Googlitarianism

After wasting large chunks of my time in 2006 flying over mountains and volcanoes with Google Earth, I’ve now become seriously addicted to Google’s latest bit of web wizziness – iGoogle.

iGoogle lets you customise your search page with snippets from your favourite websites. It means that you can have everything on one page.

The information you can paste onto iGoogle is almost limitless and ranges from regular BBC news, to the weather, to your gmail inbox.

You can also download a whole bunch of fun stuff. So, next to your latest financial stocks you can have a cutdown version of the original Pacman, complete with old-skool sound effects.

Speaking of stocks and shares, there is a function on Google Finance that makes other online financial pages look decidedly 2D. Beside the graph displaying share prices there are letters, and when you click on them, news stories appear that explain why the shares crashed or soared. It makes tracking your share options even more exciting.

You can also add tabs that place related news and stories into one section – mine feature sustainability, construction and Gillingham FC. Or you can add Google News Feeds, which are based on your choice of key word.

Of course, the Building news feed should feature on your home page. This can be found by clicking on “Add stuff” and typing “Building” into the keyword search. You’ll find us halfway down the page, past the Body Building and Building Muscle news.