iGoogle, I get distracted

I had used iGoogle before - I assume the nice little button saying either 'try' and/or 'new' caught me in the right mood. Never having logged in again since my initial play I felt I should give a bit of time to explore it properly.

So I created a general homepage adding Twitter, Facebook, email, news headlines as well as retaining some of the standard gadgets like Google Maps.

I was also a little bit too excited on discovering that the theme I'd selected (of penguins) could be complimented by little animated penguins on the main page. I felt this was a good thing even though I can't really explain why.

I think this may be the problem for me of using iGoogle, it seems very high tech and convenient to be able to check social media and email in one space, but, for similar reasons as why I don't Tweet on my phone, I don't actually like that level of permanent distraction.

I also felt the gadgets themselves didn't work that well - I haven't been able to remove the 'dark shadow' (which sounds lovely and Gothic) off the Facebook gadget. Clicking through from the gadget sends you to the mobile interface, which isn't as clear as the regular Facebook display, so I would then just log into regular Facebook to see whatever it was that caught my attention, which rather defeats the point. The Twitter gadget worked a lot better although, as Library Wanderer points out, the delay in updates still makes the main Twitter site the best way to follow what's happening.

Although I didn't like using iGoogle at home, I felt having a launch page at work might be more useful. I really liked the ability to create multiple landing pages so set up a 'Library' tab. To this I added the COPAC search box, as suggested by 23 things and which I wouldn't have though of searching for myself, a currency converter, a few RSS feeds and Google Translate. This seems to make more sense than the glowing lava lamp of distraction that is my main page, as having these things on one page should save time.


Again though I had problems with the gadget on iGoogle not working as well as the main page - looking something up on the map gadget, for example, you couldn't click through to Google Streetview. I found this quite annoying and again sent me back to Google maps proper, as I love being able to see where I'm supposed to be going as well as having the map.

I think perhaps I'd be more inclined to carry on using iGoogle at work if some of the gadgets were improved, on the whole though, moving penguins on my homepage are a stage too far for me!