Now with iGoogle video chat, the threat of the unwanted video chat is even more constant. For many iGoogle users, opening the main page is similar to opening a morning newspaper. Imagine opening your news feeds and having your boss or mother-in-law call you when you least expect it. Egad! We'll have to keep our homes clean, brush our hair and put on respectable clothing. And what about home office productivity? All of those precious morning minutes we spent mentally prepping for phone interviews will now be spent picking out an appropriate shirt.

If you're the kind of upstanding citizen that gets dressed before 10:00 am, install the iGoogle voice and video chat plug in and try it out. But if you're a nudist, self-employed hermit or hopeless slob, consider holding off until the community has established guidelines for etiquette.

All iGoogle users in the U.S. will get access to these gadgets over the course of this week and Google plans to expand the reach of these social gadgets beyond the U.S. and Australia in the near future.

iGoogle as Google's Social Hub?

On the surface, this doesn't seem like a major announcement. However, while Google is slowly building out its repertoire of services that leverage the OpenSocial platform, the company never really tied all of these services together. With this announcement, though, it looks like iGoogle could become the central hub for social activities on Google's ecosystem. After all, iGoogle already knows who your friends are because it can tap into your Google Contacts, where you can manage your friends by adding them to the "Friends" group.

Keeping Up With Your Friends

iGoogle currently offers two interesting ways to keep up with your friends' activity: a timeline and an 'updates' feed. The timeline even allows users to post Facebook-like status updates. The good thing about the update stream is that users can see their friends' activity on iGoogle, even if they don't have a specific gadget installed themselves.

Social Gadgets

The current crop of gadgets is interesting in its own right. The ToDo gadget, for example, allows you to share a list of chores with your family members. Electronic Arts developed a nice version of Scrabble for iGoogle and the NPR gadget allows you to share news stories with your friends.

Another outstanding gadget is the YouTube gadget, which allows you to easily share interesting video clips with your friends. The problem here, though, is that the gadget doesn't directly tie in to your activity on YouTube itself. When you share something on the actual YouTube website, it doesn't automatically appear in your iGoogle gadget. This seems like a missed opportunity and exemplifies the problems Google still faces as it tries to centralize its users' social activities across the large variety of services it offers.

The fact that there is no social Google Reader gadget for iGoogle so far also feels like a missed opportunity. While the Google Reader team has been adding more social features to its product, a stronger integration with iGoogle would really take this to the next level. We can only hope that an enterprising gadget developer will soon create this link between iGoogle and Google Reader.

Lots of Potential

Overall, we get the feeling that these social gadgets have a lot of potential, but it will take some work from third-party developers to really make the most out of this opportunity. The 18 social gadgets Google released today definitely make iGoogle a more attractive start page and it will be interesting to see what gadgets developers will come up with. Google itself, however, still has to work on creating a more integrated experience.

But today it appears that Google has changed their mind and has decided to give smartphone users their own unique experience yet again. On the Google Mobile blog, they've announced a new-and-improved version of iGoogle, this time designed for both iPhone and Android users.

According to the announcement, the new iGoogle mobile site is faster and easier to use than before. This version also finally supports the user-created tabs where many of you have sorted your content and gadgets into different categories for organizational purposes. The first three tabs appear at the top of the screen and then a drop-down list ("more tabs") is available for accessing the rest.

Perhaps the killer feature of the new iGoogle mobile site is its support for Google gadgets. Although not all gadgets are supported - those using Flash, for example, don't work (thanks, Apple!) - Google supports most of your favorite gadgets, including those built by third-party developers. You can also rearrange these gadgets on the mobile site without affecting the layout of your iGoogle desktop version.

For those of you using feed-based gadgets like Google Reader, the new iGoogle mobile site features an in-line display of articles which allows you to read the summaries without having to leaving the iGoogle web page. In other words, it's a very functional mini feed reader, just like the gadget you're used to from the non-mobile homepage.

User start pages like MyYahoo, iGoogle, and Netvibes may have already seen their heyday come and go when it comes to our desktop and laptop PCs...especially since the invention of the tabbed web browser lets us set multiple homepages for easy access to all our most-visited sites. However, on the mobile, there's more need for a one-stop-shop type of portal and today Google delivers just what we needed.

To try the new iGoogle for yourself, go to igoogle.com from your mobile browser (iPhone and Android only) and then click the link "Try the new Mobile iGoogle!" to see the new version.

The Google gadget called What's Popular came to our attention thanks to Steve Rubel's blog Micro Persusion. His take is that it has the potential to rival Digg. While we think that might be a bit ambitious, we definitely think the gadget is a lot of fun.

Voting on stories is just as easily. Pagination is automatic, so you just scroll down the list, clicking on stories you want to read and voting stuff up or down as you please. More stories appear as you scroll so there's effectively no bottom. The widget keeps track of all the items you voted on (making voting another form of bookmarking) and also all the URLs you submitted along with how popular they have become. If you maximize the widget, more options are revealed, like the ability to sort by story, image or video, and by date or popularity.

That's about it. Quick to load, endless supply of interesting links, ability to vote - ok, it does sound a little like Digg. However, there's a key component missing: commentary. Your opinion can only be made with your vote (and, I guess, the 'report abuse' button). There's no way of providing any additional web resources, opinions, or, well, anything. Plus, it's hard for us to see how a widget that is competing for screen real-estate with a stock ticker and a twitter client will take down a community site like Digg.

StumbleUpon, on the other hand, may want to watch this one carefully.

In addition to displaying account balances, this new gadget, now available for download from Fidelity Labs, can also be configured to display alerts on certain account-related activities, including trade notifications and price trigger alerts. Customers can choose to either add the Secure Gadget as a standalone gadget or they can click a button to add a customized Fidelity Tab to their iGoogle. The tab includes the gadget itself, plus two RSS feeds from Fidelity: Fidelity Investor's Weekly and Fidelity Investment Insight Podcast.

Fidelity iGoogle tab (click to view larger):

To use the gadget, customers log in using their SSN or Customer ID and PIN, as they would do online. That information is not saved on Google's servers on any other 3rd party servers, says Fidelity.

The Fidelity Labs web site states that they developed the gadget, but it looks to us like it came from WorkLight, an enterprise 2.0 startup whose banking 2.0 survey data we reviewed earlier this year. At that time, the survey results showed that nearly half of the respondents said they would use web 2.0 tools if offered by their current bank. We also took note of the secure banking gadgets they had under development - gadgets that greatly resemble this one from Fidelity - which we considered to be very promising technology.

The release of Fidelity's gadget may hint at the beginnings of a new trend in banking - making banking 2.0 mainstream. Along with numerous web 2.0 services for managing finances, many of today's banking customers can manage their money from their mobile phones while other customers are receiving personalized recommendations on their iPhones, as well. However, none of the services offered so far have the potential for mainstreaming banking 2.0 the way a Google homepage gadget could. It's already a technology most everyone is familiar with and it's being offered by the financial institution itself, which should help customers feel comfortable about its security. We hope more financial institutions will start offering gadgets of their own in the near future.

YourMinis was a start-page service like no other, but its feature richness and happy users fall victim to the cold business logic that so many cool startups face after being acquired. YourMinis is now primarily used to power advertising widgets for AOL, a practice that will continue but pales in comparison to the beautiful topical pages its users built with the full service over the last several years.

As several upset users pointed out in the blog post announcing the service's closure, though, none of these services are quite like YourMinis. The Flash interface, while disliked by some critics as all things Flash are, allowed fans greater flexibility in visual design.

Few if any of the many start-page startups have succeeded in their vision of becoming mini-publishing houses for users building content aggregation pages that are then shared with the world. See our interview last year with Dan Cohen, who has lead the team at Pageflakes, iGoogle and MyYahoo, for a great look into the start-page world.

All too often, this is how it goes in startup land. You fall in love with an innovative little service, you give it your attention, then it gets scooped up by a big player and everyone is happy until the acquiring company turns it into an ad network for crappy pop music and 3rd rate movies and then shuts down the original service you loved.

If you're addicted to the fringe startup start-page experience, check out recent sites bookmarked "startpage" in Del.icio.us. In between the big guys, you'll find some innovative little players there. The nice thing about RSS services like this is that it's not hard to move at least your reading list from one service to another. The user experience though, as YourMinis users no doubt are aware, is much harder to reproduce.

Update: AOL emailed the following response.

Goowy is not shutting down
yourminis, but has made a decision to close the startpage and remove
some of the functionality of the gallery. Goowy's core focus is creating
widgets and working with developers to create widgets that can live and
work on sites across the Web, including startpages such as iGoogle,
myAOL and Netvibes. By shutting down the yourminis startpage and some
of the functionality of the gallery, Goowy can continue to focus on its
core business -- developing new widgets.

I thought there might be some confusion about yourminis/Goowy shutting
down completely based on the headline of your post, and want to make
sure it's clear that it is just the startpage and gallery functionality.

In many ways, the reactions from Google's users are quite typical. As Lou Cabron points out, since Google updated iGoogle, its users have started the obligatory online petition that urges Google to allow users to keep the old version of iGoogle, created Greasemonkey scripts to roll the layout back themselves, and started a Facebook group that protests 'forced website redesigns' in general.

On Google's own discussion board, users posted the phone numbers and email addresses of a number of Google engineers and product mangers involved in the iGoogle project.

Most users especially disliked the move of the tabs from the top of the page into a sidebar on the left of the screen.

Not Just Google: Yahoo Profiles

Google was not the only company suffering from this over the weekend. While the New York Times lauded Yahoo for only making small, incremental changes to its homepage, Yahoo's radical switch to a new profile page (while also resetting everybody's profile at the same time) upset quite a few of its users. Yahoo's own blog post about the switch has over 600 negative comments.

Give Users the Option to Go Back

Users, for many reasons, tend to resist change. Even though it is often only a very vocal minority that really takes issue with these changes, companies need to take these complaints seriously.

As more software moves into the cloud, one of the most lauded aspects of cloud computing - the fact that a company can quickly make updates to a product - can now also become a publicity nightmare.

Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google usually allow users to use the old version of their more popular online products for a while after a new version is released. Lately, however, we have spoken to quite a few product managers who were quite adamant that their new product was so far superior to their old offering that they were planning to release it to all of their users without a roll-back option. Judging from the user reactions both Google and Yahoo saw over the weekend, it would seem that they do so at their own peril.

The Periscope Gadget allows users to control multiple Basecamp accounts from their iGoogle homepage. The gadget provides access to Basecamp activity and allows users to add and manage time entries, download files, and more. The design for the Periscope Gadget is simple and effective, with hover-over link effects to keep the interface as simple as possible without leaving out important details. On the downside, the gadget does not allow you to leave comments on an entry nor add/complete "to-do" items. It has been noted that the team behind Periscope is working hard to bring these features to users. The gadget is accessible from iGoogle, Windows desktops with Google Gadgets installed, and the iPhone for easy on-the-go access.

Allowing Access to Basecamp

To allow the Periscope Gadget to access your Basecamp account read the following instructions or watch this screencast:

"1. Login to your own Basecamp account. Your URL will be something like http://yourdomain.updatelog.com/ or any of the 5 domains that 37 signals owns (updatelog.com, grouphub.com, clientsection.com, seework.com, projectpath.com) and you'll need to use the username and password that you chose when you signed up with them. 2. Click on the Account (Upgrade/Billing) tab. 3. Scroll all the way down on the new page. 4. Close to the bottom is a "Basecamp API" section. Click on the check box that is labelled "I've read and agree to the Basecamp terms of service..." -- you should actually click on the terms of service and read them. 5. Click on the button that says "Yes, please enable the Basecamp API for this account" -- wait a few seconds, and voila! You're done! Basecamp API access is enabled!"

If you think the Periscope Gadget is worth a try or if you're already using Periscope in iGoogle, let us know your thoughts on the iGoogle gadget in the comments sections.

Google has also updated the iGoogle interface and a number of content providers have updated their gadgets to make better use of the canvas view as well.

The Gmail gadget now allows you to perform some of the most common email tasks, including actions like send or reply to messages without having to leave the iGoogle page (though you can also launch the full Gmail client from iGoogle).

Google Reader Integration

iGoogle now makes use of Google Reader's interface for browsing your RSS feeds. Thanks to this, iGoogle users can now share items directly from iGoogle and browse through their feeds just like they would in the regular Google Reader.

Other Updates: No More Tabs

Google has also made some changes to the iGoogle interface. The tabs at the top of the page have now been replaced with a navigation bar on the left side of the screen, for example. This is especially useful if you use a lot of gadgets that make use of the canvas view.

Some content providers like the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have also updated their gadgets to make use of the full-screen canvas view.

It's all About the Canvas

Google is clearly positioning iGoogle as a one-stop resource for all Google products. So far, it shared its fate with most other similar services like Netvibes. It was a good homepage for your browser, but the gadgets and widgets on the site didn't provide enough functionality to keep you coming back during the day. Now, iGoogle is basically becoming an interface to the rest of Google's product line and has instantly become far more useful.

If you're using the Gmail widget in iGoogle, you can now maximize the widget box and get a full view of your Gmail account. Users can star messages, compose new eamils, and more. The only downside to this widget is that there is no access to your labels.

Google Reader Integration

Google Reader integration works a little differently from the Gmail integration. For feeds that you subscribe to in Google Reader, but also display in iGoogle as a separate widget, you can maximize the widget box for Google Reader style viewing. In this view you can also check your other feeds in Google Reader. This view seems to be only available for RSS subscriptions in both Google Reader and iGoogle.

Click to Enlarge

Gchat

You can now talk to your friends in iGoogle with the Gchat sidebar widget. Just be careful when refreshing the page because you may lose your ongoing conversations. Also, Firefox and Safari users will not have this feature at the moment. The chat widget will only display in Internet Explorer.

Click to Enlarge

Preview the New iGoogle

To preview the new iGoogle simply head to the iGoogle homepage and paste the following in the address bar:

javascript:_dlsetp('v2=1');

To revert back to the previous iGoogle simply paste the following:

javascript:_dlsetp('v2=0');

This is is by far one of the best integrations I've seen from Google and it looks as if it'll only get better as time goes on. I'd love to see the same integration style applied to other Google services such as Google Analytics and Picasa Photo Albums. For now, these new features and integrations have pulled me in as a new fan of iGoogle.

We have no idea what the "final network" will be, but it certainly seems to hint at the further social networkification of iGoogle. We think that's smart. In May of last year we theorized that start pages were very well suited to take on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. "Whereas Facebook is just launching their platform," we wrote at the time, "Netvibes and Pageflakes each already have an evolved and popular platform ecosystem in place. What they lack is the social scene." We called adding social interactivity features to start pages the "next logical step" for those companies.

A couple of months later, it appeared that taking on social networks was exactly what Pageflakes and Netvibes were planning to do. "Start pages will challenge the existing social networks - it's almost evolutionary for them to become social networks," wrote Richard MacManus.

In July, we laid out a plan to fix Yahoo! that revolved around building out a developer platform for their web-leading start page, MyYahoo! The final step of our plan was to make the platform social.

And just last week, Pageflakes was acquired by LiveUniverse, a move that we saw as a step toward the further socialization of Pageflakes. "Along with [MySpace founder Brad] Greenspan, LiveUniverse has original MySpace engineer Toan Nguyen on its management team. That's some serious chops in the area of social networking, which is where Pageflakes has been heading since ... last July," we wrote.

Google's announcement today may just kick off an industry wide trend toward turning start page properties into social networks -- often, as Google goes, so goes the web. That makes a lot of sense. Start pages generally already have rich developer ecosystems with many useful apps, and because they act as "first stops" for many users, they're already sticky. Adding in social networking functions just increases utility for users.