A New iGoogle Interface

Google tests a new interface for iGoogle, the personalized homepage that lets you add gadgets and themes. The updated interface uses the design patterns that should be familiar by now from other Google services. Tabs are now available in a dropdown that's displayed below the search box, while the left sidebar is only used for the chat widget. There are two buttons for adding gadgets and changing the theme next to the options menu.





{ Thanks, Brinke. }

Google Will Discontinue Google Buzz and Code Search

It's not surprising to hear that Google Buzz will be closed in a few weeks. Google now focuses on Google+, a product that learned from Buzz's slip-ups and became a lot more popular than Buzz. "We learned privacy is not a feature... it is foundational to the product. (...) But probably the best lesson we learned is about how to introduce a product. We started very slowly with Google+ -- in a limited Field Trial - in order to listen and learn and gather plenty of real-world feedback," says Google's Bradley Horowitz.

I'll miss Buzz because it was a lot more simple than Google+, it was integrated with Gmail and it allowed me to automatically share my favorite Google Reader posts. Buzz will continue to power the Google+ activity stream, but it will no longer be a Gmail feature.

It's not surprising to hear that Google will close Jaiku, a product acquired back in 2007 that was later open-sourced or that Google will disable iGoogle's social features powered by OpenSocial. They weren't popular because iGoogle didn't integrate with a social network.


What's surprising is to hear that Google will shut down Code Search, probably the best search engine for open source code. Code Search had a great API that was used in plug-ins for software like Eclipse. It was a brilliant way to find useful code and Google, the big proponent of open source, will close it.


"We aspire to build great products that really change people's lives, products they use two or three times a day. To succeed you need real focus and thought—thought about what you work on and, just as important, what you don't work on. It's why we recently decided to shut down some products, and turn others into features of existing products," explains Bradley Horowitz.

You can still use Buzz, Code Search and Jaiku until January 15 2012. "In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search." I'm sure that these aren't the only Google services that will be closed: at some point orkut, Knol, Google Toolbar, Google Bookmarks will have to go away.

iGoogle's New Interface

Google's personalized homepage has a new interface inspired by Google+. There's a prominent button for adding gadgets, a unified menu for gadgets that's hidden until you mouse over a gadget, an option to hide the sidebar and a bigger search box that supports voice search if you use Chrome. The links to the advanced search page and language tools page have been removed, while the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is only displayed below the list of suggestions,



{ Thanks, Tim. }

Google Tests a New Layout for iGoogle

There's a new iGoogle interface that's only available to a small number of users. Google dropped the rounded corners and only shows the controls when you mouse over a gadget. Another change is that gadgets have a small icon next to the title.

Avery M., who sent this tip, noticed the new interface when visiting iGoogle Japan, but that could be a coincidence.



{ Thanks, Avery. }

Google Classic Plus

The new feature that lets you add a background image to Google's homepage has a name reminiscent of Microsoft: "classic plus". When you click on the link to iGoogle, there's an option to switch to the classic homepage. Now the classic homepage has an important feature that was only available in iGoogle: themes.


It will be interesting to see if Google adds more features from iGoogle to the "classic plus" homepage. Google could add some simplified gadgets that show if you have new messages in your Gmail inbox, new events in your Google Calendar agenda, gadgets for weather and news. Since Google only shows the search box and the two search buttons if you don't move your mouse, the gadgets wouldn't clutter the homepage.

Google Search Integrates With iGoogle

Google Search tests a new feature that lets you add an iGoogle gadget corresponding to a search result. For now, the link "add to iGoogle" is displayed for a small number of sites (BBC, New York Times, National Geographic, TVGuide.com, NPR, Flixster, Epicurious) and it's not clear if publishers can enable it.


After clicking on the link "add to iGoogle" displayed next to a BBC result, Google added BBC's official gadget to my iGoogle page. Unfortunately, Google also set a cookie value so that every time I go to google.com, it redirects me to iGoogle. Clicking on "classic home" at the top of the page solves this problem.

New Ways to Read Feeds in iGoogle

iGoogle added two new views for feeds: a slideshow view for photo feeds and a view that shows the headlines and a snippet from the lead story. You can change the view for each feed by clicking on the arrow icon, selecting "Edit settings" and choosing one of three views: headline only, headline and lead story or slideshow.



By default, Google shows a small number of hand-picked feeds in the sideshow view and uses the "headline and lead story" view for feeds that support Media RSS. "These new views not only create a better experience for users, but also give publishers an opportunity to more easily expose rich content, often already present in their RSS feeds. To take advantage of this new feature, publishers simply need to add images and associated Media RSS and/or enclosure elements to their existing RSS feeds. We'll then grab the images, resize them down as necessary, and provide hosting/caching. Additionally, we'll make the images clickable and display a 150 character snippet in the Headline and lead story view," explains Google.

There's a guide for publishers which offers more information about the new views. All Blogger feeds use Media RSS, so they'll be displayed in the "headline and lead story" view.

Friend Suggestions in Google Chat

The Google Chat gadget from iGoogle's sidebar started to show friend suggestions and they're usually people you've emailed frequently. Google also shows a list of Google Translate bots that help you translate the messages from a conversation.



Another new feature lets you send some of your contacts to someone you've emailed frequently.


It seems that the suggestions are displayed even if you've enabled this option in Gmail: "Only allow people that I've explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I'm online". By default, Gmail automatically invites to Google Chat the users whom you frequently email. "Gmail determines which contacts you'll be able to talk to without having to invite each other."

{ Thanks, Bogdan. }

Send Files in Google Chat

One of the few features that are available in Google Talk's desktop client, but couldn't be used in the web-based gadgets from Gmail, iGoogle and orkut, is file sharing. The missing feature is now available in iGoogle and orkut, but not yet in Gmail.

"Starting today, you can share photos, documents, and other files while chatting in iGoogle and orkut. To give it a try, just click Send a file... in the Actions menu while chatting with a friend (no download required). This feature is also compatible with the file transfer functionality in the Google Talk downloadable software, so you can share files directly from the web with folks who use the desktop version," explains Google.

You can send multiple files at the same time, but you can't select multiple files from the file picker dialog. Google Chat doesn't support transferring files larger than 100 MB.


Google Talk's desktop client is no longer updated, as Google focused on improving the chat feature from Gmail and adding similar features to iGoogle and orkut. Google Talk's homepage still links to the Windows client, but the first option is a plug-in for video chat.

{ Thanks, Niranjan. }