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New Google Homepage Features

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Jul 26, 2005 08:59 AM
from the so-many-submissions-about-this dept.
Businesses Google The Internet
SecularG writes "It seems that Google has added new features to it's Personalized Home. To edit the content of your personalized homepage you click 'Add Content' in the top right, and a list of options slide out from the left. You can add your own bookmarks, select from more news feeds, and add your own RSS news feeds." Of course since Slashdot is already available from their default list of technology sites, why would you need the ability to include an RSS feed?
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  • Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub (11606) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:00AM (#13164605) Homepage Journal

    Of course since Slashdot is already available from their default list of technology sites, why would you need the ability to include an RSS feed?

    It takes less bandwidth to see a dupe headline with RSS than it does when one reloads the entire slashdot mainpage. [rimshot]

  • Countdown until Google.com looks like (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 55555 Manbabies! (861806) on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:01AM (#13164622)
    yahoo.com. What a pointless and crowded web portal.

    RSS eliminates the need for web portals entirely. You can just use the RSS functionality of Safari for a home page, or make a local page with the RSS feeds you want to see.

  • your other... (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by frieked (187664)
    ...right. Seems like someone doesn't know their left from their right.

  • Gmail (Score:2, Insightful)

    by daviq (888445)
    So they are just adding more of gmail's features too their homepage.

  • Top left (Score:3, Informative)

    by deego (587575) on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:03AM (#13164640) Homepage
    > To edit the content of your personalized homepage you click 'Add Content' in the top right

    It is at the 'top left' here.

  • sorry but your browser is not supported (Score:5, Informative)

    by pair-a-noyd (594371) on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:04AM (#13164648)
    Microsoft IE 5.5+ (download: Windows)
    - Netscape 7.1+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
    - Mozilla 1.4+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
    - Mozilla Firefox 0.8+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
    - Safari 1.2.1+ (download: Mac)
    Many other browsers work with Gmail's basic HTML view, including:
    - Microsoft IE 4.0+
    - Netscape 4.07+
    - Opera 6.03+

    Konqueror users are still SOL

    • Re:sorry but your browser is not supported (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Oh no!
      Lynx users are SOL too!

      Seriously though, they did manage to make sure it works with 99.5% of all the web browsers currently out there. Nobody is forcing you to be that 0.5%.
        • Here's a side by side comparison of firefox and konqueror.
          http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=omfgx130 9 ea.jpg [imageshack.us]

          I use a 21" Sony Trinitron CRT at 1400x1050 at 112hz
          Be aware that jpeg compression makes the fonts in this snapshot look *much* worse than they are when live.

          This is *after* I tweaked Firefox to use the same fonts (Suse Sans 12).. They do NOT look the same despite that they are both configured to use the same fonts at the same resolution.

          I rest my case.
          • Except for the size, they look the same to me. Same kerning, same antialiasing, same ligatures (observe the "ft" in "Lifts"). The fact that Firefox is rendering fonts smaller may or may not be a bug in Firefox. But have you tried increasing the font size in Firefox until they're the same, and then comparing?

            You may choose to use Konqueror for a list of valid reasons, but in terms of fonts, I think your case is far from rested.

        • If 99% of the people like to eat spinach should I too be forced to eat spinach?
          No, but you don't get to complain when someone gives the spinach eaters a free gift either.

  • A dud? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rueger (210566) * on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:06AM (#13164665) Homepage
    Well, I played with it for five minutes and couldn't see much use. It wouldn't let me fine tune the news feed to suit my needs, or at least not in an obvious way, and didn't display the accompanying pictures from news stories.

    For whatever reason it won't display the weather for my location (Hamilton ON) [ec.gc.ca]. I don't particularly like the way it displays my g-mail info, and would like to change the arrangement and width of the blocks.

    All in all this one actually looks like a beta - dull, uninspired, and not fully realized.
    • Well, I played with it for five minutes and couldn't see much use.

      For someone that has *never* used an RSS feed I see a benefit: I don't need a program to see the RSS feeds as my browser goes straight to this page when it opens and I can see everything I need to see in one shot (except Slashdot which isn't up-to-date enough for me).

      Being that I don't know any better, with regards to how RSS feeds can be modified, I am quite happy with it. I can keep up w/my friends' RSS shit and I don't have to rememb

    • Re:A dud? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mboos (700155) on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:26AM (#13164815) Homepage
      I'm in Toronto, and I can get the weather. What irks me though is the fact that the temperatures default to Fahrenheit. The current temperature also has a Celcius value (but it's secondary) and all the long term forecasts are in Fahrenheit. There is no option to change everything to Celcius. I was only taught Celcius in school, and was led to believe that Fahrenheit was left on the thermometers to appease the old-timers.

      This is the 21st century, people! Let's start using those SI units that everybody* has agreed on.

      *The States not included
  • I go to the weather section, I remove "Happy, TX" and add my zipcode and blam, it doesn't add my city and keeps "Happy, TX".

    I go to the "news" section and increase the number of stories from 3 to 5 and, nope, it keeps 3.

    I go add a "gmail" section and it does nothing?

    Is this thing working at all? I can't seem to be able to save / configure anything.

  • Because... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by pickyouupatnine (901260)
    "... Of course since Slashdot is already available from their default list of technology sites, why would you need the ability to include an RSS feed? ..." .. Because replies like this one make Slashdot useless from time to time, and sometimes its fun to read what other sites like The Register and The BBC have to say ;).

  • awesome (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fender_rock (824741)
    awesome, now i dont even have to search on google for my torrents if i can add the rss feeds!
    too bad limewire doesnt have rss feeds for its files...

  • Not updated (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tyrsenus (858934)
    To bad when you add /. to your homepage the news links aren't updated real-time. This article doesn't even appear as of the time I'm writing this!

  • Slashdot feed (Score:5, Funny)

    by soboroff (91667) on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:17AM (#13164739)

    It's good to be reminded that Slashdot is a Technology, not a Lifestyle.

  • highly editorialized? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by supernova87a (532540) <kepler1NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:24AM (#13164792)
    I'm not complaining about Google's choices of feeds on the personalized homepage, because I actually like what they've offered -- but I can see how someone else might be offended at their editorial judgment. For example, (at least in the previous version, maybe also this one) the news choices were NYT, BBC, and other (generally) reputable sources. Now they also have Washington Post and others.

    But I can see how someone might see this as liberal bias. "Where's my Washington Times, or Fox News feed??" And then some people will complain the other way -- "How come I can't get my Democracy Now feed on the home page??"

    Maybe I just take the position that I like their choices and to those who complain about not having their own right-wing news feeds available, I say, go and create your own Google, losers. On the other hand, is it dangerous for one company to filter the available options so dramatically? You don't have to use their homepage, but when one provider is so dominant, you can't avoid issues like that...

    ps. I believe the page now lets you input your own choice of xml feeds...
  • One feature I noticed on the new personalized Google site was that you can add your own RSS feed. Google should integrate this into their toolbar (like Yahoo's toolbar), in case some users aren't really sure how to find the RSS file associated with each website. Instead, the toolbar should recognize that an RSS feed is available and a button should appear stating something like "Add this RSS feed to Personal Google page".
  • Given GOOG [yahoo.com] stock is at all time high, my question is how does Google plan to make money with these free products?

    Google can not really commercialize this portal with the fear of getting sued [finfacts.com] by the news media.

    Or does it think that by giving away these freebies, it would attract more users to their search engine which seems to be the primary source of all their profits.

    Can anyone justify the price for google stock?
  • ... if someone could write a firefox plugin to sync bookmarks to and from the google personal page. That way all my firefox instances will have a consistent set of bookmarks.

    Currently they have a plugin that syncs to an FTP server. This is cool but not everyone has a web-accessible ftp server handy. Everyone can, however, personalize their google account.

    -- /* no comment */

  • Wiki's (Score:3, Informative)

    by r2q2 (50527) <zitterbewegung.gmail@com> on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:43AM (#13164943) Homepage
    Some people have community based wiki's that they might want to be updated on for recent changes.

  • won't work with customize google ff extension (Score:5, Informative)

    by frieked (187664) on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:45AM (#13164954) Homepage Journal
    If you are running the customize google firefox extension these new features will work very poorly or not at all depending on what preferences you have set. Just an FYI for anyone having problems.

  • Ask Yahoo! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mlk (18543) <{moc.liamg} {ta} ... l.dyoll.leahcim}> on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:57AM (#13165083) Homepage Journal
    I love it. Ask Yahoo on Google.

    • adding rss feeds is new. Before you only had a few selections of the sites that google would let you add. Now you can add whatever you want, as long as there is an rss feed

    • Re:How freaking difficult is this? (Score:5, Funny)

      by badfish99 (826052) on Tuesday July 26 2005, @09:28AM (#13164823)
      "It's" = "It is". The possessive is "its". Why is that so freaking difficult to grasp?

      Because it's illogical: most other possessives have an apostrophe. And a short survey of modern English usage (as seen, for example, on Slashdot) will tell you that the usage is changing: quite possibly the apostrophe in the possessive "it's" will be the norm in a few years time.

      Still, I'm glad you're not pompous.

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