Click to enlarge

Slashdot points to an MSN start page, terming it Microsoft's version of Google's start page, which was launched in May. A quick visit to http://www.start.com/3/ reveals a sleek layout featuring a search bar at the top of the page; feeds from BBC News, Reuters, Engadget, and Boing Boing; stock quotes cheekily featuring Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo; the weather for Redmond, Washington (sunny today, with 86 for the high).

A click on the "START preview" on the upper left of the page unfurls a sizable list of options; prominently listed are "My Feeds," "Recent Searches," and "Popular Feeds," which currently lists "staff favorites," including Slashdot, Wired and something called MSN Blogger Map - which maps the development team's whereabouts at the Redmond HQ using MSN's Virtual Earth, and has links to their blogs.

(See this excellent summary of real-world business [including advertising-related] applications that run on top of mapping platforms.)

At the foot of the spare page is a link to the "start.com blog" on MSN Spaces that has several posts from the developers, who apparently first put up a first start.com test site on March 6.

Also there, one finds the following disclaimer: "this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. for other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com. enjoy!"

The design/color scheme of the page can be altered via a link at the top right, featuring colors corresponding to "ocean," "granite," and "ice."