will also be able to check the contract by returning to the site to view it securely whenever you want to.

This is an excellent addition to the field for anyone who has the need to sign or issue contracts.  This is especially the case if you happen to be working for or with someone who is in a different country from you.  Time differences notwithstanding, this service strikes just the right balance for everyone.

Dwolla aims to do things differently by charging just one small fee for every transaction you make.  This fee is currently just twenty five cents, making this a very attractive alternative to use if you want to save money on making your payments.

This flat fee is the cornerstone of this new payment model, and it could result in many more people switching to it and making the most of the savings it represents.  As you know if you use PayPal and many other similar payment services online, you are charged a flat fee every time you decide to make a transaction.  But it doesn’t stop there.

These other services also charge you a small percentage of the amount you get.  The bigger the amount, the more they shave off the top.  But with Dwolla this doesn’t happen.  Instead you pay them their twenty five cents and you take the rest of the money.

It is early days for this new service but it will be interesting to see how far it gets and how successful it could eventually be.  You can follow Dwolla on Twitter if you wish, and at the time of writing they had 1,700+ followers.  As word spreads about this new service we can expect it to grow more popular and be used by more people as well.

This is a facility which allows you to create a blog made up of links.  The Howl home page is fairly basic and simple, but you can sign in quickly and easily with a new account, or use your Twitter or Facebook account instead if you wish.  If you already have an account with one of these it makes sense to make better use of it with Howl as well.

Registering with Howl takes just a few seconds, and once you have done so you can start adding whatever links you like.  Posting a link doesn’t take long at all, and since you can edit the links once they are published you do get a certain amount of control over your link blog as well.

The thing we liked the most about Howl was its simplicity.  Some may find it a little too simple, but it is quick to use and you can promote your own blog and websites as well as other links you like as well.  It is definitely early days for Howl but if enough people see the benefits it could well be a distinct success over time.  Start your own link blog today and see how it develops.

But how can shopping become a social affair? Well, Swipely aims to calculate and store every transaction you make – whether by email receipt or  credit card connection, and then compares this to restaurant menus and product catalogs. This will lead to a system that lets people actually see what your own purchases are in real time,  connecting both retailer and consumer in a more direct manner, which (according to Swipely) will help both parties benefit (the latest deals for the consumer, and of course – a targeted customer for the retailer).

Of course, security is always a must in the social commerce world, and Swipely is no exception – all users must approve every purchase that they choose to share on their account via the online interface (although there will be an option for automated sharing).

Already Swipely have raised a staggering $7.5 million in funding, led by Index Ventures and with further support from First Round Capital and Greylock Ventures.  Davis, First Round and Conway previously helped raise $1 million for the new Social Commerce startup.

To conclude – Swipely aims to save its userbase money, whilst helping to provide growth to various markets.  Making shopping a social affair is a new concept, and Swipely aim to accomplish this in a multitude of ways – whether this will be accomplished by introducing an online game leaderboard with the highest ‘savers’, or via a Facebook-style interaction service remains to be seen.

In reviewing this app, I did have a hard time staying objective because there is hardly a page on the Uruky site that doesn’t have at least one typo, misspelling, or just badly-made sentence.  It’s hard to keep a professional eye when faced with unprofessional site copy.

The unusual name for the site doesn’t come from the Uruk from Lord of the Rings, but instead from the ancient city of Uruk in Babylonia – considered the first seat of commerce in the western world.  The app itself is made by SilverStripers, a Sri Lanka-based open source development group.

The app itself, although fraught with typos, is simple to use and has a learning curve measured in minutes.  In about ten minutes, you can have your account set up, three clients entered, and be sending your first invoice.  It’s that simple and easy.  The invoicing supports branding and is (thankfully, because of typos) fully customizable.

Pricing begins at the free version, which allows you the basics like creating invoices, customizing the invoice headers, etc.  The paid version is only $5/month and includes a lot more like CSV output and PDF invoices send to clients.  Automated invoice reminders are a nice bonus.

Overall, the app is easy to use and does the job, but there are plenty of others that do the same around the ‘Net.  Most are about the same, really.

Howtru will enable users to aggregate their expertise in order to place a “VeracityScore” onto content. Each VeracityScore will be judged according to how many people believe the content to be accurate and how much of an expert each person is on the subject. Users can post the reasons they believe the content to be dubious. These reasons are also then seen as articles by Howtru and can also be rated, thus helping to further ensure that the judgements aren’t biased.

Howtru is currently still developing its system, however users can sign up to be notified and considered for beta-testing when the opportunity arises.

Howtru has the potential to help police even the largest and most powerful media outlets, as well as providing a new way of filtering the massive amounts of information that are available to internet users.