Google Offers Personalized Home Page - Personalizing Google
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Clicking on the appropriate link in Google Labs takes you to an example of what your new Google home page could look like. It is still a very clean interface. In the example, the custom items sit below the Google interface itself in a rectangle that takes up a little less than half of the page. In the upper right hand corner you will find a link to “Classic Home,” which returns you to the default appearance of Google’s home page. At the top of the rectangle is a link that encourages you to “Get started personalizing your Google homepage.” When you click on that link, Google takes you to a page that gives you twelve items from which to choose. You can click any or all of them. Displayed in colorful text, they include:
- Gmail
- Stock Market
- New York Times
- BBC News
- Google News
- Weather
- Wired News
- Slashdot
- Movies
- Driving Directions
- Quote of the Day
- Word of the Day
Clicking on “Gmail” pops up a message which states that you must have a Gmail account to preview messages. A drop-down menu lets you set this item to preview anywhere between one and nine messages, with five as the default. Clicking on “Stock Market” gives you a choice of Dow, Nasdaq, NYSE, and S&P 500; all four of these options are checked by default, but can be unchecked. Google also gives you the option of adding your own stock ticker.
Clicking on “New York Times,” “BBC News,” “Google News,” “Wired News,” or “Slashdot” turns up a drop-down item that lets you set how many stories you see from these sources. As with Gmail, you can choose any amount between one and nine, but in this case, three is the default. If you click on “Weather” or “Movies,” a pop up box appears, in which you can enter your zip code. For “Quote of the day,” the familiar one-to-nine drop-down box appears, this time with one as the default. Clicking on “Driving Directions” or “Word of the Day” does not do anything immediately obvious.
After you have finished deciding what you want on your personalized home page, simply click on one of the two very obvious buttons labeled “Save personalization.” If you chose to preview Gmail messages, and you are not logged in, Google will ask you to log in at this time. After you log in, Google immediately takes you to the new page you created. If you don’t like the way the items are positioned, you can easily drag and drop them to different spots. You can also edit individual items, changing the defaults and other information you entered earlier.
If you want to perform some wholesale changes, you can click on the link at the very bottom labeled “Further personalize your Google homepage.” This link takes you back to the original screen you used to personalize your homepage, with all of the values you set filled in. Making changes is as simple as setting it up in the first place.
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