Well not literally, but a product called iGoogle from you guessed it, Google, has enabled me to shave hours off my work day and drastically improve productivity. I’m also fairly sick of webmasters complaining about Google knocking their PR (PageRank) so I thought I’d be the first to post a positive Google story. The sentiment in the blogosphere seems to be defiance, a lack of concern, and comedy, but who are we all kidding? PageRank at one time was the ultimate factor in determining your site’s placement, and for that reason alone I believe its underlying technology should be respected. We dropped from a 7 to a 5, i’m not crying :). Back to the original intent of this post, iGoogle has freed me up to do more high value work and since I’ve been recommending iGoogle to everyone I know, I figured I’d share it with you!

What is iGoogle and How Do I Use it?

Well you can start by visiting the link I posted above. iGoogle, which is the personalized home page service offered by Google is a great way to make your business, and life in general, more efficient and productive. With iGoogle you can have a number of different applications all on one page, as well as the great search engine capabilities already offered by Google at your fingertips. Once on the page you’ll note there are some default “widgets” in place. There are two options at the right to “change theme” and “add stuff”. There is also a third option to “Add a tab” on the left side of the page.

To get an idea of what you can do with your page, take a look at the “Work” tab I’ve set up on my current page (click to view larger):

You’ll note I have both the WhyDoWork forums and blog on my page. On this particular tab I’ve also added the RSS feeds of some blogs I read regularly. If you take a look at the larger version of this image, you’ll also see a sticky note pad where I jot down ideas for WhyDoWork. I’ve blurred them out because many are top secret! My other tabs are equally exciting :) and contain my email inboxes, to-do lists, calendar, and additional news feeds.

How to Add Stuff to Your Page

Adding content to a tab is as easy as searching for it . You’ll see for a search of “whydowork” iGoogle has found two possible widgets I can add to my page. There are a multitude of categories of widgets to add to your tabs or page which you can browse here. Personally I’d suggest adding a sticky notes field, your favorite sites, and email to get started.

Setting your Homepage Theme

There are quite a few themes to choose from (personally I like the “Tea House” theme) and most will change throughout the day to reflect the time of day according to your chosen time zone. Here, you can take a look at all the images the Tea House theme will use throughout the day. Note that most themes have an extra special header image that will show up at 3:14 am (in honor of the mathematical constant Pi / because Google engineers are such nerds) so if you’re a night owl, take a peek at that time.

What are the Benefits?

All of a sudden you’ll be able to read all of your favorite blogs in one place without having to visit each site individually. For myself, I can quickly scan all of my favorite sites in under 10 minutes. I have access to a remote sticky notepad where I can jot down notes from any computer and have them saved to my profile, and I can check my email, calendar, to-do list, wikipedia, youtube and more all in one spot. Using iGoogle as my homepage has saved me hours of time every single day, and directly impacted my personal productivity. Because widgets can be dragged around your homepage to rearrange exactly the way you want them, you are in control of maximizing the benefits of this great tool.

You can also add FeedBurner feeds directly to your iGoogle page. If you look at the WhyDoWork FeedBurner Feed, you’ll see there is an option to directly add it to Google.

It doesn’t get much easier than that!

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