Thing28: Customized Home Pages

I liked this. I chose iGoogle, even though the reviews weren't that great. They were correct - you should be able to "add by URL" and that was nonexistent; also dragging from one tab to another didn't work. A search confirmed that others had this problem. Still, this will be handy form my home PCs and eventually on a mobile device (still shopping).

I used the article " Riding the Waves of Today’s Online Web Tools " as a guide. Most helpful. As I read it, I made an outline of what I wanted on my page and a rough layout. I used Widgetbox to find gadgets. On the Home tab (3 col. format), I have Enhanced bookmarks, Google Reader, Google Map Search, and Lunchbox (a restaurant finder). On a second tab called "More things" I have a CNN feed, Weather, Traffic, and dr. Gadgets Calculator. It was very easy to set up. However, if it keeps suggesting stuff I might also like, I may switch to another format.

I looked at creating a gadget for our library, but didn't like the extent of coding knowledge required.