iGoogle, do you?

iGoogle has become a part of my daily life, and I can blame one of my coworkers. No, it’s not just searching Google I’m talking about! With a free Google account (you already have one if you use Gmail) you can personalize your online experience every time you go to Google:

• Select a visual theme to decorate your page(s) and drag and drop individual sections to rearrange the page(s) however, and as often as, you’d like

• Choose from thousands of Google Gadgets to add news, pictures, games, weather, words of the day, and more to your page(s)

In my iGoogle I have quite a few tabs, each a page for a different category such as science news, general news (the one shown here), movies, plants, birds, France, etc. Each time I create and name a tab I populate it with a different banner and gadgets, all chosen from the many that are available (it’s easy–just click on “add stuff” and search for whatever interests you). On this image you can almost make out that your University Library has a gadget too! The gadgets I have here are (across the top:) CNN.com-Europe, CNN.com-World, CNN.com-US; (below the CNN gadgets row:) UWW Library’s gadget, world newspapers, and Google news; and (under world newspapers:) JS online from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. If any of the news story headlines interests me, I can click on it to read it. If I want articles or books for more information I can search the Library’s catalog and article databases from the Library’s gadget. It’s that handy.

I am finding this to be a great way to keep up with news, and on other pages I have gadgets that help keep my blood pressure down (like the Georgia O’Keefe art print of the day), educate me (the science news gadgets are great for this!), or just entertain me (like the Eiffel Tower Mini Cam). Oh, and I can listen to the German word of the day.

Try it out!