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August 12, 2007
Personal Continuity - Creating a Virtual Desktop with iGoogle
"Portal" web pages have been around for years. Every copy of Netscape used to start by default at Netscape's home page, making it one of the most valuable pieces of web real estate in the late 1990s. Internet Explorer,. when downloaded from Microsoft, points you immediately to MSN, and Firefox starts you off with a Google search screen.
Now that we have a Gmail account, we can use that to create an iGoogle desktop. iGoogle is a customized portal page for Gmail users. Your iGoogle desktop starts with some useful boxes on screen. These boxes, or "gadgets," as Google refers to them, are independent applications. The initial desktop starts with news, weather, date/time, gadgets, along with one for YouTube, the video-hosting site now owned by Google.
When you sign into iGoogle with your Gmail username and password, you can begin to customize your desktop. I've re-arranged things a bit, removing the Google News gadget, adding gadgets for Wikipedia search, to-do list, and quote-of-the-day.
I'm a huge soccer fan, and the Internet is the best way to keep up with my favorite leagues and teams. Sport information is not something I need immediately when I log on, so I added a "tab" to my iGoogle desktop for sport-related gadgets.
Re-positioning the gadgets on the page is simple: Grab the gadget's title bar and move it where you want it. The active gadget will displace whatever is there. Play around with this and get a combination of gadgets that works for you.
Now you have a virtual desktop, complete with personal e-mail. You should be able to bring up iGoogle from behind most corporate firewalls and security. With the right combination of gadgets, iGoogle can be an effective corporate desktop tool as well as your personal continuity mainstay.
Posted by Edward J. Branley at August 12, 2007 9:34 PM
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