When using a browser, the start-page will eventually become so important that most people will customize it in one way or another. I’ve found Netvibes to be a nice replacement for the morning newspaper (although I’m not using it 100%).
Yourminis is another page that’s easy to customize, more so than Netvibes. Yet another is Protopage that at first glance looks more cute than serious, but lets you embed sections of a website in your protopage. On the other hand, the Main Page of Wikipedia will probably work for most people.
The best solution productivity-wise (also, for that so-important timeless, minimal look) is of course to simply use a blank page, as it will provide no distractions!
