OK, I’ve done it now, I’ve changed my homepage to igoogle. Oh good grief I don’t like it.
Do I have valid reasons beyond the perfectly natural repugnance brought on by the thought of being logged in/on to a google application all day long – because of course I have to be logged in to google to be allowed to see what I’m told is MY homepage. It feels as I would imagine it would feel if I had to log in to google to see my own front door; there’s something not quite right about it.
Homepage – I don’t actually use my homepage much at all. My browsers are all set to re-open the tabs that were open when I closed them. In effect the only time I see the homepage is when a browser has crashed and not remembered where it was.
Browsers – To find the things I need I use the tool bar bookmarks on Firefox and Chrome both of which I generally have open throughout the work day – of course I also use my other bookmarks – which I try to keep well organised and highly descriptive. I use Chrome for quick searches and stuff I don’t mind losing because it seems to crash whenever it has to handle pdf files – Opera used to be my second browser but the latest version is terribly buggy on my machine, crashes all the time. Firefox is my browser of choice which I will use for stuff that is more important materials. I use it a lot with Zotero.
Screen dumps of each toolbar below:
As you can see there are common entries on both – but it’s fluid thing and they can and do change quite often, especially on Chrome. I’d argue that I’ve got more on those little strips that I use on a daily basis to do actual work – rather than browse – than igoogle is offering in a whole page of temperamental gadgets over which I have no control*. Is it a no-brainer as all the cool kids might say on mytwitface? I feel igoogle is almost trying to re-invent the wheel, but heart-shaped, because it comes with love.
A tip if you want make space for more bookmarks visible is to edit the titles. In firefox right click on the bookmark and select properties and edit the ‘name‘ text box. In chrome right click on the bookmark select edit and as with firefox, edit the name text box.
The point I think is that use much, much more than igoogle seems to be able to provide.
I’ve decided to lessen my pain by having igoogle only as my homepage on chrome – surely that counts?
See this post for grumbles on gadgets not installing or working properly
Librarianing 
Couldn’t agree more – it doesn’t work for me either, so I’m not going to use it. I have all the same technical issues as you do (see http://23crimes.blogspot.com/2010/05/things-1-2-and-3.html) and, what’s worse, it’s just so ugly. Really, tremendously ugly. And remember iGoogle is now three years old. In web years, that’s around eighty.
Not all of these 23 things are going to be useful for everyone. The history, practice, culture and purpose of your library, and the composition of your reader group, will all make a huge difference to what you take from this 23 things exercise. Our library, for instance, is a research library with a small postgrad-only student base. Others are teaching libraries with hundreds of undergrads; others again are college libraries with hundreds of undergrads who all study different subjects. Just relating to those readerships is an entirely different job each time.
Other things will be more use; it’s fine to leave this one behind.
Interesting comments, yes, I agree.
Like they say in dance: if it hurts, don’t do it 🙂 Discovering what you loathe about the different apps is entirely valid and part of the fun … but as Stuart says, if it doesn’t work for you, feel no guilt at moving on!