Introduction to iGoogle

Matt SeibertAdjunct Reference/Instruction LibrarianHACC York Campus

iGoogle is a content management system that provides for:

Web 2.0 IntegrationGmailRSS FeedsBlogging and BlogsNews ReportsGadgets

What is Web 2.0?

Interactive Internet

It allows you to retrieve information and it automatically retrieves information for you.

It provides “elegant organization” to your life. (Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, etc.)

Wait… What is iGoogle?

What are RSS feeds?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)Gadgets that bring us news, blogs, information, etc.When you see the button shown below, it links to an RSS feed.

Google

RSS Feeds work in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox

The Internet Explorer 7 browser can read RSS feeds.However, it becomes the primary RSS Reader, and you cannot access it remotely.This can become a problem, if you want to check daily search results from another computer.So far Firefox has no issues.

In Microsoft Internet Explorer 7+ We Must Disable Automatic Feed Recognition

Settings for Feeds

Turn off feed reading view

Un-check Box

In Google, we make a Google Account to use with iGoogle.

How do we make a Google Account?

Create an Account

Google Account

Google Account

Account Verification

Logged into Google Home

Click on iGoogle

Making an iGoogle Page

Let’s make iGoogle Home Pages

Drop Stuff

Add Stuff

Let’s get some Gadgets

Added Gadgets

Let’s get a Theme

iGoogle Page Furnished

Let’s get some News and Information

Search Results

National Public Radio NPR.org

RSS Feed Health and Science News

Add to Google

Automated Addition: Add to Google Homepage

NPR Topics: Health and Science

Let’s connect to a Blog

Searching Blogs

Limited to Educational Blogs site:.edu

Blog (Click the RSS Feed Link)

What is this? (RSS Code)

RSS Feed Link

http://www.harvardscience.harvard.edu/latestnews/feed◦ The link above connects to RSS Code◦ We can just copy the link into the iGoogle

RSS Reader and it will work

Some RSS Feed Links will have the extension .rss

Now click on “Add Stuff”

Adding an RSS Feed manually

Enter the Feed URL (http://***) RSS Code

Added

Library Information with RSS

Click on Articles & Newspapers, then click on Databases A - Z

Click on EBSCOhost

Click on Health Source, then Continue

EBSCOhost

RSS Button above Results

RSS Alert for my Search Topic “myocardium”

RSS Code Again

Add Feed or Gadget

Daily Search Results

Good Luck

Have Fun