Riding the Waves of Today's Online Web Tools

摘要

The days of web "surfing," when you went from site to site to check on the latest content updates, are long gone. They have been replaced by RSS feeds and online news aggregators. Now, as more productivity tools become available online and Web 2.0 social networking tools proliferate, it would certainly be helpful to have just one single platform to host and organize all of these services. What if you could create a personal information portal, a virtual workspace that you could access from any internet connection? Customizable start pages have been around for some time, but Ajax technology has given this niche service a major boost. Today, there are about a dozen players in the personal start page arena, including heavy hitters Netvibes and Pageflakes. With the rollout of a new logo and the addition of some nifty personalization features in May 2007, iGoogle has staked out its competitive position. Although still not as strong in the area of customization as its chief competitors, iGoogle is still remarkably easy to set up and provides easy integration of other Google products, including Google search, Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Scholar.