This is my first blog entry and I wanted to find a gadget that met a few key conditions.

1. Had less users than it deserved.
2. Showed that iGoogle is turning into something bigger than just a homepage.
3. Was obviously a terrific gadget.

So after going on my quest to find the perfect gadget I stumbled across Online Painter By Offtype.Net. It currently has around 6000 users, but I think it deserves far more. Nowadays some people may be spoiled by super powerful Photoshop software, but back in the early days of Windows 1 (yeah I said Windows 1 from 1985) Microsoft Paint was all you had. Still to this day there is something elegant about artists who choose to use this basic program. This experience is recreated for iGoogle.

Online Painter is a simple program: no cut,paste, or crop. However, it doesn’t need it. With a small color pallet and varying paintbrush thicknesses you are being challenged to create the best artwork you can. Or if you are just looking for a little distraction, casual doodling is fine. Best of all you can share you art through Offtype.Net’s free web server. There you can brag, rate, and comment on various creations. If there was one thing that could be changed to better the experience it would be to implement expanding. While on there website Offtype.net does provide two sizes of Online Painter, the size of the paint window does not increase when you expand the window.

So while most people will agree that Online Painter is not a technological marvel, I think that like Windows this is a first step towards something much larger for iGoogle.