The Obligatory iGoogle Mention
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.
Vitalist Release
The Vitalist folks said they’d have the new features out by the end of March, and they did just that. Barely! New and improved features were rolled out earlier today (this afternoon I think?).
This update includes many new features and enhancements. To read about the major changes, please see the past few articles on this blog: Contexts as Tags, Sub-Projects, Quick Add/Edit, and Priority. We think you will find that these features make Vitalist both more powerful and more adaptable to different productivity styles.
So far, I love all the new features. Well, Priority is interesting — not sure how that one will work out, but the others are great. I need to find time now to revisit a lot of my queued stuff to take advantage of Sub-Projects. That one may be the real heavy-hitter.
If you’re a current user, be sure to refresh your local browser cache or things may be a bit “goofy” on your next visit.
[Minor Addition] I forgot to mention how much I like the google personalized page Vitalist gadget. It’s “read only” so there’s no direct interaction, but it is a great way for me to get a glimpse of my dashboard when I fire up a browser.
Google Desktop 5 Beta Released
The Google Desktop blog announced today the latest beta release for Google Desktop. The main benefits appear to be aimed at better searching via a preview feature and more focus on security.
The most noticeable difference to me, however, is that the sidebar is far more aesthetically pleasing.
The sidebar has a completely new look and feel. It samples the color of your wallpaper and fades in the sampled color so that it fits seamlessly onto your desktop. Some of our gadgets have been redesigned so that they are easy to tell apart, easy to read, and easy on the eyes. More differentiated gadgets allow for faster scanning of information through the sidebar. And we’ve created a new dialog for adding gadgets so it’s easier and faster than ever to find the right gadgets for you.
I’m going to run it at home for a few days and try to gauge memory/resource usage. Right now as it is indexing memory usage is not pretty… but the side bar is and what can I say? I’m a sucker for pretty!
One thing that interests me (and has probably been around for a while) is this option labeled, “Access my gadget content and settings like To Do lists, Scratch Pad notes, favorite stocks, and more from any computer“. You know, that seems kind of useful and not to be confused with the “Search Across Computers” feature that gets security folks all quivery. The Help page for it is rather informative too.
This feature does just what it says, keeps your gadget stuff in sync. So if I add To Do stuff and notes here at home, I’ll see them at work and vice-versa. Does it replace a dedicated “GTD” type solution? Not really, the note and To Do modules are both very light weight. But as a quick place to jot something down, it could be useful.
Now to wait for a good GTD post on this thing and how to adapt it. I’ll bet you that someone will write one! Or already has?
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