Google renames personalized home page, adds gadgets

Users without programming experience can create gadgets on the new iGoogle

By Heather Havenstein

May 1, 2007 12:00 PM ET

Comments

Computerworld - Google has renamed its personalized home page and added several new "gadgets," or mini applications, to the newly minted iGoogle.

The company announced yesterday that it will rename its personalized home page to iGoogle, which will now include Google Gadgets. Users with no programming experience or Web design experience can create gadgets for iGoogle and send them to their family and friends.

The new gadget templates include a photo gadget, a "GoogleGram" greeting card-style gadget, a YouTube video channel gadget and a Free Form gadget that can link text and images. A "Daily Me" gadget is similar to the increasingly popular Twitter, and will allow users to include daily quotes, brief descriptions of what they are doing at a certain time and other ideas that can be made available to all friends and family, Google said.

Users can choose a gadget template, enter information about themselves, add their friends' e-mail addresses and then use the gadget, said Sophia Brueckner, an iGoogle software engineer. Users can make changes to the gadgets, and some gadgets can update automatically so a user's friends can see new information daily, she added.

Google also announced that it is expanding the personalized page themes that it unveiled in March for users in the U.S. Those themes will now be available for all iGoogle editions. Users can choose from six different desktop themes, including a beach, a city or winter hills.

Google announced the rebranding of iGoogle and the new gadgets at the same time its executives detailed how the company plans to defend itself against Viacom Inc.'s $1 billion lawsuit against Google subsidiary YouTube Inc. Google rejected claims that it enables copyright infringement on YouTube and noted that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act will be core to its defense.

Comment Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Jump to comments

Google

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER

Do You Know the 7 Steps to Successful Data Migration?

Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.

WHITE PAPER

Total Cost of Ownership of Server Computing Vs. PCs

Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.

WHITE PAPER

IDC White Paper: Linux in a Global Recession

Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.