Slashdot Mirror
Google's New Personalized Homepage
jgaynor writes "Citing user requests to coalesce its disparate services, Google today released its new personalized homepage service. It allows you to arrange your Gmail, Google News, Google Maps driving directions, weather and a few select news services (including Slashdot) on a single page. Future plans include Universal RSS support. Clearly a shot at existing services like My Yahoo."
I was waiting for this moment for a lot of time. Google have so many features, but it was missing the page that put them all together. Have a directory, stock market feeds, dedicate search for Linux, email, free blog and lots more ... Oh yeah and don`t forget about google adsense and adwords
Think like a hacker, act like a hacker, but never become a hacker !
Seriously, I guess Google just got a new lease on life, considering it's supposed to die in 5 years, according to Microsoft.
The start of the cluttered Yahoo-like interface. the fact that Google is clean and white is the reason most people flocked to it at first. At least the customization means that I can make it what I want.
Would be even nicer if i can integrate my yahoo mail too! ;-)
the portal service is an indicator of an immediate collapse.
More coverage at Google Blogoscoped.
I submitted this story about 30 mins ago but it looks like someone beat me to it.
Awesome. You don't need to sign up for another account if use Gmail. Good stuff.
between google and yahoo. Google's is clean and compact while yahoo's is all over the place. People want simplicity and when so much information is displayed at once like on lots of portals, it's difficult to find anything.
I still can't actually read messages, but I can see if I have something that requires immediate attention instead of waiting until I get home.
Woot for google!!! All we need now is gbrowser and gOS :D
One of like nine options total is to see slashdot's news items. Strange? Not really. Suspicious? Yeah, kinda. I mean, why would Slashdot be picked among all the tech news sites out there....?
My little site.
very good, especially the drag and drop rearrangement ability. but I doubt I'll be using it. my gmail is just for the very rare untrusted sign up, safari and firefox support google search from the search bar, and safari has far better RSS feed management than this.
Thank God it is optional
Has anyone figured out how to combine My Google with Google Suggest?
I was trying to get all the columns lined up nicely to fit on my screen so I don't have to scroll. After fussing for a few minutes, I tried dragging the Slashdot pane around. Lo and behold! it fucking works beautifully! The content automatically updates based on where you want the thing to be! It's fucking brilliant! (for a web page).
IE keeps saying are you sure you want to continue, if i click yes the message just keeps popping up.
Things like maps, movies and weather are all specific to the USA.
Even has slashdot as one of the things you can put on it.
At least they didn't put this on the main front page. Stuff like this tends to be cluttered, and I dislike clutter.
I really like this look and feel.
However, I would personally like a standard default available so that I don't have a different looking homepage just after clearing internet cache/cookies etc.
liqbase
Until they support external RSS, I will continue to use MyYahoo (which is quite clean once Adblock and Greasmonkey are done with it).
Well personally I'm happy that Google keeps trying harder and harder to become the all-encompasing mega corp that we all need to place our faith in... An I for one welcome... eh.
This is the opinion of The Oi Group's IT guy, not of The Oi Group. It's probably complete nonesense anyway.
It won't list any movies for my (in Canada). It says the information is temporarilly unavailable. A US address (90210) works fine though. Hopefully they will have this fixed in a few days, unlike the few weeks it took to fix Western Canada on Google Maps.
Aw Google... they just keep adding good stuff...
I love how you can customize it, it can even pull stories from slashdot (although it lags a bit, for instance this story hasn't shown up yet).
If you don't like how they're arranged, just click and drag the boxes around, really truely awesome use of DHTML.
My one gripe is with the gmail integration, when you open a message it looks a bit kludgy, and from there if you try and the inbox link at the top you get a "grrr! you have a popup blocker" message. Note that I'm using Firefox here, and from how FF friendly they are you think this wouldn't be an issue, oh well, it still rocks.
I know a lot of users who switched to Google for its simplicity.
Remember Excite, Hotbot, Lycos, Infoseek, and Altavista all used to look like Yahoo.
Then Google started to kick ass and everyone moved away from that format to a minimalistic approach.
No google is trying to become Yahoo? I'm going dizzy just thinking about it...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
That drag and drop is pretty gosh darn cool...
Pretty nice. The clean drag 'n drop and edit stuff is good. One thing I would have liked to have seen is a 'generic' RSS box instead of one specifically for /.
Maybe they'll get around to that.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
I just browsed through these pages, and saw the registration link for gmail. WTF??
It's too bad Suggest isn't incorporated into it. http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
The interface is nice and clean, but it's still not My Yahoo!
- No outside RSS feeds, so can't add anything beyond pre-selected sources
- No user-selected color coding, so semantically the boxes are barely distinguishable
- Small things, like inability to select a subset of Google news, not just top stories
All fixable, and it's obviously a beta, but it's surprisingly a really raw beta.
I like how you can have slashdot's RSS feed on this. I think I've just found a new homepage.
I don't know, I just tried it there and it's nice, but I don't like how it looks.
Ok, it is the initial version, but compared to other stuff from Google like Gmail, it doesn't seem very polished. Be nice if you could minimize each of the portlets also.
I wish them well after all Google's moto is "Do no Evil!"
This is just what I was waiting for! /me loves Google!
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
Slashdot is world famous. A roving random distributed denial of service attack before which web, network and systems administrators alike quake and have terrible nightmares about.
How many other tech news sites can claim that?
Deleted
You guys keep talking about how Yahoo is clutered. Well, Yahoo does have a site similar to google's minimalistic main page. It's at:
http://search.yahoo.com/
Now, stop all the Yahoo! bashing.
Google is so over; familiarity has breed ho-hum-ness.
Wake me up when the next beeg thing arrives, Lucy.
Don't you know that Steve Ballmer said you're going under in 5 years? Get out of the IT business with your stock shares intact, while you still can....
Interesting how the top article in the slashdot is the "sith" article and not this one...
Is there a delay or could they have filtered their own article...
Like the idea on the whole.
But, if you click on an email message it takes you directly to that message without any of the gmail files, links, etc. Not very usefull.
So when do I get my gcalendar and greminder?
I would say Google should come up with something original. This is just lame.
You guys... seriously... it's Google... they released a product... that's non-beta... seriously, you guys, come quick!!!
First sentence:
Remember, "It's 'its', not 'it's'."Or, just read Bob the Angry Flower's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots (his words, not mine!). I mean, sheeh, twice in the first sentence? You idiot. (My words, not his!)
Yes, its part of an insidious plot to spread a rumor that you're completely paranoid- a stark, raving, tinfoil hat-wearing, paranoid. Those bastards!
F**king a man, its finally happening! we all know where this is headed right? most people want to see an OS eventually, so how about if it was online completely 24/7 turning our boxes into nothing but data we want to keep! bill better be paying attention because in five years it looks like he is going to hearing "ill make u an offer u can't refuse"
this is one of the most amazing web interface's i've ever seen. google has done some remarkable work with gmail and maps.google.com and this is even better.
it would be nice if someone could make a toolkit for php or whatever to make web interfaces that are as rich as regular app interfaces. Qt for the web!!
So I just signed up; How long does it take a new article to show up with this personalized Google thing? Because it's still showing the "sith" article as newest...
coalesce it's disparate services -->
coalesce its disparate services
released it's new personalized homepage service -->
released its new personalized homepage service
to how much personalization they can do. It's just a matter of time. People are not going to return to the days of the mainframe. One of the main reasons why pcs have done so well is that you have your own hard drive. Google's model is just as bad, if not much much worse than .NET My Services, Hailstorm, and Total Information Awareness.
Basically, Google is not empowering people. They are creating a worldwide service where they are the single "Doc" format that only they can view and open. It's worse than MS in a lot of ways.
Totally anonymous searching is one thing, but the more that they try to do this, the more resistance they will hit. This whole "Do no evil" thing is a bunch of double-speakin' jive, I tell ya.
If Google REALLY wanted to make a splash, they would create an installable web platform where people could run their own instances of each service. It would kind of be like as an analogy as if you could obtain "MapPoint" but "GoogleMaps" and then create your own service with it. I know you can mash up Google maps and such, but why don't they release the source to it? They can still run their own instance of it and provide services around it, but create an open platform where other people can have the same OPPORTUNITY that they are creating for themselves. As it is, they're just locking people in way worse than Microsoft ever did.
Google is a fad and a delusion. I've come to this realisation only recently. Google isn't anything more than a search engine with alot of boring, unoriginal add-ons. I'm of the belief there really aren't any spectacularly smart people working at Google and there is no cohesive strategy to "take over the world" or "control all the information on the net". Judging by this steady stream of uninspired new features (Google desktop, accelerator, gmail, gmaps or whatever it's called), they will never be smart or innovative enough to bypass Microsoft Windows to create some sort of ubiquitous online operating platform - which I wish someone would do.
All this stuff is a distraction to divert users/stockholders attention from the fact there is no innovation and no strategy.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
If you go to http://www.google.co.uk/ig/customize then try to set and save your settings, you'll find that it's pretty broken...
It seems to send the page into a loop...in IE you will just receive continuous warnings that you are being redirected to an nonsecure page.
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
I wish that Google homepage would let me include arbitrary HTML. Especially an so I could include any content from any webserver in the page, including my own. Slashdot doesn't even allow that. But it really is the most "P2P" type customization, where the content is provided by the user, rather than the provider of the page.
--
make install -not war
Hopefully for the rest of you your googlepage doesn't fall into the wrong hands. If people were to find out what you had been searching for, how would they feel? How would you feel?
Heck, I felt a bit violated and it was only /me/ that saw them.
We're not talking dog years when we talk Microsoft, we're talking dog years in a time warp.
Its != it's
Thank you.
n/t
I just made a cool google page, go and see it www.google.com/ig :)
What would you do without a monitor? Sit and look stupid behind a keyboard and a mouse
get google, add customization, gathering content and unrelated stuff mixing it all and putting it together on your private homepage.
what do you get ?
you get Excite circa 1999, you get yahoo wanting to be a 'portal' and losing focus from their premiere source of income.
it didn't work then, and it won't work now.
are we doomed to repeat stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes forever ?
When is the Google Instant Messenger coming out?
splunge (n) -- A good idea.. but it could be lousy... and I'm not being indecisive!
I changed from Yahoo! over to Google because of the looks. It faired way better on my slow moving 56k connection at the time.
I wish there would be a "Back to My Google" link when viewing an email messsage from the personalized page. Also, you can't delete the emails? Google isn't going anywhere. They just need to put an overlay on the satellite views on Google Maps, and I will always use it.
Googleweiss, Googleweiss,
Every morning you greet me,
Small and white,
clean and bright,
Works in Gecko and IE.
Don't be complex
Just search and index,
Don't be evil forever,
Googleweiss, Googleweiss,
Bless my homepage forever.
By the time you've rhymed one line, I've already busted ten; You rap in exponential time and I'm big-O of log(n).
Well, I clicked on the link in the article, and was able to setup a page and customize it.
I then visited Google Canada's home page, and added /ig to it and tried to do the same, and ran into a redirection loop (seems google.ca tried to redirect to google.com, which tries to redirect to google.ca, ad infinitum...
Now neither /ig pages work at all. I had to clear all the cookies to get back to one page that works.
Hey Google guys! I know that some of you are reading this. Please fix it.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
because you are a loser with no friends.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Send me a mail to matrixcam@gmail.com and i'll invite you.
What would you do without a monitor? Sit and look stupid behind a keyboard and a mouse
Get back under your bridge, troll.
really? d'oh.
just sent you an invite to your email addy. enjoy!
I like the interface as it stands now, very simple and easy to use. I'd like more content, but that can be added easily. My Yahoo jazzed up their interface and ruined some aspects but added no new content, which now bug the hell out of me.
Now all they need are TV listings, along with the ability to customize the listing, and customize the theaters I see, and I'm set.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I use My Yahoo as my home page. It gives me the news, weather, and other miscellaneous stuff. I check it a few dozen times a day, whenever I want to connect with what's going on.
I use Google to search.
At this point, a "Personalized Google" home page wouldn't be a reaplcement for Google, and in fact they shouldn't take up half the front page with a search bar. It would be a replacement for My Yahoo. When I want to search, I'll search. When I want to know what's going on, I'll hit my personal page.
What I see of Perssonalized Google Home Page isn't taking me away from My Yahoo yet, especially since I use neither Yahoo mail nor GMail. (Not that I have anything against gmail; I just own my own domain and use that instead.) I like My Yahoo's collection of news better, which is funny because Google News has all the ones I could possibly want.
But if they keep at it, combine the maturity of My Yahoo with Google's fancy Javascript and good instincts for non-evil features, and it may not be long before I abandon My Yahoo entirely.
Available options for personalizing Google:
...
...
[]Gmail
[]BBC
[]Weather
[]Slashdot
They're slashdotting slashdot?
Or *dons tinfoil hat* are they tracking the pages that I visit often?
EPIC 2014, the Evolving Personalized Information Construct.
...it'll be gone in 5 years. Oh well, I'm sure MSN will have something to replace it.
Do you have ESP?
http://isnoop.net/gmail/
Over 1 million invites available and counting
I thought slashdot was Google's personalised homepage.
So, I load the slashdot applet in the customized google. The top post is "Google's New Personalized Homepage".
What's the ig for? iGoogle? Please tell me no.
Would be to have a "dismiss" link for the Word of the day and Quote of the day entries so they can be made to go away but automatically reappear again tomorrow.
I quite like them, but after I've absorbed them I don't need to have them cluttering up the page for the rest of the day.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Just pick a nickname and sign it
That they included Slashdot in the news services. Right up there with the New York Times and Wired News. All stuff that I read, and pretty cool that Google reads them too!
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
Works great on Firefox for OS X 10.3 :)
Google personalized homepage displaying this new
Clicking on the inbox link of the new home page will display your emailID in URL string.
... the url will bel %40gmail.com
if your emailID is j0hn.paul@gmail.com
http://gmail.google.com/gmail?account_id=j0hn.pau
Look it is not https:/// it is http:/// only.
P.S: to take care of the real john paul it has been written as j0hn
Google said that they are a few months off but ads WILL be a part of this...Oh well I guess eventually flash ads will be everywhere.
I am positively loving this. I've previously used my Yahoo account because it has everything I need when I'm traveling, or when I'm using the computers at school. I can also set it up with a two-column format that is friendly for my Original Recipe iBook. Yes I know you can also do that in Yahoo but it's just not as elegant.
I could use a link to Google Maps, My Google Groups and some sort of bookmark storage scheme, but this will do for now.
Oh yeah, it loads really, really quickly too.
Call me a Google fangirl, but this rocks.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
As I scanned through the critical discussion of this new compilation of services by Google, I realized how calculated their marketing efforts are. It now seems quite probable that there are any number of Google employees currently tracking this thread on Slashdot. A free analysis by one of the most vocal net cultures of geeks (and n00bs)!
Where's the Beta?
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
So Google keeps coming out with all of these great services and things (maps, gmail, picasa, groups, blogger) and they are all free. What I want to know is how they are free? There have got to be a ton server hits world wide, how does Google afford all of these things? I know they make enough money off of the advertising revenue program, but wow, this is getting rediculous.
The other thing is that they leave no room for any competition anywhere. Not only is everything google offers free, but its full featured and robust as can be. Even if its not full featured, somehow you can just rely on Google to make it so in the near future. Google is almost too good, I'm starting to resent them for how good they are.
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
Google's shot at personal homepage looks decent. However, a host of additional facilities could be provided as well, such as homepage color and templates. Template information could be stored in users' Gmail accounts. Also, inclusion of Slashdot does seem strange :-)
Since we are the subject of customization and google, an awesome addition would be a GCalender system. It's hooked to your account, and it allows you to store tasks etc. It would be a wonderful thing to the customization page. Everytime you open your homepage you got your daily and/weekly duties right there anywhere. Another thing that has no relvance is when is google going to over free webhosting past blogger/blogspot.com
$sig$
I listened to a few hours of the stockholder briefing. Some guy in the audience actually had the gaul to ask if he could use his Yahoo Mail with this new service. Bryn deferred to the PR chick who announced this - SHE SAID YES. As in 'yes we're in talks with other vendors to get 'hooks' to display their mail services'.
.
Bottom line? Google's got balls. They repeatedly stressed that they dont track user statistics by services crossover or hits per person, but by user utility. The fact that they would allow and even per-emptively OFFER access to offsite mail shows that they're not just pulling our legs about that mantra . .
that is just slicker than "snot on a door knob"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'd like to open my google-homepage and see if anyone has replied to my comments on slashdot/some random forum/etc; I'd also like to use a small chunk of my gmail storage to synchronize my bookmarks to, then display a bookmarks browser on my google-homepage. So why can't i hack these things together? Half the reason I'm not switching back to ie when it finally gets tabbed browsing (the feature that originally attracted me to firefox), is that i'd miss all my old plugins. if google could pull of some kind of system like i've just described, i'm sure a lot of their use base will be sticking with them for a while.
damn, i got a blank page?!
oh.. customized too much
Or you can just tell them yourself:
t .py
http://www.google.com/support/fusionph/bin/reques
- shazow
thanks everyone. I had a bunch of friends promise to give me one, but they all kept forgetting and it wasn't something I wanted to push. But I am happy to say that I now have a gmail account and am going to have a lot of fun trying it out.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
That looks like Google's idea of a Minime portal.
Simpy
Does anyone still visit the front page? I probably visit it once a week (following the inevitable /. story), the rest of the time i just use the query box in firefox.. or gg: in konq etc.
Brain(s): 0.0% user, 1.3% system, 0.1% nice, 98.6% idle
Try adding The Dow Chemical Company stock in your customized homepage. It will not let you. :P
Come on google coders.
Hope you can customize your news. Right now it defaults to the news in the USA by default. I would like to be able to pick modules in France, Canada and USA in different languages and different news sections.
I'm difficult. I want business news in french from Canada. I want tech news from the main USA news site in english. And I want french news overall.
the portal has arrived.
Last seen at altavista,
excite,yahoo,msn,and others before
power users left for something more
specialized - Google.
Actually now I do not have to visit Slashdot.
I do the vast majority of my searches from the little search box next to Firefox's address box. Those that aren't done from there are done from a results page. How many people still go to the Google front page to initiate a search?
Except for the lack of the forthcoming RSS innards, this is a way cool site. Setting up the weather and movie listings sections can be difficult though (for travel use) since they both require zip codes, of course Google can most likely help you look those up. The drag 'n drop interface is nice.
Sorry folks, but Google has fallen waaaaay short here. This is nothing to get excited about yet. I seriously doubt that the Yahoo! bashers here on /. have used MyYahoo! more than 20 minutes in the last two years. It offers a hell of a lot more, and it is totally customizable.
And I am by no means anti-Google. Google Maps is a killer app. Gmail is a super-slick email interface. But the Google portal so far is really quaint. If you thinking I'm kidding, check out Yahoo! on the Wayback Machine, circa 1998.
I tried this from http://www.google.ca/ which is the default Canadian Google page. In the process of setting it up, the server somehow ended up sending me into a redirect loop which caused Firefox to balk and never actually got my customizations set up. The loop was between google.ca and google.com. Bizarre...
I love the new service but . . . if the purpose is to consolidate all of Google's features into one page then they are not there yet. Central to this becoming a dominant web portal would be the integration of Blogger, Picasa, Google Groups, better Maps integration, and finally for commercial people the addition of Adwords and Adsense accounts on the front page.
However, this being only beta I cannot complain too much (even though I do complain about GMail being down, despite it still being in beta). Google hasn't conquered my web portal business . . . yet.
Interested in Sports with a brain? --> http://dispatchesofj.blogspot.com/
With all their services, they didn't have an encapsulated portal to get people to log in completely so that activity could be tracked more efficiently. Now they do, finally.
They needed a way to "package" their applications into one "OS"-like method. The only way Google can do that right now is a portal/personalized homepage. No surprise, really.
.msb
You know what would be a KILLER idea? If you could list what TV shows or TYPES of TV shows your interested in, and then it lists when they're showing in the next week with a countdown of how long before the show begins (kinda like when bidding is going to end E-Bay style) and whether it's a new episode or re-run. If you want to browse what's coming up in the next 3 hours, it would list shows according to the CURRENT time and based on what you've been interested in before or based on your ratings of a show (Tivo thumbs up/down style).
It would be MUCH better than the cluttered and space wasting TV Guide-style TV listing that Yahoo currently uses. The Yahoo one is also frustrating in that it's not smart about the time listing it shows. It can be 10 am and it will still show you the 8-11 pm prime time block. Even on weekends.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
FLOSS...oh wait.
Google classic loads in under a second, the customized page takes a second or longer. Believe or not thats too long for me. Besides I already have firefox extensions with the dow jones and weather on my status bar and gmail notifier in my tray. But, hey it's nice to know that it's only an /ig away if I ever get the urge to see all that stuff at once.
...the nice user interface with proper tabs for Firefox clients.
Seriously, it's so much nicer than having the page reload when you click another tab. Why doesn't the FF start page use this?
when I can have my comics listed (and more than 3, please) as well as specific sports scores. Oh yeah, and TV and movie listings for my area. Short of RSS news feeds, what else can it do?
I think, going by the trend, that google is consolidating its hold on the internet by getting itself integrated into the lives of all people using computers irrespective of the OS that is being used. Now the question whether Google is another Microsoft in the making can only be answered a few years from now when most of the competition gets swalowed by google or gets waylayed - if it ever comes to that. For now it is a good thing for the users who get all these wonderful technologies for free.
--
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
It looks interesting, I'll have to try it. Now... if only they would keep all of my search history and not delete it after a few weeks. It hasn't gotten above 850 yet. That limits the usefulness. I really like it, I just wish it would keep the history forever.
If I change the URL to use https instead of http, it redirects me to the google.no searchpage.
If I use the Inbox link to go to my gmail page, then it does not use https! It does so for my account settings, so gmail shouldn't be much of a problem.
Anyone else have this problem?
Seeing as how with Firefox I can add all their search features to the query window. I just click and choose what I'm looking for.
No sig for you!!
Google has homepage link to Slashdot stories about Google.
839*929
i don't know if i'm being paranoid... but it has errors when you go to it via IE (XP, SP2, latest patches) - so many that it prevents you from even customizing it.
i was able to customize it once. and then everytime i go there, it just wont let me do anymore customizations...
Checked it out in T-Bird.
Go to FF. Hit Reload. Message gone.
Bloody fast.
R.
I'm in the uk and consequently Google auto redirects me to Google UK . Thats fine but when I go to customise my google page it gets stuck in an infinite loop of redirecting between Google and Google UK. However, if I go to google.com/ig I don't get redirect and I can customise my homepage :)
It's a really clever approach to the yahoo-like cluttered all-in-one environment. Basically you get to the cluttered environment by stuffing pieces yourself. Google avoids the yahoo trap by giving power to the user.
cut this signatures madness. stop reading them now!
Next, Google brings your kids to school and sleeps with your wife.
wasn't it Google's clean interface that killed the whole portal idea?
Try typing a "zip code" for "personalised" movies/weather/etc if you live outside the US!
Google is the best thing since free beer that dosen't leave a hangover being served by at the playboy mansion.
Really, its that good. They take every good idea that has been crappily executed (mapquest/maps.google.com, hotmail/gmail.com, froogle.com/shopping.com and now msn/gmail home page.)
Problems: With Google News, all I can get are USA headlines. I've customized the dedicated Google News page to show UK headlines, but it doesn't show up on the /ig/ page.
The weather applet only seems to work for USA Zip code areas. Where's my UK weather?
Why is the weather-service US-only? wunderground.com who provides the data has weatherinfo for most of the world.
This is not an automated signature. I type this in to the bottom of every message.
You'd think that with the number of PHD's they employ somebody would have a clue.
To think, a menagerie of new words at my finger tips! I presage I am going to like the Word of the Day feature.
Now if they would only make Maps and News usable for people living outside the US (or UK for the Maps). I live in the Netherlands, and their is no Google Maps or News section available for us yet. So a personalized homepage allowing me to add Maps and News is not very useful for me at the moment.
I read post after post that it's good but lacks X or Y feature. Well i agree i'd prefere if it had features that support my country but it's still early in development. lets give it a few weeks and see. Still it's a move to the right direction.
BTW, I used to use akkregator as a "web start" where i could see all in once the news feeds i wanted but i couldnt use akkregator in each and every pc i use. now if/when google implements the ability to present any rss feed i want then i want have to use akkregator anymore... neat
X~
I was getting worried about the future of Google.. They hadn't released a new service for DAYS !
Somebody with the balls to be more than just another anti-MS drone, please mod parent up! I am really amazed at this thread - sometimes /. is way ahead of the curve, but here, with all these people going, "Wow, that's just what I always wanted!", it's like... "Welcome to the year 2003!"
Oh yeah, I forgot... M$ sucks and google really is going to keep "innovating" beyond the next 5 years!
Link
I love that extension.
google.com/ig? wats this "ig" ?
THAT is the COOLEST PAGE EVER!
.torrents of that show ever since I saw it on Simpson goes to Japan! XP
I've been looking for
The nice thing about web forms is that you can put them on any page and they still work. I've had my own "customized" Google homepage for years: http://home.six27.com. It's obviously not quite as elegant as Google's, but I can incorporate all the things I want or use regularly, and if I find something else I want, I can just add it on. Plus, it's completely portable from computer to computer - no need to sign in!
Kind of a glimmer of the possability a lot of us have been waiting for.
But it would really be nice if they let things be two or 3 columns wide. The gmail preview is pretty useless at one column wide.
This is also the first time I ever used Adblock on Google. The big Google logo was wasting to much space on an info page....
But seriously, the reason Google prevailed in the early days is that it didn't try and plaster the user with news, articles etc when the user simply wanted to search!
Google philosophy: If it ain't broke, add new features that 10% of the Slashdot community will use and no-one else
www.google.co.uk/ig breaks when you try and sign in ...
:S
odd, complains about cookies.
-- Manik Surtani
Now all I need is someone to update the Google toolbar with this /ig site so when I push the button it will take me to my homepage instead of the standard Google site.
/ig homepage? Hate to say it but I am way to lazy to type in /ig everytime I want to do a quick search on anything. Having the option to have this replace the standard google.com page on your pc for every search would be a nice idea.
Or how about a cookie that is set on your pc so when you type in Google.com it will take you right to your
Finally, I've been emailing and emailing Google about this....and finally they have! I wish they'd team up with StartSter.... This is great though! Finally it is here! Success! The New Yahoo killer!
Shuai Google/Digg/Slashdot/Gmail addict Plus....Mozilla Firefox, etc.....
I love this new customize google since i use a lot of the features separately, but it takes a long time for /. stories to be updated. As of this posting (8:40 am eastern) the latest /. headline still hasn't shown up (BSA Reacts to 'New' BitTorrent Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri May 20, 07:54 AM) that's almost an hour lag. since most /.ers refresh slash every 5 minutes, that's no good.
Set your language preference to US English. It didnt show my gmail when it was in UK English.
Mod parent up!
I just made one.
So far, so good. They haven't caught to Yahoo's home page yet, but it looks they are moving fast...and thinking/being innovative.
Things I missed:
- ability to have a lead photo
- ability to change the colors of the page
- ability to rearrange the layout of the page
- calendar/reminder feature?
I also don't trust gmail. I don't like the idea of my email being scanned, even if it is only by software for the purpose of targeted spam.
To be fair, yahoo attaches web beacons to their web emails to track my browsing habits and every few months I have to make sure my preference to stay opted out of that is still set.
Google has some better services. Their maps beat the crap out of yahoo.
However, I have been using the same yahoo address for years with the intent of never having to change my email address.
For now, I will keep my yahoo email account and my yahoo page. I will just put links for Googles services on it.
For now
Being able to drag and move the sections around is great. Nice and easy way to customize the sections.
Bark less. Wag more.
Google .. <gasp> <gasp> new page <gasp> <gasp> they <gasp> did something <gasp> <pees pants> <passes out from excitement>
Yeah, I tried it, but I think there's a bug with the weather service. It keeps coming up with these really weird high numbers followed by an "F". I know the number is wrong, because I just came in from outside, and it's only about 16C.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I've been using another portal website for quite some time now, that I like better than Yahoo! et al:
MyWay.com
It's not perfect... you can't add RSS feeds; it doesn't work well on small screens, but in terms of features and customization, it's still way ahead of everything else I've seen. It's my TV guide, my movie listings, my financial snapshot, and it keeps me aware of when my favorite shows are next coming on, at a glance... very cool feature.
Oh, and like Google's portal, no banner ads, pop ups, blinking garbage, etc...
but new. and this is my first post. mercy. So we have hyperlinks in a page. We click and we go to a section in the site. Problem: where we want to conveniently hop to is at the mercy of the webmaster. Instead, I see a term on a page. The term is not necessarily hyperlinked. I right click, click on 'hyperlink', window opens on site and shows all pages in the site where the term exists. Off I go my merry way. Gotto think through the work flow process. But I think our google can do something like this by breakfast.