Ajaxed - Google Homepage
December 13, 2005
Yet another wonderful creation from Google, Google’s new personalized homepage feature is an ajax based framework for all types of content and information. Supporting RSS and Atom feeds, bookmarks, weather top stories … you name it ! and ofcourse the sweet “drag and drop menu” feature.
It’s about same as Microsoft’s live.com, but I had a referer to my website’s feeds from ig before live.com was officially released.
In my Opinion the only difference between Live and Google’s Page is the layout design. 
Wonderfull
The google portal one of the few examples of “animated transitions” (ubiquitous in the Flash world) that I’ve seen in AJAX. A panel slides out, and then slides back when you are done with it. Everything else sort of compresses and moves aside to make room for the new panel. Very slick.
The drag-and-drop was pretty boilerplate. OTOH, the editing-in-place of individual squares (e.g. changing the # of items to show in an RSS feed) is very nice.
I get lots of referers from /ig as well…hadn’t checked it out before today though.
-Jonathan Boutelle
I personally don’t care for the Google personalized homepage. I have several Google accounts and I’m constantly logging in and out of them for it to be of any use to me.
I’ve found that netvibes.com has just as much, if not more, cool and features. I can have live updates on ALL FOUR of my GMail accounts, something I would NEVER be able to do on Google IG.
Netvibes also has the “editing-in-place” feature for its blocks, it has a robust RSS reader, includes Writely integration, weather, bookmarks, a feed directory, flickr integration, Webnotes (like sticky notes for your page), and a nifty “Price Watch” feature which, unfortunately, is fairly useless unless you’re in Europe (you can’t change the currency unit).
I totally agree. Netvibes is really godd. You can have notes, bookmark, price watch, so more.
I found it really powerfull, more than IG.
There’s another difference. Google wheather sux. It lacks international countries. What’s the point of a personalized home page without my weather?
I rather enjoy using Googles home page.. the multicolor crap brothers me but I have all my feeds on my Google home page. Weather isn’t an issue because I am from the US. I only have 1 Google/Gmail account so that isn’t an issue either..
As for Microsoft’s Live.. that is a different animal completely.. Live has a bit more going for it last I heard. Not just AJAX and RSS.
I have been using Google’s homepage for some time…. the multi-colored crap bothers me as well, and the drag-and drop feature seems a little forced, as you can’t isolate certain items from a category. Overall though, it beats a static google homepage (although the lack of international weather reports is rather troubling).
i think live.com will win because it has more ajax use and php and js. and google has not got as much but it loads more faster then live so it is a balanced side
I like the new format, but also like live.com. If you want Eclipse-based AJAX tools, you can visit http://www.myeclipseide.com/ContentExpress-display-ceid-58.html
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