That’s right! As of yesterday, iGoogle has integrated the chatting feature into the start page.

Now you don’t have to leave your Gmail up to be able to chat with your friends. You don’t even have to add the Google Talk gadget. Google Talk is now built into the sidebar of your iGoogle page.

There are some differences worth noting. In your iGoogle page, you will not be able to do any of the following. These features will still only be available in Gmail.

• Pop out windows
• Offline messages
• Group chat
• AIM integration
• Video chat

However, there is a perk to chatting in iGoogle. You can talk with all of your friends, even if they don’t have a Gmail address. Simply invite them to chat through the iGoogle interface. Once they sign up for iGoogle with their personal email, you can start chatting away.

Are you excited about chatting in iGoogle?

In the post, “How to Tweak Your iGoogle Page with Greasemonkey,” I wrote about a Greasemonkey script that allows you to easily minimize and maximize iGoogle gadgets. This script only works with FireFox and Greasemonkey. So, I’ve created a bookmarklet that should work in most browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Opera.

Depending on your browser, you can either drag the link above to your bookmark toolbar, or right click the link and add it to your favorites/bookmarks. Whenever you visit iGoogle, click the bookmarklet and you’ll be able to expand/minimize your Gadgets.

Through Twitter, some online forums, and readers contacting me via this blog, I have learned that there are many iGoogle users who want to be able to manipulate their homepage so that it is more user friendly. This makes sense. If iGoogle is going to be your start page, you want it to function as effortlessly as possible.

In this post, you will learn how to use Greasemonkey scripts to change the behavior of the page you are viewing. And one of the scripts is even brought to you by the Unofficial Google Gadget Blog!

What is Greasemonkey?

Greasemonkey is a Mozilla FireFox add-on that enhances the browser experience by letting the user change the page with scripts. Changes can be made to most web pages. With Greasemonkey, any change that is made will be carried out every time the page is loaded.  Just make sure to leave Greasemonkey on and any changes made to a web page will be “permanent.”

To continue, please install the following:

• Install Mozilla FireFox
  
• Install Greasemonkey
• Install Greasefire
• Restart Mozilla FireFox

Now, you should see two little monkeys, as pictured to the left and with fire surrounding it,  on the bottom right side of your web page. Click on the image and make sure that “Enabled” is checked.

Using Greasemonkey in iGoogle

Now that the set up is complete, go to your iGoogle page. Once on the page, click on the little monkey with the fire surrounding him . This will show you all the Greasemonkey scripts available for this web page.  You will see that 357 scripts are available for iGoogle.

Yikes! That’s a lot. So what now? Clicking on the “357 scripts” will open a new window that allows you to browse through all the scripts that are available.

To save time, I have posted links to two scripts that you can use right away. Click on the links and hit “Install.”

Minimize & Maximize Gadgets in iGoogle
This script adds a +/- icon to the title bar of every gadget. This allows you to easily minimize gadgets when not in use and maximize them right away when you do want to use them. This script really helps you to not delete the gadgets you love. (”Delete this gadget” & “Minimize this gadget” are right on top of each other.)

Resize Columns in iGoogle
This script allows you to change the width of your columns in iGoogle. Once the script is installed, you will see two little gray boxes in between your columns. Dragging your mouse left and right between the columns will resize them.

What’s Next?

You can also visit UserScripts.org to see what other scripts are available for the various pages you may visit on the web. This site is a directory of all the Greasemonkey scripts that web developers have written.

As you can see, Greasemonkey is a tool that allows you customize your web pages with as many features as you would like. Who wouldn’t want custom upgrades for your browser?

While trying to use my iGoogle page today, I have received this error message in many of my gadgets. I am not sure what is going on with the homepage this morning.

Many users are reporting the same thing with their homepages.

What’s going on iGoogle? How can we share our love when you are broken?

In the spirit of the season, (I hope you all know Valentine’s Day is tomorrow), Google is giving everyone a chance to get some iGoogle stickers.

Simply confess your love for iGoogle in a video or short story. That’s right! Just tell Google what makes your iGoogle homepage so special. In return, they’ll send some love back in the form of stickers.

Choose from 1 of 6 iGoogle artist theme laptop stickers. I’ve showcased them below.

Radiohead		Diane von Furstenberg		Paul Frank
kate spade		Michael Kors		Marc Ecko

Visit www.google.com/sharethelove09 to submit your story or video and receive your stickers.  Google even put together a nice sample video.

I can remember back when the big deal about Firefox vs IE was that Firefox had TABBED BROWSING. And just what was so cool about that? If you’re the type of surfer I am who likes to have multiple sites open at once, it was a royal pain to have to use the back button or click through open windows to go from site to site.  I found out during a training class in HTML that Opera had always had tabbed browsing. Hey, I even used Opera before I tried Firefox, just because my instructor said it had tabbed browsing (and loaded fast).

What does this have to do with iGoogle? Everything. If you have your own iGoogle page, and you really should, then you know how easy it is to get overwhelmed with gadgets on your page, just like it was easy to get overwhelmed with too many open websites.  Once again, tabs are here to save the day, or at least reduce gadget overload, by giving you the option to put your gadgets on different pages instead of all in one place. Tabs act as a table of contents that lists the name of each page (the title of the tab) and the gadgets that are on that page.

In case you don’t know, iGoogle is Google’s personalized homepage. It lets you take your favorite content from across the web and organize it all in one place. You can try it at http://www.google.com/ig

If you look at the left-hand side of your iGoogle page, you’ll notice a tab that’s labeled “Home” and has links underneath that open each of the gadgets you have on your homepage. Here’s what the Home tab looks like on the iGoogle homepage:

You can categorize your gadgets by adding a tab.  Let’s say you’d like to put all of your productivity gadgets like your calendar, e-mail and to do list on one page. To add your first new tab, click the arrow to the right of Home on your Home tab and choose “Add a Tab” from the dropdown menu and open the “Add a tab” dialog window.

If you’ve used Google before (and who hasn’t), you’ll be familiar with the “I’m Feeling Lucky” option. If you know what type of tab you’d like to add but aren’t sure what gadgets to put on the page, let iGoogle do it for you. Just type in a search term, click the box next to “I’m feeling lucky…” and like magic, you have a new tab already populated with great gadgets.

Not only are tabs a great way to beat gadget overload by putting your gadgets on different pages, they also make it easy to navigate to the gadget you want to use by clicking on the tab (page) that contains the gadget or clicking on the name of the individual gadget listed on the tab to open the gadget page. Once you’ve created one new tab, you can create more by clicking the arrow to the right of the tab that’s currently open. You can also add and remove gadgets, change the theme of your iGoogle pages and even change the layout of the page by clicking “Edit this tab” to open the Preferences dialog window.

If you think somebody else might like your tabs, you can send the tabs to them by choosing the Share this tab option from the drop down menu to the right of the  tab you want to share (the same one you used to Add a Tab). This option allows you to share some or all of the gadgets on the tabbed page with others. Just check the box next to each gadget you want to share and enter the email addresses of the people with whom you want to share. Make sure you include a message letting them know how the gadgets have helped you! You can also receive a copy of the email you send by checking the “Send me a copy…” option.

What sorts of tabs might you be interested in adding besides your Home tab? On my own personal iGoogle page, I have tabs for Productivity Tools, News, Music and Contacts.

I work from home and it’s a real challenge to manage my time productively, especially when my cats, Trillian and Puff,  are pretending to nap on my desk. I say pretending because they have no problem reaching out a paw now and then to remind me that they’re there.  Having my Gmail, Google Calendar and To Do List right in front of me helps me stay on track.  I use the Todoist gadget from Amir Salifendic to list my tasks and check them off.

See Productivity gadgets on YOUR iGoogle Homepage

I also like to keep up with the news, so I have a tabbed page that contains my favorite news sources. I always check my Google Reader first thing. Other favorite news gadgets include NPR and USAToday. I also like to keep up with technology and entertainment news so I have gadgets for PC World’s Top Technology News and Yahoo Entertainment News.

See News gadgets on YOUR iGoogle Homepage

Music is a big part of my life. I play bass guitar in Diezelfitter, a blues band I started with my guitar playing husband, Rick, so of course I have to have a tabbed music page. We’re constantly looking for lyrics online and having the Lyrics Search gadget available right in iGoogle makes it a lot easier. I also like to check out the latest music videos so I have the You Tube and Yahoo Music Video gadgets on my Music page, too.

See Music gadgets on YOUR iGoogle Homepage

Since I like to keep up with friends, colleagues and family, I created a tab for Contacts. I used the “I’m feeling lucky…” option to magically create a contact page already populated with gadgets. Now I can see my Gmail contacts (Gmail Contact Manager gadget), my GoogleTalk (GoogleTalk gadget) contacts, and even my Twitter friends all on one page!

I’ve been an iGoogle user now for about six months. During that time, I’ve played around (a lot) and wasted (a lot of) time. Well, maybe the time wasn’t really wasted because now I can share what I’ve learned with you so you can get your page online and working the way you want in a lot less time. I’d like to share my top five tips for getting started with iGoogle!

When you first get started with your iGoogle page, your page will look like…well…Google! If that works for you, then you can skip to tip #2. If you’d like something a little bit more customized, take a look at the links underneath and to the right of the Google Search box.

Would you like to be reminded of your favorite cause? Choose Themes for causes to search for it. If you just want something different, then choose Change theme from Classic and start searching for that perfect theme!

Once you choose the link that fits what type of theme you’re looking for, you’ll find yourself on the Themes tab where you’ll see a list of themes created primarily by Google users. Each theme is complete with a thumbnail shot of the theme, the author, how many other iGooglers are using it and how some of them have rated it.

You can either search for a theme by going from page to page and looking at all of them (one of those time-wasters I was telling you about), or you can search for a specific theme by keyword. Take a look to the right of the theme listing and you’ll see a familiar search box.

Type in a key word, or words, just like you would if you were doing a Google search and find results that match those keywords! If color is your thing, then type in the color of the theme you’re looking for. You’ll get a list of all the themes that use that color as a keyword. Once you find the theme of your dreams, just click on Add it Now beneath the theme and viola (that’s as in vwah-la, not the fiddle), your iGoogle page will take on the look you want! To see your page with the new theme applied, just click on “Back to iGoogle home” at the top left of the page just underneath the Google links. NOTE: I’m including this because I wasted a lot of time looking for it when I first got started and don’t want you to have to do the same!

In my case, I picked the Bipolar Guitar theme (don’t ask…it’s a long story). When I returned to my iGoogle homepage, there was a confirmation underneath the Google Search box that my theme had been changed. If you like your new theme (and I did) just click on Close to remove the confirmation or Undo to revert back to the original theme and continue your search for the perfect theme.Now that you have your theme picked out, why not add e-mail to your page?

Tip #2: Get e-mail on your iGoogle page

If you regularly check your e-mail account on the web, then why not check it right from your iGoogle page? There’s no need to open your desktop e-mail client and download your e-mail to your computer to send or receive messages if you use one of the major webmail services like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOLMail or Hotmail. Just add a gadget for the e-mail service you use to your iGoogle page!

When you click the Add stuff link, you’ll open the Gadgets tab. It looks just like the Theme tab except you’ll see a list of gadgets instead of a list of themes. In the Search for Gadgets box located to the right of the gadget list, type in the name of your webmail service to see a list of gadgets you can add to your page that you can use to check your e-mail

Remember the links you used to find your theme? To add an e-mail gadget, click on Add stuff.

You’ll find multiple gadgets for checking your e-mail on your iGoogle page. It’s a good idea to pay attention to how many people are using the gadget and what rating they’ve given it. You can also get more information about the gadget in the iGoogle gadget directory by clicking the name of the gadget. Here is where you can also read other user comments.

Once you’ve chosen the e-mail gadget you want to add to your iGoogle page, click on Add it now and return to your iGoogle homepage to login to your account and start sending/receiving your e-mail!

Here are few links to examples of the highest rated e-mail gadgets:

• Check your Gmail in iGoogle
• Check your Hotmail in iGoogle
• Check your Yahoo! Mail in iGoogle
• Check your AOL Mail in iGoogle

If you have several e-mail accounts, there’s even a gadget you can use to check ALL of them.

Tip #3: RSS Rocks!

Do you want to keep up with the latest news or updates on your favorite site? The best way to stay up-do-date is by subscribing to the site’s RSS feed. A RSS feed (or news feed) is a data format used to provide updated site content to users who subscribe to receive it.  It’s like having a magazine subscription, as opposed to having to go to the store and pick up the latest copy. You don’t have to keep checking the site to see what’s going on.

If you’re a Firefox user, you can subscribe to and add your favorite feed to your iGoogle page right from the address bar of the browser. Type in the URL of the site to which you want to subscribe. If the site has an RSS feed available, you’ll see the RSS icon to the right of the URL.

Clicking on the icon opens a page that gives you a choice of subscribing to the site feed on your Google homepage (iGoogle) or with Google Reader.

If you choose to add the feed to your iGoogle page, updates will appear on your page the next time you open it. I subscribe to feeds with Google Reader, so I use the Google Reader gadget.Anytime you see the RSS icon on a site, you can click it to subscribe to updated site content. Some sites even have links to various feedreaders. To add the site feed to your iGoogle page, look for the Google icon:

Tip #4: Use Tabs

Now that you’ve started adding gadgets to that beautiful new iGoogle page, you might find yourself entering what I like to call “Gadget Overload.” Been there, done that! You can organize your gadgets on separate pages, or tabs, to more easily access the one you need without having to scroll down your page until you find where you put it! You can group similar gadgets together on a page and label that page with a descriptive tab.

What sorts of tabs might you be interested in adding besides your Home tab? On my own personal iGoogle page, I have tabs for Productivity Tools, News, Music and Contacts.

I work from home and it’s a real challenge to manage my time productively, especially when my cats, Trillian and Puff,  are pretending to nap on my desk. I say pretending because they have no problem reaching out a paw now and then to remind me that they’re there.  Having my Gmail, Google Calendar and To Do List right in front of me helps me stay on track. To learn more about adding tabs, read my article “How to Create and Share Tabs on iGoogle”.

Tip #5: Keep your page fresh!

You probably won’t keep all the gadgets you initially put on your iGoogle page. You’ll use some a lot, some a little and maybe you won’t use a few of them at all. There’s no point in keeping the gadgets you don’t use. Heck, all they do is get in the way of the ones you do use! For tips on the best gadgets (and the ones to avoid), visit the Unofficial iGoogle Gadget Blog where Brandon Garlock keeps you up-to-date with his Gadget of the Day blog posts. Find out what’s new, what’s hot and what’s not! Let Brandon help you keep your iGoogle page current, useful, and above all, FUN!