We've met a lot of users who take their to-do list applications very seriously. It seems every task management system -- from old-fashioned pen and paper to OmniFocus -- has its own fanatical following. Listaculous is a web-based to-do list that keeps it simple, but still offers tabbed organization, and it could be the right to-do list for you.
There's not much to Listaculous, which is what might make it useful for a lot of people. It's just tabs and to-do items, all in one window. Opening Listaculous in a pop-out window is appealing; the tabs make for a small footprint, even with multiple lists. For those who like their action items embedded in a home page, Listaculous also comes as an iGoogle widget.
A few months ago Google launched an iGoogle themes gallery, making it a little easier to find themes for your personalized Google homepage. But just a little. While you can search for themes in the directory, there's no way to browse by category. So if you want to see celebrity, nature, or artsy themes, you have to either search through the whole pile or keep entering search terms until you find what you're looking for.
InThemes is a new unofficial iGoogle themes gallery that puts the official gallery to shame. Themes are divided up into categories and subcategories. And since each theme submitted to inThemes is reviewed before it's added to the gallery, there's a better chance of finding themes that aren't... how to put this delicately... hideous.
Last week Google launched a new directory for iGoogle themes. At the same time, the company launched an API for developers who wanted to create their own custom skins for the Google personal homepage service. But if you're not the sort of person who enjoys spending your spare time sifting through XML code, creating your own theme might seem a bit difficult.
Luckily someone has been kind enough to create an online application that lets you design iGoogle themes with no coding knowledge. All you have to do is visit igThemer and choose from a long list of colors, Google logos, and other graphics.
Or if you're looking for real-time feedback on your designs, another developer has come up with an iGoogle theme editor bookmarklet. All you have to do is visit iGoogle and copy the code from his site into your URL bar. Up will pop a theme editing dialog asking you to choose your colors, images, and graphics. Unlike igThemer, this application doesn't give you pop-up color selection tools, so you'll need to enter color codes by hand.
Google has allowed users to customize their personalized iGoogle start pages by adding themes for a while now. But aside from a handful of themes that show up in a box on your iGoogle page there hasn't been a great way to find new themes.
Now Google has added a themes directory to its gadgets directory. There still aren't a ton of themes to choose from (Just 18 as of this morning), but we expect to see the number grow. Most of the themes are currently Google designs, although there are a few third party themes. Hopefully now that there's a central place to showcase themes we'll see more third party development.
As we previously covered, the custom iGoogle skins widget allows the user to, well, use custom skins with iGoogle. -- It says what it is, folks!
It boasts a few new features that make it well worth the upgrade. For one, it's now possible to set conditions for certain skins. For example, it's possible to have, say, a rain themed skin appear when the weather widget shows it's raining. It even supports different skins for each tab of the browser! The widget also has a new mini mode that frees up space on the page.
Google has been offering two different types of gadgets (or what the rest of the world calls widgets) for a while now. You could install tiny applications on your desktop using Google Desktop. Or you could install them in a personalized Google Startpage using iGoogle. Now Google has gone and removed the line dividing these two gadget types: You can now install Google Desktop gadgets on your iGoogle page.
In other words, you can add applications that will let you interact with your computer directly from an iGoogle page. For example, you can play music, or check your PC's power consumption or WiFi signal. You can find the gadgets using the iGoogle Content Directory.
Google is also releasing a new beta of Google Desktop 5.5 with improved Outlook search features and the ability to open multiple instances of the same gadget on your desktop.
It's hard to escape online ads, and now Google has rolled out another ad format in order to take control of another piece of the ad pie and make it more dynamic and interesting. Ads in Google's Gadgets.
The AdWords Gadget program has been built to quite simply turn widgets into ads. These websites within websites can draw in dynamic content including data feeds, maps, images, audio, Flash, HTML and JavaScript content to serve an audience in over 100 countries with no hosting charges attached. The ads can then be embedded and users of your brand can share them amongst friends. Built on the iGoogle platform, companies like AOL and IBM are already using them to drive traffic.
With widgets and gadgets being so easy to embed into social networks and websites, there is surely no stopping Google from deploying these into such high profile locations as MySpace and Facebook.
Google has rolled out a new beta feature for its iGoogle personalized homepage. PubSub (short for Publisher/Subscriber) is basically a new framework that allows iGoogle gadgets to communicate with one another.
For example, if you've got a search box in one gadget, you can type a query that will affect the results in other gadget. So if you've got a news gadget, a maps gadget, and a calendar gadget all connected to that search bar, you could pull up relevant news, locations, and appointments.
This won't work with all iGoogle gadgets, just those that have been built to take advantage of PubSub. And they'll have to be installed on the same page. You can't have a gadget on one page or iGoogle tab interact with a gadget on another page or tab.
Google has been experimenting with totally different homepages in both Taiwan and in Hong Kong than what other countries have experienced.
During a conference call the end of last week, Sergey Brin announced that Google has been testing another version of its homepage that adds a row of icons across the top of the search bar, and animated icons below it. The search giant has been taking advantage of the higher broadband speeds in these markets and pushing the types of content they can serve visitors.
Google has also been experimenting with the iGoogle homepages in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Adding both tabbed content and animated icons for Google services. Will these experiments make their way to the U.S. and other countries in some form? Most likely not. Local culture and higher connection speeds allow for these types of additions in these regions.
What do you think; would you like to see these additions rolled out on Google in other countries?
Google introduced a set of themes for your personalized homepage (or iGoogle) a few months back. But if you're looking for a few more customization options, check out this new Google gadget.
Once you install the gadget on your homepage, you can choose from a variety of custom skins, create your own, or submit themes for other users to install.
Some of the skins change the graphic behind the search bar at the top of your page and not much else, while others give your entire page a new look. Future version of the gadget will include a built-in skin editor.
If you thought slapping a lowercase "i" on a product and calling it a day was a thing of the distant past; Think again. Google's Personalized Homepage is now iGoogle. At least now we know what the "ig" stands for in the Personalized Homepage iGoogle URL.
Seven new gadgets are on tap to back up the baby green "i", along with a taste of some social features and the promise of a new Gadget "wizard" to come. Included in the seven new gadgets are Daily Me (cough, Twitter, cough), Simple List (a to-do list Gadget) and five others of descending usefulness; Bringing Google Personalized Homepage iGoogle within a country mile of the feature set that's been available at Netvibes for ages. Forgive us if we don't throw a congratulation party in Google's honor.
The Gadget wizard, which is yet to be released, is the only promising piece of iGoogle's new digs. Too bad it's not available for a test drive. When launched, the gadget wizard will allow users to build Gadgets of their own, although apparently without any advanced coding or ability to do much that we'd classify as interesting.
We've met a lot of users who take their to-do list applications very seriously. It seems every task management system -- from old-fashioned pen and paper to OmniFocus -- has its own fanatical following. Listaculous is a web-based to-do list that keeps it simple, but still offers tabbed organization, and it could be the right to-do list for you.
Last week Google launched a new directory for iGoogle themes. At the same time, the company launched an API for developers who wanted to create their own custom skins for the Google personal homepage service. But if you're not the sort of person who enjoys spending your spare time sifting through XML code, creating your own theme might seem a bit difficult.
As we previously covered, the custom iGoogle skins widget allows the user to, well, use custom skins with iGoogle. -- It says what it is, folks!
It's hard to escape online ads, and now Google has rolled out another ad format in order to take control of another piece of the ad pie and make it more dynamic and interesting. Ads in Google's Gadgets.
Google has rolled out a new beta feature for its iGoogle personalized homepage. PubSub (short for Publisher/Subscriber) is basically a new framework that allows iGoogle gadgets to communicate with one another.
Google has been experimenting with totally different homepages in both Taiwan and in Hong Kong than what other countries have experienced.
