I was chatting with one of my friends last week who was bragging about how cool his Google Homepage looks.  He went on about it every time we spoke online.  Frankly, it was starting to get annoying.  Finally, he told me that I just had to catch up to him, if for no other reason than we could use the Google Talk to party chat, leave voice messages and exchange pictures.  Apparently, he preferred that to what we were using. 

Now, I’m not completely helpless when it comes to the computer, but I have never given any thought to customizing my Google Homepage.  I knew that iGoogle existed – it’s all over the internet - but I didn’t really know what it was, nor did I care.  I thought it would be too hard or at least too much trouble to bother with.  Well, I finally tried it today and guess what – it was actually really easy!

My friend lives in Great Britain, so he had Google Homepage UK.  Naturally, I’d be using the American version.  I started out by going to the regular, classic Google page and used “personalize Google Homepage USA” (without quotes) as my search term.  I was expecting that I’d have to do a lot of reading.  Knowing me, I would likely give up the second it looked like it was going to be too involved or take forever.  Luckily, the search brought up the exact page and link on the Big G’s blog for me to get started. 

The first thing I noticed was that I had tons of options.  I thought, “Okay, here we go, now it’s going to get complicated.  I’m only going to try this once and if it doesn’t work – forget it.”  I started with themes.  There was a vast selection, including beaches, palm trees, space, dots, the earth – just tons of different ones and they were all nice.  You can add ones you custom make yourself but hey, I hadn’t even figured out how to use the stock ones yet.

Once I settled on the theme that I wanted, I clicked “Add this one” and boom it was there, along with a pre-set layout.  I was very surprised to see that my Google Homepage already had my hubs and blog entries listed, all without me telling it to.  I don’t know how it did that, but I assume it tied in everything that was attached to the email address that I signed in with.  There was also a clock, weather widget, news feed and a few more items on the page that I could choose to keep or delete.  This was getting interesting. 

After familiarizing myself with the layout, I found that I can change my theme if I want to, just by clicking a button on the upper right.   Maybe someday, I’ll figure out how to make and add a custom one.  Right now though, I’m excited at how good my personalized Google Homepage is looking.  There are so many ways that I can pretty it up and have everything just the way I like it.  If only other things in life were like that!

Although there was a lot of useful stuff on my Google Homepage, I didn’t want everything that was there, so I deleted some of it.  Using my mouse, I clicked and dragged the widgets around until I had them just how I wanted them.  Then, I used the “Add stuff” button that I found beside “Change theme” to see what else I could have.  There were tons of enticing things like Google Docs, Gmail, games, a to-do list and Google Map Search.  It didn’t matter what I was looking for, I found it there.  I chose one of the games and Google Talk for starters.  It was kind of sad to see that there was no more room on the page for the other cool stuff that was available.  I really wanted to have a photo widget and Music Mash, too.

So, as I sat admiring my handiwork, I happened to notice something on the upper left of my screen.  I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, I guess I was having too much fun.  Anyway, it was an “Add tab” button, which gave me another page.  Great!  I didn’t hesitate to click, name the tab (called it Fun Stuff) and add the photo and music widgets that I wanted.  I was actually beginning to love my personalized Google Homepage.

As much as I’m enjoying what I’ve created so far, I’m sure that I’ll continue to change and update it because it’s so easy to do so.  That’s just another great feature of iGoogle, I’ve learned. 

Today, I’m going to brag to my friend who has the Google Homepage UK and try to convince another friend, Teresa, that she needs to pimp her Google Homepage Malaysia.  Once she catches up, the three of us can party - all from our Google Homepage.