Google To Retire iGoogle

[6Foot2]

Link: Official Google Blog

 

...On November 1, 2013, iGoogle will be retired. We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today's web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips. With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time, so we’ll be winding it down. Users will have 16 months to adjust or export their data...

[ZeroHour]

I love iGoogle, cant believe its going, I use it all day

[edutech4schools]

I love it. You can make a landing page in sites that does the same thing but it's not as easy to set up.

[sonofsanta]

aaaww motherlovers first time that I've really resented Google their over-eager retirement of products. Surely it ain't that difficult for them to maintain it? I like my pretty-mountain-pictures-and-random-slashdot-articles page.

[vikpaw]

I love iGoogle, cant believe its going, I use it all day

 

I Google all day long too

[jamesfed]

I stoped using iGoogle and changed my homepage to Bing after the most recent refresh (the one that moved the search box to the far left).

 

Used to have all my news feeds ect on the page however after a while I figured out that between RSS and general web browsing I was seeing all the things on my iGoogle page anyways

[rich_tech]

I like the fact you could personalise the page, we had to ban it on site here though for pupils, as people were using it to load up games into their page.

[Gatt]

I used to use iGoogle, but stopped as it was taking an age to load sometimes...

Also found it annoying that a background image removed the Google Doodle til you clicked the spinning thingiemajig

[sted]

i stopped using it when it constantly refused to load certain "modules" (dilbert for one just wouldnt load 9/10 times) and you missed any google doodles

[sparkeh]

I love iGoogle! How will I know how foxy is getting on in his teahouse?

[AMLinington]

i stopped using it when it constantly refused to load certain "modules" (dilbert for one just wouldnt load 9/10 times) and you missed any google doodles

 

It's a bit sad but that was the same reason I stopped using iGoogle - I liked the doodles.

[6Foot2]

For those who like iGoogle:

 

Link: Save iGoogle

 

iGoogle will be turned off on November 1, 2013! It's worth saving! We're here to help prove it, provide information and resources about iGoogle developments and discuss iGoogle alternatives. Thanks for stopping by. If you are so inclined, contact us to help.

[6Foot2]

iGoogle alternative not covered in the link in the post above:

 

Link: igHome - iGoogle Alternative

 

igHome [beta] supports widgets and allows for connection to your Google [surviving] services.

 

http://i.snag.gy/dpwfQ.jpg

[jamesfed]

Another case of people putting BETA on things because it looks cool

[6Foot2]

Another iGoogle alternative:

 

Link: MyCloud

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3IAmefuS9g4

 

http://i.snag.gy/ieR4g.jpg

[6Foot2]

Link: STARTME.COM - Your own personal startpage | iGoogle Alternative

 

Create a personal startpage with your most important bookmarks and RSS feeds.

 

Easy to use, reliable and completely (ad) free.

[sonofsanta]

I realised that the only reason I used iGoogle these days was because it was prettier than plain Google - I got a random mountain photo in the background from the theme. You couldn't pay me to use Bing, though.

 

So I've made an HTML page to save locally and set as a home page, with JavaScript to load a random background image:

home.html.txt

Save the file into a folder on your local machine and take the .txt extension off (I've only added that to let me upload here). Save a bunch of images alongside it, named 1.jpg, 2.jpg,...102.jpg (however high you go) - I'd recommend grabbing some photos from InterfaceLIFT: Wallpaper sorted by Date that match your monitor resolution.

Edit the value of numImg on line 40 to match the number of images you have in the folder.

 

You can add as many search fields as you please, Google and Wikipedia seemed reasonable defaults, and there's a thesaurus.com field commented out in the code. The Google field has focus as soon as you open the page.

 

The JavaScript is set up for FireFox, if you use a different browser you'll have to tweak some of the JS (e.g. .textContent to .innerText).

 

If you do use FireFox, you might want to use Tab Mix Plus to load the page as a New Tab Page - don't set it to use Home Page when it loads new tabs, as the focus JS doesn't work and you can't start yer Googlin' straight off. Give it the address as a New Tab Page and tick Focus Content When Loading Non-Blank Page and it works fine.

 

You can browse through your images with the controls bottom right, or click on the number to skip straight to another - useful if you're checking how certain images work (I've had to flip some horizontally to make the search bars more readable, or stop them covering the interesting part of a photo).

Edited October 8, 2013 by sonofsanta

[ZeroHour]

Those of you using ustart.org may have had issues loading our RSS feed, I have fixed the issue now, the hosting they are on is on a bad ip address range list.