Topic: iGoogle (Page 1 of 2)

Can't find any thread on that, recent or old, soo.. anybody tried iGoogle yet?

http://www.google.com/ig

I found it neat, can aggregate web apps and applets into a single google page with smart tabs, and the internationalisation, geo location, and search features of google.
Plus the themes are so clever, they will reflect the current weather/light conditions in the place where you google from.

yep, love iGoogle. I'm a google whore. I've become VERY dependent of google. All my mail goes through google, I use google maps all the time, picasa, google calendar, blogger. Just about everything google

Not too sure I like that menu they added to google though. I liked the bare bones of it, even though the menu really isn't that much.

Later,

C:\

Nono, not only standard google, IGoogle. It's for developers and common people in need to organize. It has very, very interesting possibilities for web development, chek it,
append the "/ig" to your old fashioned google.

iGoogle hum, that's just a rebranding of Google's personal page.

I haven't had a look at their API. I'm not really good at keeping up with the zillion of JS API and libraries popping every week or so.

Also I really wonder how this google stuff compares to Netvibes. At least from a user's perspective, Netvibes looks clean and feels much more pro. It also does a better job at localization, have slicker themes, and it doesn't reload the whole page every time you click on something.

As for the new iGoogle name ... hum come on. I know it has nothing to do with Apple's iWhatever, but it sounds like a jump on the bandwagon. They could have kept the Personal page name or use a new and original one.



(Edited by poi on 07-04-2007 09:55)

Netvibes is much better IMHO, plus you can create cross platform widgets with its own API.

Well, it sure sounds nice, I didn't know netvibes.

But what you said, Blaise, applies to iGoogle, and it has geo localisation exposed by the api,
plus the google search.

Granted, the name is not the best idea ever, but a single xml file allows exposing existing web app as google gadgets
for iGoogle - wether written in Flash/AS, javascript, you name it.

And I am an apple guy anyway.

I've been using Google a little too much I think recently too. Mail, maps, searches, in fact al the same things as you C:\ . It makes me feel a little uneasy so I'm always on the lookout for good alternatives.
I like the look of Netvibes at first glance thanks poi I've just signed up.

::tao:::: ::cell::

Apart from the vague feeling of shame I get when I realise Google is even on my mobile phone, I can't see the problem
I just love all of it and I can't help it

Heh, I know Google does look great on a mobile phone too kimson, I use that and the BBC mobile site for most of my mobile phone browsing. I just don't like to be too dependent on one company/service/person/M.O.
I think it is a Tao thing

quote:

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argo navis said:

Nono, not only standard google, IGoogle.

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Yes, I knew what you meant. I was just saying, not only do I use iGoogle, but just about everything Google puts out.
I'm with Kimson. I love it and I don't care who knows it.

Later,

C:\

iGoogle iTunes on my iPhone... marketing woes, these nerdy trends make me talk pirate.

The google gadgets (eg. widgets described using xml, xhtml, css and javascript or any other web technology for that matter)
are really sexy, though, and the smart tabs... you can "get lucky" when naming a new tab, and therefore collect relevant gadgets
automatically.

The geo localisation never ceases to amaze me : I had to travel 18'000 kms recently, and the theme I use for my iGoogle
stays perfectly in line with sunlight, weather, everything. Not to mention that sexy sunlight map gadget, etc.

Is there something like good free hosting available? I would love trying to put together a couple of google gadgets.

Seriously- I don't know what I would do if I lost my iGoogle page...

I just wish I could add my bank page in an xml and my cell phone. It's my home page- I reload it fanatically (even though it reloads itself automatically) and people look at me weird because I always know everything..

"Man, I've been looking forward to sealing the roof- I hope it doesn't rain."

"It's gonna rain every day until Saturday"

"Geez I wish I could pay someone to do it, but it's not like I'm Bill Gates."

"Did you know Bill Gates it no longer the world's richest person?"

I love my iGoogle page so much, I'ma go ahead and list here all of my feeds- try and stop me-

*Quotes of the Day
*Dictionary.com Word of the Day
*Gullible Info (Random facts that change on refresh- did you know that one in three newborn ducklings will be eaten by a larger animal in their first three weeks of life? That's so sad...)
*Gmail
*Jokes - jokes4all.net (Random jokes, changes on refresh)
*To-Do List
*Wikipedia (The search, but I almost never use it since firefox lets me "ManBearPig wikipedia" in the address bar)
*Marvel Wallpapers (new ones about every few days)
*Love Quote of the Day
*BBCRussian.com | Главная
*Slashdot
*Coding Horror (What?! You call yourself a developer and *Don't* read this blog??)
*the eXile - War Nerd (outstanding biweekly colum, read this article at least- The War Nerd- Who Won Iraq?.... OOoo and The War Nerd: The Doctrine of Asymmetrical War)
*Worse Than Failure (used to be The Daily WTF) (Please enter your 'Street Name' -- *snicker*
*Top Stories (Many news outlets - Google News feed)
*Stock Market (The google finance applet is second to NONE, try it. Damnit, GOOG is at $534.34, I told my friend to buy 4 shares when it dipped to ~$340 last year, but we didn't.)
*Google Calendar
*Weather (told ya)
*How to of the Day (This is one of the most dangerous things I have on here... Gotta go, gotta learn to Clear a Building With a Firearm)
*HowStuffWorks: Daily Stuff Feed
*Braingle - Daily Brain Teaser

/me accepts the "Bigger iGoogle Whore Than CPrompt" Trophy .... "I'd like to thank the Academy...."

Edit:
Forgot to add that clicking an RSS feed on a website will have Firefox ask you if you want to add it you iGoogle page.. Might be relevant

(Edited by Petskull on 07-04-2007 16:31)

I love Google.

iGoogle loves me.

I feel loved.

Hehe...

Seriously, I am a Google addict.

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

You people need a life Badly.

Oh, guess what, it's easy to share the tabs directly in a simple web link, apparently. Igoogle users should be able to reproduce my "today" tab configuration clicking this link :
Today iGoogle tab from argo navis

(Edited by argo navis on 07-04-2007 18:42)

I've been using iGoogle since before it had a marketable name. Definitely an addict here...

With rss in mind, I don't see a need for an iGoogle gadget about this forum, but some of the most prominent members around may want to make theyre
stuff available in a google gadget nutshell, btw. I am thinking about things like 3D Tomb II. Could make a fun game on an iGoogle page.

yeah, I remember when it was just "Google Homepage"

How'd you share your page?

I used to have the Art of the Day, too- but nothing good ever shows up and the resolution sucks..

There is a little button on each tab, click, it allows renaming and other options, including "share". You have to input an email adress. In that mail, copy the link you get, and paste as needed.
And now that you mention it, it's true that many art of the day pics do suck.. oh well.

Btw, free web hosting tips anyone? I feel an urge to put together some silly gadgets.

iGoogle, like nearly everything else from Google, is overrated in my opinion.

95% of the add-ons are useless. Disney character of the day?

Hmmmm... well, it's free. And it's an improvement over the default google.
And it has a tremendous potential since it is open to anyone who would like to whack some xml/xhtml/js/whatever together
and integrate it to the google domain.

And it has MacOSX... er, no, wrong iThingie.

quote:

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argo navis said:

And it has a tremendous potential since it is open to anyone who would like to whack some xml/xhtml/js/whatever together

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So is Netvibes, and basically any of the hundreds of similar wigets thingy be them embeded in a web page or run by a widget engine ( Dashboard, MS Gadgets, Opera widgets, ... )

I just don't see anything to be overwhelmed about.

Well, there does not seem to be a way, using netvibes, to tune the app to the location of the user. iGoogle allows that.
Plus the netvibe default theme is ugly grey, iGoogle has themes that adjust to where and when the user is.

AND it has the google search features, you can call those in your widgets.
And so on and so forth.

I'm not alone in it then?! This is so good to know! I converted a work mate yesterday as well, and plan to convert another one today! Viva Google! YaY!



*Gets a life*

Love the word "converted", very gospel-ish. Amen, let's show the google ways to all those pagans.

Alright! Check out my iGoogle goodness!

Yeah- I love the way the page theme matches with the time of the day... right now it's kinda orange-y and 'dawn-y'

I'm not saying it is 'better' than this Netvibes (that I've never seen), but that it's a vast improvement over the time before I discovered it. The idea itself is pretty old- I remember the 'newsreaders' with came out in- what, the late 90's?- that took forever to parse pages and pull your news. iGoogle is really just a common RSS reader, but one I can access from anywhere (probably like this Netvibes or just a better version than that old Yahoo.com/me). The concept of push mediums on all that info you care about is still something to be excited about for those of us that don't already have secretaries.

The true value of that lies not in the lame little "Pictures of Boogers from Around the World" widgets out there, but in you can add *any RSS feed you care about* on the net to your page. Then you can also write code to parse pages that *don't* have rss feeds. That said- I want a much better 'Art of the day'

And it is a holy war.... I put a jihad on anyone who still uses Yahoo or Altavista

Edit: "Viva la Google!" indeed...

Edit2: People- if you have an iGoogle page- Post your tabs!!

(Edited by Petskull on 07-05-2007 14:21)

Been using it since the day they started it to track a couple of blogs and some other daily stuff like news sites and my gmail.. so mostly just as a text-only feed reader. Makes for a great browser homepage and distraction from whatever it was you really wanted to do.

*snicker* ... I think "distraction from whatever it was you really wanted to do" is the perfect description...
... and NO THANKS, KUCKUS! I will *not* be adding a feed to The Onion- I waste way too much time already!

BTW folks, you can try adding the Asylum RSS Changes to your iGoogle (I just did)..

uh...Petskull..."Romantic Quote of the Day"

Later,

C:\

Luv google.... but i got to admit, it doesn't scratch netvibes... I almost wish google would swoop up and by netvibes instead of continuing igoogle...

What are the "pros" of netvibe against igoogle, jive? For me to pick the nicest one as start page.

Does this time-of-the-day theme only work in the US ? 'coz every time I had a look at iGoogle ( *gasp* that name is so bad ), regardless of the time or weather it always looked dull and white with edgy boxes topped with a blue-ish header. And it doesn't show things relevant to MY country/city. So long for the localization.

OTOH the I18N and I10N in Netvibes is quite good. It appears in my browser's language ( EN at work, FR on my personal laptop ) and shows feeds from Norwegian newspapers and the weather forecast in Oslo. And the themes are much nicer than Google's geocities-like ones.

In the vein of iGoogle's tab sharing, Netvibes has a whole 'ecosystem' of tabs, universes, thematic feeds/widgets/calendars/podcasts/ ... sorted by popularity and tags to pin down your search for THE tabs you need.

Nothing to convince me :

>> And it doesn't show things relevant to MY country/city. So long for the localization.

As I said, I am based in Europe but was recently in Latin America, right on the tropic, and it worked like a charm in both locations. It worked also for the moon quarters gadget, because the api exposes it's localization features. So try again, localization works these days.

The sheer interest in netvibes makes me want to "try", but the presentation you made does not convince me to adopt right away.

Instead, here is argo navis utilitites iGoogle tab , I don't need universes and an ecosystem of informations, I need a link I can copy paste to share my stuff.

Petskull, you have a huuuuge display.

I'm not trying to convert you to Netvibes or anything. Just trying to show you that Google is not the Alpha and the Omega on the net. Sure they do nice things, there's more and better out there.

As a matter of fact I don't use any of these hip personnal pages.

For [random] news, I have my feeds in my mail client, and check www.popurls.com ( one of the many mashup from Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, Youtube, Flickr, ... )

For weather forecast, I saved Olso's forecast in my speedDial, I see it everytime I press Ctrl+T. If I want the forecast for another place in the world , all I have to do is to enter "wf CITY, COUNTRY" in my address bar as I bookmarked a weather forecast site and gave it the nickname "wf".

quote:

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I don't need universes and an ecosystem of informations, I need a link I can copy paste to share my stuff.

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have you had a look at the page in my previous post ? All these things are one click/URL away. And there's a 'share this tab' link in the options of each tab.



(Edited by poi on 07-06-2007 11:51)

Nothing "hip" there, just the fact that google exposing the essentials of their api in a web widgets agregator, which among things allows me to turn
an existing web page in a widget, sounds like my way as a developer into a powerful web application base and an immense infrastructure. I can pluck my magic into their magic this way, sounds like a fun thing to do, simply.

And about "google not being the only one", thank God, but Google earth - revolutionary, Google video - as good as youtube,
Google maps rules, maps with eye view are revolutionary, Picasa is so good for a touch up freeware that it hurts, google search is top notch search,
cannot avoid a hat tip to the guys.

..Damn pagans

(Edited by argo navis on 07-06-2007 11:56)

[quickie] Haven't tried Google earth since the first releases. I just don't have a need for such a tool. But at the time I also tried NASA's World Wind, and it was damn good too. [/quickie]

On Linux or Mac- try the Stellarium or Celestia programs, they're outstanding for navigating the galaxy.

I think that the "theme by time of day" thing is something that you need to activate, try fishing in your preferences/options.

I'm with you on the hatred for the iGoogle name, though.

What's that about me having a huge display? Do you mean my iGoogle page or my monitor?

The NetVibes 'ecosystem' sound cool, but I don't even use the tabs on iGoogle. It's basically a replacement for the custom blah.html 'homepages' I used to make with my gotta-go-there links on it. If iGoogle is not for you, don't use it at all. For me iGoogle is just the newest method of something that I've been doing for many years, anyway...

I *do* love many of Google's other projects, but I recognize they are hardly the oldest or best. Take GoogleEarth for instance, I use it a lot to find out where places are, even though I have an army mapping program here. However, I can't "right-click>download current imagery" on GoogleEarth. On yet a third hand, the GoogleEarth UI is inspired...

... and I think that's their biggest fortay, they do UI well and hold the linux ethic of 'one app for one thing'

.... and Google Video seems nowhere close to Youtube, even though they own it...

That said- you gotta admire their spirit, though...


... and what's'cher beef with my romantic quote of the day?! I'm usually a lover, not a fighter, but for you CPrompt, I'm willing to make an exception!

>> Do you mean my iGoogle page or my monitor?

Both, you need a monster monitor to be able to have such an iGoogle page. *glazes at petskull frightguly* guess that's why they call you a "mad sci". Part of your plan to conquer the world?

argo navis, meet my monitor

22"; 1680x1050 of pixely goodness... and it even adjusts the colors automatically based on the ambient light..

.... and it was $200 when I got it... Still toying with the idea of bracketing it to my wall

Nice. Well, mines are sexy beasts too, but I got fed up of reading fonts at a default size on WXGA displays, so I browse the web with pages zoomed to 150%
(since the font size feat is completely screwed up anyway, due to forced font sizes using CSS)

quote:

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the font size feat is completely screwed up anyway, due forced font sizes using CSS

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You mean browsers' default font size being ignored when a font-size is set in the CSS ?



(Edited by poi on 07-08-2007 20:51)