Personalize Your Google Homepage
One day, I noticed a small link in the upper right hand corner of the Google home page. It said, "Personalized Home." Clicking it, I was taken to a dashboard-type page which featured little modules, including a calendar, news, the weather, the date and time, and top stories.
I was invited to personalize this home page. In order to do that, you have to have a Google account, which I already did as I used gmail, Google's free email service.
To personalize, you click checkboxes of content from a sampling, including your mail account, movies, bookmarks, a news source, stock market quotes, and more.
My personalized page ended up looking something like this:
If you want more organized information, you can add tabs. So you might have a tab for news, games, entertainment, and tools.
Tools include things like world clocks, sticky notes (handy for daily reminders... don't forget to pick up milk!), text messages (you can text message a cell phone user free from the Google interface as long as you know your buddy's cell phone carrier),and to do lists.
Under communication, you have options like your IM accounts, MySpace alerts, Google Docs and Spreadsheets (in which you can collaborate on projects with friends and associates), and keep an eye on your webcam(s)
New to the Google communication tool lineup is Google Notebook, an online app that allows you to keep a running notebook of information gleaned from the web. You can create as many notebooks as you want, and you can add sections to each notebook to further organize your information. The notebook, once invoked, will follow you around on your travels through the web, and storing info is as easy as a couple of clicks. You can switch notebooks on the fly, and store just about any type of data you want.
You can also choose from categories like Fun & Games, Finance, Sports, Lifestyle, and Technology. And don't forget to check out "New Stuff," which is all the newest, and sometimes hard to categories "stuff" you can add to your desktop.
Many of these little applets are designed and executed by someone other than the Google staff, so you add them at your own risk, so to speak. While they won't harm your computer, some of them work better than others. The nice part is, it's so easy to change them out you may find yourself doing it every day, anyway, just for fun.
To rearrange your selected items, just drag and drop them into a new location.
The latest twist is the "themes" choices:
"Themes" gives you a choice of looks (images and color schemes) to enhance your personal homepage. Applying City Scape gave me this result:
The upside of Google Personalized Home: it's really handy; it follows you everywhere (so you can actually use the calendaring application to keep track of your day to day events, birthdays, etc.); you have way more choices than you can possibly use in terms of what information and gadgetry you'd like on your home page; it can be used collaboratively by families, organizations, even some non-proprietary work groups.
The downside of Google Personalize home: it has way more choices than you can possibly use for information and gadgetry; you're giving away lots of data (in the aggregate sense, at least) to Google. If you have a major issue with privacy, an online application that has access to your daily activity, your gadget preferences, your demographic data, your movie choices, even your buying habits, may make you a little uneasy.
One day, I noticed a small link in the upper right hand corner of the Google home page. It said, "Personalized Home." Clicking it, I was taken to a dashboard-type page which featured little modules, including a calendar, news, the weather, the date and time, and top stories.
I was invited to personalize this home page. In order to do that, you have to have a Google account, which I already did as I used gmail, Google's free email service.
To personalize, you click checkboxes of content from a sampling, including your mail account, movies, bookmarks, a news source, stock market quotes, and more.
My personalized page ended up looking something like this:
If you want more organized information, you can add tabs. So you might have a tab for news, games, entertainment, and tools.
Tools include things like world clocks, sticky notes (handy for daily reminders... don't forget to pick up milk!), text messages (you can text message a cell phone user free from the Google interface as long as you know your buddy's cell phone carrier),and to do lists.
Under communication, you have options like your IM accounts, MySpace alerts, Google Docs and Spreadsheets (in which you can collaborate on projects with friends and associates), and keep an eye on your webcam(s)
New to the Google communication tool lineup is Google Notebook, an online app that allows you to keep a running notebook of information gleaned from the web. You can create as many notebooks as you want, and you can add sections to each notebook to further organize your information. The notebook, once invoked, will follow you around on your travels through the web, and storing info is as easy as a couple of clicks. You can switch notebooks on the fly, and store just about any type of data you want.
You can also choose from categories like Fun & Games, Finance, Sports, Lifestyle, and Technology. And don't forget to check out "New Stuff," which is all the newest, and sometimes hard to categories "stuff" you can add to your desktop.
Many of these little applets are designed and executed by someone other than the Google staff, so you add them at your own risk, so to speak. While they won't harm your computer, some of them work better than others. The nice part is, it's so easy to change them out you may find yourself doing it every day, anyway, just for fun.
To rearrange your selected items, just drag and drop them into a new location.
The latest twist is the "themes" choices:
"Themes" gives you a choice of looks (images and color schemes) to enhance your personal homepage. Applying City Scape gave me this result:
The upside of Google Personalized Home: it's really handy; it follows you everywhere (so you can actually use the calendaring application to keep track of your day to day events, birthdays, etc.); you have way more choices than you can possibly use in terms of what information and gadgetry you'd like on your home page; it can be used collaboratively by families, organizations, even some non-proprietary work groups.
The downside of Google Personalize home: it has way more choices than you can possibly use for information and gadgetry; you're giving away lots of data (in the aggregate sense, at least) to Google. If you have a major issue with privacy, an online application that has access to your daily activity, your gadget preferences, your demographic data, your movie choices, even your buying habits, may make you a little uneasy.
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