Archive for: igoogle
I have been wondering for a long time now “what makes a good startup page”? How does an internet user determine what will be their start page and what just doesn’t do it for them? In this article I’m going to run through some of the basic types of startup pages out there today and see what characteristics are good for me and what aren’t.
The first type of startup pages are the ‘add your own modules‘ type of startup pages. About a year and a half ago these types of pages were being developed left right and center, but lately they seem be going into liquidation very fast.
Netvibes - Netvibes is a module based startup page that has been growing from strength to strength recently. They are based in France but have been able to build up traffic worldwide. All modules can be customised in whatever style the user sees fit. Netvibes is the leader in this type of startup page and I every time I head back to their site they seem to have made improvements.
Pageflakes - Pageflakes is a startup page very similar to Netvibes except they don’t have the adoption levels of Netvibes. Pageflakes was acquired by Live Universe about either months ago because they were struggling and running out of liquid funds.
iGoogle - iGoogle is basically the Google version of Netvibes but with the Google search option at the top of the page. iGoogle has very limited themes, but it is simple to integrate with everything Google of course.
These types of startup pages are good for the user because they allow you to place whatever modules you want onto the page, but there is such a thing as information overload. Personally, Im not so sure about these types of sites as startup pages, because they are simply just ugly to look at because everything is a base size module and they just take too long to setup!
The next type of startup pages are the ‘one page aggregators‘. This type of startup page brings together some of the most popular rss feeds from around the internet and puts them all onto one page. Basically it is a rss reader for the lazy.
Popurls - Popurls is the original startup aggregator which brings together some of the best sites in the tech industry. Sites include Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, Metafilter and more. The site has a very simple layout showing the top 10 from each site. Additionally, they have added videos from Youtube and photos from Flickr.
Alltop - Alltop is a new site from Guy Kawasaki (evangelist at Apple), in which he takes the idea of popurls and spreads it to pretty much every time of market. This is basically an rss reader for every type of industry for the most basic of internet users.
Original Signal – Original Signal used to be one of the leaders in this space, but recently they have been losing market share fast. Original Signal covers mainly tech and business topics, but they have seemed to update the service in many years.
These startup pages are great if you just want to have a quick look at one site in the morning and see what is happening around the world on a specific topic. However, they don’t allow users to choose the rss feeds you want to read, this can be done easily by using an rss reader.
Finally the other type of startup page is the simple search engine and 99% of the time its Google. Personally Google is my startup page but mainly because I find it easier to click the home button at the top and then type in my search, instead of typing it into the top of Firefox. Google as a page is so simplistic and it provide immense functionality behind that basic exterior.
Overall, what makes a good startup page? This is probably a different answer for every single person. However, I do think that startup pages need to be simple, have a good search option and allow the user to customise if they wish. As always simplicity and functionality are the keys.
Less than a week after iGoogle had a facelift for the worse, die-hard users have started to revolt. Like myself, many other users have complained about the shift of tabs from the top to the left, the lack of support for what were fully functioning apps and the total lack in ability to go back to the old version. A quick twitter search for iGoogle and hate shows that this is still a very hot topic and most are not a fan of the changes.
Going one step further, there has been an online petition started asking Google to roll back changes, or at the very least, an option to roll back changes. Seems that when software or application vendors make changes without full market research, users will stand on their soap boxes and let everyone know how much they dislike them.
My start page of choice is iGoogle, which was reviewed here earlier in the year. I’ve been using iGoogle since it was released and didn’t even have a real name, and loved it. My love changed about 10 minutes ago when Google did an update to the page, changing the pleasing top navigation for tabbed pages to left sidebar navigation with a + / – button to see the site feeds in text format, but not recent articles. Take a look:
That’s how my iGoogle page looks currently. Sadly, the tabbed names are now cut-off, the last one should read Photography / Art, it doesn’t. Furthermore, this new sidebar eats up 128 pixels of space. Reading article titles when the + is expanded is a joke and it’s now wasted space. I’m angry, real angry. This sucks. Google, give me my horizontal tab navigation back!
The only attractive thing to the new update is the rounded edges, which is so 2006 already.
Update: It seems the real purpose for this update is to integrate Google Reader with iGoogle and, possibly, become your bookmarks portion instead of storing them in your browser. Seems if you click the blog name from the left side, the content from the RSS feed loads, as seen here:
Here’s the other really crappy part, Google has added in content to my tabs that I didn’t have there before! I never had movies or The New York Times in my iGoogle, now I have to go through and edit their crap out, Google, I hope you are listening because I’m loosing my trust.
From a user perspective, it’s not terrible I suppose, but I still would much rather read an article on the original website than a stand alone reader which is why I never used Google Reader. From a blogger’s perspective, this is horrible. If you choose to publish your whole RSS feed, you have now have potentially lost unique visitors to your site, they can read it all right here in iGoogle. Additionally, .htaccess pages used to help prevent people from hotlinking graphics means that your article that has photos in it won’t display properly, as is the case now with my blog.
As a blogger, I need to seriously consider if I want to continue to publish full articles via my RSS feed or just snippets and have the reader come to my site to read it all. What’s more fair? What serves the reader the best? As a reader, what’s better for you?
From what I can recall, the Google start page was launched into beta more than two years ago and it had no official name. I instantly started to use it as that is about the time I really started to fall in love with RSS feeds and wanted / needed a better way to keep track of them. Since launching, many of the bugs have been worked out and a slew of new improvements for the service, which is, at the heart, an RSS reader, yet deliver so much more.
The official name for the web service is iGoogle, although no one really seems to know why and to access it you must point your browser to google.com/ig. Using this service for more than two years, I feel I can give it a fair review because I use it every single day.
Layout: By default, iGoogle is three columns wide and seems to hold an unlimited number of feeds vertically. There are now more than a hundred different themes for the page to skin them however you’d like, some will change dynamically based on your zip code, for sunrise / sunset as well as rain / snow / sun. Across the top are tabs; these are separate screens to help keep you organized. For example, I use one for Home tab; these are feeds and gadgets I use most. I also keep separate feeds based on interests, having one specific to Art & Photography, another for Celebrity Gossip, and so on. These tabs, help me keep everything separated yet still really easy to find and use.
Appearance: As stated above, there are themes available to skin the homepage to fit your liking. I use different skins for each of my tabs; this helps me quickly identify which tab I’m on just by visual. Recently, they’ve added a whole slew of artist’s themes by some very famous people and opened up the API to allow others to create and submit themes.
Use: You need a Google account to use iGoogle, not a big deal if you use Gmail already. Once logged in, you can add any site’s RSS feed by clicking the RSS logo on that page or, if using Firefox, the RSS icon in the address bar. You’ll be prompted as to how you want to use the feed, choose iGoogle Home Page and it will be added. To arrange the feeds in the order you want, simply drag them around. To move them into a new tab, simply drag that feed to the new tab. This is, by far, one of the simplest layouts I’ve used. There are also options to expand and collapse feeds and designate how many posts from any given feed you want displayed, default is three. The one feature I really don’t use is the ability to expand any particular feed and read it on the homepage. I don’t do this because the columns are a bit too narrow if there are photos in the blog post, they often get cut of. My preference has always been to read a blog post on that particular blog anyway.
More: There is an Add Stuff button on the iGoogle page that will show you the most used RSS feeds and Gadgets. Gadgets are simply things like dynamic weather integrated in, Quote of the Day, stock tickers, Gmail integration, etc. Personally, the only gadget I’ve found useful is the weather, but I have several friends that use Netflix and eBay widgets religiously.
I’ve tried a few dedicated RSS readers and a few other start pages but I keep coming back to iGoogle for the ease of use, clean design and easy customization. My current start page has 5 tabs and more than 100 total fees. Within minutes I can scan all of them and checkout articles that I might be interested in reading.
Try: www.google.com/ig
