iGoogle – Your Blogging Command Center
Posted by Mert Erkal on Apr 10, 2008 in Blog, Making Money Online, Personal Development | 19 comments
Do you have the same feeling? Time goes so fast nowadays. I don’t know whether the Earth’s rotation speed has changed. All I know is 24 hours is not enough for me as a full time employee and a part time blogger. Therefore I always think about increasing my productivity and efficiency in order to hit my daily blogging targets. I know success in blogging comes when you take little steps everyday consistently.
I discovered iGoogle last year when I was playing with my Gmail account. From the first moment I had the feeling that iGoogle could be my blogging command center, a center where I could reach everywhere related to my blogging topic.
It took me about an hour to make the necessary adjustments. Since last December, the first thing I do every morning is to open my iGoogle. This way I can easily keep track of my favorite blogger’s recent posts, recent news about my blogging niche, and read my Gmail/Yahoo mails from a single web-page. As you can imagine this is a huge time-saver for a blogger.
What you see on the top is the most recent version of my iGoogle. Google recently started to offer hundreds of good quality themes for your iGoogle. iGoogle is composed Gadgets. Gadgets are very similar to widgets. They are simply information boxes.
Well, I assume that you haven’t heard or fully utilized your iGoogle yet. Let’s start with the benefits, and then continue with how to setup your iGoogle to look similar to mine.
Benefits of iGoogle for Bloggers
- Saving incredible amount of time
- Easy track of Google News related to your blogging niche
- More structured and organised blogging
- Taking notes with Google Notebook and having a content archive
- Many more…
How To Create your Own Blogging Command Center?
- You need to have a Google Account to login to iGoogle. If you haven’t got already, you may sign up by clicking here create a Google Account now
- Click on http://www.google.com/ig
- Click on “Sign In” on the upper right corner to logon, enter your userid and password
- First time users will probably see a blank page, or a page with a few items
- Click on “Select Theme” to select a theme
- When you finish selecting your theme, click on “Add Stuff” to start inserting gadgets to your iGoogle.
- The easiest way to is to search for gadgets. For example type “Google reader” in the “Search For Gadgets” form on the right corner. You will see all the related gadgets. All you have to do is to click on “Add Now”. That’s all. You are done!
- Now add these gadgets to make the most out of your iGoogle:
- Google Reader
- Enhanced Bookmarks
- Google News (find the news related to your keyword when setting up!)
- Google Calendar
- Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail etc
- Google Notebook
- The good thing about a gadget is you can easily carry it anywhere you want on your iGoogle home. You can create your own layout. I prefer to have my bookmarks on the top, because the first thing I do in the morning is to logon to these websites.
iGoogle will make your life a lot easier. In case you need further assistance please do not hesitate to ask me. I am looking forward to receive your comments regarding iGoogle.
Yes, times really flies and it goes faster the older you get…. I also like igoogle but haven’t used it nearly enough, but I will now!
Good poignant post thanks.
Great post. Unfortunately I still can’t figure out how to set up my keyword in google news. It didn’t ask for one when I added it, and the options don’t include it. How did you do this?
Thanks Mert – I use iGoogle but wasn’t using half the features you have mentioned. David
I didnt use igoogle, but i will try it soon!
Thanks. But the text in the “Link to Google Services” is so tiny? Any idea how I can make it bigger without affecting everything else?
Everything go interesting with blogging, thanks to Mert to posting about igoogle
me too, i will try it soon!!
Hi there, iGoogle is perfect the tool to save time and master Internet.
I’m using it for all kind of Internet needs: related to my job, my friends update, my hobbies…
And thanks for the reminding me that I can easily use it for blogging
Help! I made igoogle my home page but it loads too slowly and I can’t change it back! every time I type http://www.google.com into the address bar, so I can reset my home page, it takes me to igoogle! Any ideas?
I just recently found igoogle and I’m in love with it! I didn’t know I could add my Google Reader to it… going over there to do that right now.
Something I just added was a tab with ‘Webmaster Tools’. It keeps stats on my blog (i.e. crawl errors, meta tag errors, top searches, internal and external links, etc.)
Michaelann — “I made igoogle my home page but it loads too slowly and I can’t change it” — in the top right, next to your sign-in name click ‘Classic Home’ and you’ll have the plain old google back.
Hey Mert
I did not know Google even had a service like this available and I’m in need of all the time saver hacks available. Thanks for sharing!
Have been using iGoogle for a couple of months now, it is great. I can recommend it!
@revivalink: on the upper right corner of the Google news gadget there is an arrow (on the left of (-) sign). Click on it, and a menu will pop up. Click on Edit settings, and then type the keyword in the about field. You will now get the most recent news related to this keyword. Hope serves. In case you need further support please drop here a comment or contact me directly at mgardenya@gmail.com
@michaelann: Hi Michael, i agree with Angie, you better use the classic theme which will load faster. Your other question, link to google services, i really don’t see such a link on my google/ig. Please tell me where exactly you see that?
There are so many tools out there and so many different ways to follow your stats and keep track of rss feeds. I’ve been using Google for rss for a long time, sometimes I subscribe to my Google homepage and sometimes to the newsreader.
I’ll be checking out iGoogle now to see if it can save me some time and help me organize better.
For a similar but less technical homepage experience you should try out ClutterMe.com. RSS reader coming soon.
Thanks for your submission to the eighth edition of the Blog Carnival: Blogging. Your post has been accepted and its live: http://thatsblog.com/?p=75
-ThatsBlog.com
Can you briefly explain to me what would be the benefit of using IGoogle to keep up with your favorite bloggers as opposed to using say a desktop RSS application?
I love Google and use it for many thing however I prefer to use feed demon over Google reader so I’m just wondering if there is a significant advantage of using IGoogle as opposed to a different reader. Thanks in advance for you answer.