iGoogle Replacements
You may have been following our advice to use Google’s iGoogle service to be your Homepage when you first open up your browser.
As of today, sadly, Google have closed down this service and sent it to what is know as the Google Graveyard.
iGoogle was great because it gave you immediate access to a lot of information about things that interested you straight-away. Weather, News, Email – it all loaded into one useful screen.
The only trouble is there doesn’t seem to be a replacement. And even the few services that remain are fairly low key and unoptimistic (www.readwrite.com).
This is all very un-Googleish and I strongly suspect Google will launch a replace at some point in the future and rumours of things like Google Now strengthen that belief.
In the meantime, the best I can do if offer ways to continue to get your information up and running in the quickest possible way.
One gadget that was incredibly useful was Google Shortcuts – as it allowed you to access all Google’s products and services at the click of a link. For chrome I have found Carlos Jeurissen excellent Shortcuts for Google, you can install this on Chrome and a button will pop up with all Google’s services listed, you can also customise the list to suit your needs.
For Firefox a similar Extension is available on http://www.googleshortcuts.org/ and in much the same way you can install and customise the Google Services that most affect you.
Typical services I recommend, because I’m keeping an eye on your website include:
- Analytics
- Webmaster Tools
- Adwords
- Places
- Maps
- Google Plus
- Drive
- Calendar
- Picasa Web Albums and
- YouTube