Improved Look Of iGoogle Default Page

November 5th, 2007

The iGoogle default page, which users see without signing into their personalised Google homepage has been spruced up to reflect the wider range of subjects and media that can be syndicated. The screenshot below shows the new default page layout:

Improved iGoogle Defualt Page

Previously, the iGoogle page included plain text RSS feeds and a few widgets. New features on the improved page include:

YouTube Videos - recently featured videos from YouTube that can be played within the widget itself, plus a search box and a quick jump drop down menu allowing users to view top favourites, top rated, most viewed today, most discussed today and recently added videos.
Google Map Search - shows a local map based on the user IP address and a search bar. Results of the local map search are shown on a map within the widget, without loading the full maps.google.co.uk page.
Google News - top 4 headlines from World, UK, Business, Sci/Tech and Sports news currently featured on the Google News homepage. The widget includes a 6th tab that can be customised to pull any number of stories from other categories or based on any keywords entered.
Wikipedia - unfortunately this is the only widget that opens a new page and does not show the Wikipedia search results or even a preview within the widget itself.
To do list - simple organisation feature that allows entry of tasks to be done. Users can assign low, med or high priority to each task and just delete the task from the list when it is completed.

Tags: feeds, google, homepage, igoogle, personalised, rss, seo