PaulSpoerry.com

Today the Google Personal Homepage has been officially renamed iGoogle.

Originally Google decided they wanted the personalized homepage to be a feature, not a product. Hence, it doesn’t have a particular name until today. Launch your homepage and you’ll see a shiny new logo like in the image above. Notice your iGoogle may look different, the one above has the personalization theme applied to it. According to the Google folks, themes have been adopted by 30% of the Google personalized homepage user base (I use it, doesn’t slow it down to much and adds a bit of splash to the otherwise bland Google pages).

Also being launched today is Gadget Maker. Basically self made Gadgets that require no programming. There are 7 different types of gadgets that users can create with this tool. A new link at the bottom of your iGoogle page will allow you to access the Gadget Maker service. Once the gadget is created, you can invite other people to view & use the gadget, and make it publicly available for other people to view & use it.

The wizards let you enter the settings for seven new gadget templates:

1. A Photo gadget (share a series of photos with others)
2. GoogleGram gadget (allowing you to display a new greeting message to someone for every day for 7 days)
3. Daily Me gadget (which will show what you’re currently doing, as well as quotes, what’s on your mind etc.)
4. Personalized Countdown gadget
5. A Personalized List (you can e.g. publish your own top ten list with this, Google says)
6. YouTube video favorites gadget (pictured above, this gadget will let you create a YouTube channel to share)
7. A “Free Form” gadget (an “all-purpose gadget that lets you meld text and image in any way,” Google says)

The Gadgets can also be shared. You send a friend an invite, similar to a Docs/Spreadsheets invite and the gadget will be immediately shown on the invite page allowing your friend to play with it before adding it to their own page.

Neat stuff! You can read more over at Google Blogoscoped.