21 November 2008

iGoogle for Ideas & Reference

One tool that I use everyday has proven invaluable to my writing. It also has value in other areas, but for the purpose of this post, I will address iGoogle for writers. If you are not aware of iGoogle, it would behoove you to change that.

iGoogle allows you to personalize your information searches. You can gather, track and monitor all areas of interest, and all in one
place, on one page. You add widgets or modules to a certain tab, which you can also create. I have a writing tab where I place all modules concerning writing. This saves a great deal of time if you surf the net searching for certain information needed to complete your writing project. If there are certain sites you visit frequently, check to see if they have a widget you can place on your iGoogle page.

You also have the power to rearrange, by clicking and dragging, all the widgets under any given tab, and also drop it to another tab, and by clicking a plus or minus, you may choose whether you want their content opened on the page, or closed as a title bar.


My only complaint is that they made a recent change in the location of the tabs--to vertically on the left, which doesn't work for me, so i use the Canada version of iGoogle, which works like the old one. I have heard from different sources that iGoogle is working on making all those formatting choices available so the user can have the layout however desired.

I currently have 9 different tabs in my iGoogle page, and I use them all everyday.


One word of warning: once you see how iGoogle will streamline your writing day, you run the risk of developing an addiction to it.


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