iGoogle

"One page to rule them all,
One page to find them,
One page to bring them all,and
in the webcache
bind them"

The latest internet thingee I am playing with is blogging, of course. More on this later...I am, as you can tell, still experimenting with that and promise to report later.

Meanwhile, the latest internet thingee I have been playing with for more than 6 months is iGoogle.

That is the subject of today's article. It is just in time to coincide with Google's Feel The iGoogle Love campaign where you can Share Your iGoogle Lovestory. The timing is spot on.

Being an "Early Adopter" does not necessarily always mean being way in front of the pack when it comes to technology and other 'on the edge' ideas. Being a little ahead, is still early enough for me. This can often be for practical reasons because I find I will avoid trying something new right out of the box if I’m not sure of the benefits, the bugs or the downside.

However, when I stumbled across iGoogle, I embraced it and found it extremely easy, fast and useful. All attributes that tickled my Early Adopter gene.

You can easily make your own page in 30 seconds. You can add different tabs for the areas that you are interested in. For example, my iGoogle account holds tabs for my local news, National news headlines, Art sites, Education, job search sites, politics, favorite Blogs, College Search sites, the Economy and the Environment! My homepage offers Map Quest, YouTube, weather updates, and a To Do List. I have RSS feeds (headlines from an online newspaper, newsletter, blog, etc) for everything that I like to read and see on a normal basis, and it all lands in one location.

One part I like is decorating your iGoogle pages. You can select from different featured artists who create themes for Igoogle, and some of them are even animated! My favorite thing to do is when I have a new subject I am following which requires me to start a new Tab and page. iGoogle adds what it thinks I might like on that page, based on the name I gave it, but then I get to select and add gadgets. I loved finding just the right ones when I made my Economy page. You just click "Add Stuff" off to the far right side of your page and you click to a long searchable list of cool gadgets you can add and try out how they look on your page. You can move them around on your page and edit the settings so you get the amount of new headlines you want and then if you don't like it you can just delete it and look for another one. It a very fast and fun process.

I really used it this summer leading up to the presidential election to follow polls and columnists that would give me the latest updates on what was happening on that front. It was so helpful not to have to do a news search or even hunt around my bookmarks for news sites I habitually read. I would just look in one place. The RSS feeds were really my obsession for a long time, because I would see if my favorite sites had a widget and if they didn't I would search the actual site for one. 9 out of 10 times they had a little RSS button that I could click and it would be added right to my iGoogle page. You can also move these feeds from one page to another if you want.

In the end I was able to cancel my local newspaper subscription, which I only read a little of each day anyway, and even a few magazine subscriptions. I still read print, but I am quite selective about it. You can even get a widget (gadget) that will play movies, videos and tv shows on your Igoogle page,.

I really find that it has simplified some things in my offline and online life. Check out iGoogle. You can use Google's own iGoogle How-To guide or this one I found at eHow.com

Happy iGoogling!