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There’s a test version of the new Google customizable homepage (startpage), iGoogle, available to play with. When you start it up, the first thing you’ll notice are the pretty rounded corners on all your gadgets. The second thing you’ll notice are the tabs along the left side of the page, rather than across the top.

It appears to be organized this way: each of your tabs appear in the left navigation and listed under each tab are the gadgets included in that tab. When you click the link for a gadget, it appears on its own in the main portion of the window. Click the tab name and all the gadgets appear as before. The switching between gadgets and tabs is very fast, almost instantaneous, so when you open the Gmail gadget on its own, for example, it’s much faster than opening Gmail itself. Of course, you’re not getting all the Gmail features, only the ones that are part of the gadget. Google calls this feature, canvas view and you can also access it by clicking on the maximize button on the gadget itself when viewing an entire tab.

It all appears to be very much in the experimental stage. Things don’t seem to work even as Google’s Help page describes. For example, the Help page shows a screenshot of a feed in canvas view, which looks an awful lot like Google Reader.

When I try it though, I get what appears to be a single gadget on a page, with no extra functionality and a “you might also like..” list of suggested gadgets.

Finally, the new iGoogle integrates with Gmail chat, so you have access to the same IM in iGoogle as you do in Gmail.

Are you salivating yet? Dying to try it? Well sorry, it’s only open to developers. But wait, can you keep a secret? OK don’t tell anyone but if you go and sign up to play in the iGoogle sandbox, you’ll instantly have access to the new test version.

You do have to give them a few pieces of information about yourself but it’s mostly stuff Google knows about you already (email, name etc.)

Don’t want to play with it anymore? Go back to the same link and the experimental version will be turned off. (But remember, if anyone asks, you’re a developer, right?)

The full rollout of the new iGoogle is expected next month.

Announced in April, the new version of iGoogle that brings social applications is tested in a small number of randomly selected Google accounts.

The new iGoogle places the tabs on the left-hand side of the page and you can expand the tabs to see the list of gadgets and status information, like the number of unread Gmail messages. There’s a new chat feature borrowed from Gmail that lets you chat with your contacts while visiting iGoogle - that means iGoogle gets a sense of presence because you’ll know when your contacts are online. Since the chat feature will be enabled by default, it’s obvious that Google will be able to add options for sharing items and discussing posts with the contacts that are online.

iGoogle also adds a list of updates from your contacts similar to Facebook’s newsfeed: you can see stories shared by your contacts in Google Reader, recent photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, Google Talk status messages, shared iGoogle themes and gadgets.

Another change is that gadgets have an expanded interface, called canvas view. Gadgets authors will take advantage of this to display more information and make their gadgets more interactive, while your feeds can be read in a Google Reader-like interface. In the future, iGoogle will support OpenSocial applications and the transformation to a social site will be complete.

Google announced that the canvas view will be rolled out to a small percentage of users this month and to more users in July, while the OpenSocial applications “will not work in production until later this summer”.

Google introduced a set of themes for your personalized homepage (or iGoogle) a few months back. But if you’re looking for a few more customization options, check out this new Google gadget. Once you install the gadget on your homepage, you can choose from a variety of custom skins, create your own, or submit themes for other users to install. It currently provides 10 new skins.

 The gadget features three main tabs; a skins directory which mimics the built-in iGoogle theme selector, a tab with details of how to create and upload skins and a skins submission form. Unlike many other gadgets, this one does rely on a server side component to retrieve a list of available skins from the database in JSON format and also to validate and insert new skins submissions. This little gadget will also permit a different skin per tab - and thankfully no more reloading the page when switching skins. Works in IE and FF.

   Custom iGoogle Skins

Check out BonstioNet for the latest.

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.