Solo Technology

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Google Personalized Homepage is now officially iGoogle — with Gadgets that anyone can create.

I about died earlier today when I fired up my browser and saw my Google start page back to the old default. All my content was gone! I almost wept earnest man-tears… Fortunately, a couple hours later everything was back just the way I like it. Thankfully.

Go here to make your own gadgets. I find them rather underwhelming — they’re not the reason I’m using “iGoogle.” Maybe they’ll grow on me, but I’m leaning towards doubting it.

[...] you can make your own, because starting today, without having any programming or web design experience at all, anyone can create Google Gadgets for iGoogle and send them to friends. Simple gadget templates include a photo gadget, a “GoogleGram” greeting card-style gadget, a YouTube video channel gadget, and a free-form gadget

Notice how all the desktop companies are going after “social” aspects? There’s a trend that’s going to probably leave me behind. I like a nice customizable start page. More than just like actually — I rely on ‘em! But I really have no desire to share mine or look at other people’s. Call me anti-social, but my page is for me. It makes me happy — and you probably have next to no interest in it.

Oh hey, speaking of iGoogle… remember that “Searching Without a Query” article from the Google blog a couple weeks ago? The recommendations tab thing was announced and is, at times, pretty interesting. I had mentioned it in passing once before but hadn’t really tried it yet:

If you prefer to get your information at a glance, we’ve added a recommendations tab that you can add to your personalized homepage. Simply click on “Add A Tab” on your Google Personalized Homepage, and type in “Recommendations” for the tab name (keep the “I’m feeling lucky” checkbox checked). We’ll give you a page of recommendations that are updated daily.

After having it for almost two weeks, it is definitely getting better and more interesting over time. Does it replace StumbleUpon? Nope, not really, but it’s still worth a look to see what’s popping up.

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