In the olden days (1993), when I first started on the Web, it was all fairly simple. I signed into AOL and kind of went from there; used Netscape to browse and a few sites and articles from PCMag, etc. to read and learn what was developing. These days it’s not so simple, but I hope it soon will be.

Today, I open my Google Chrome (with four other browsers for backup and other uses), go to Gmail, and then open up 6 more tabs just to be able to adequately function. I’m sure we all have our tricks and quirks. For me, I open FB, Twitter, two curation sites, a private collaboration site, and my blog. And then I am ready to read my e-mail and browse, sort, link, and respond accordingly. That’s a lot of effort, but it works for now. My biggest problem? – learning not to close the whole browser instead of new tabs that pop up along the way. There’s a reason it is a big red X, but for the life of me I still keep hitting it by mistake. Aarrgh!

What I want and hope will come very soon (developers, I hope you are reading as I give you this most awesome, free idea) is to be able to simply open my own page on some service provider that has all of this functionality, and more, built into it. I want to go to my own space and be able to have all the personal tools, links, pages, etc. all in one spot, signed in and ready to go. Basically turn this whole present scenario on its head. I want my own FB, Twitter, friends and contact lists, in my space, not theirs!

That will give me the freedom to control my own data, decide who belongs where, who sees and shares what, let me fine tune my own browsing experience and collaboration efforts and allow me to filter the vasty deep of the WWW down to what is usable for me. I can’t be the only one thinking this can I?

Santa, is that too much to ask for Christmas?