How to Sign Up for iGoogle

Series Summary

If you are interested in spicing up your personal Google page, then iGoogle is the application for you. This internet program allows you to customize your desktop with photos, videos, timers and a number of themed interfaces. You can also add easter eggs to your page, such as the loch ness monster that shows up in the beach theme. iGoogle (previously known as Google Personalized Homepage) first came out in May 2005 and was expanded in April of 2007.

In this series of internet application videos, our expert will tell you everything you need to know about iGoogle. He begins with an overview of the interface, then tells you how to choose a theme and search for gadgets. The gadget categories include news, tools, communication, fun and games, finance, sports, lifestyle, politics, and technology; Drew Noah demonstrates how to use them all. You will also find out how to create tabs and even your own custom gadgets.

Video Transcript

"DREW NOAH: So in this series, I'll be talking about iGoogle which is basically a personalized homepage from Google that you know includes Google Search like you can see at the top there and everything you can do with Google.com, but what makes it cool is all these things you can personalize with it--these little gadgets is what they call them and there's just a ton out there to pick from and you can even create tabs to arrange your gadgets in a certain way. Just looking at some of the ones I set up here, the YouTube videos, this day in history, a language translator, driving directions, a Wikipedia search, this multi search, searching Dictionary.com, search eBay. So there's just tons of different things you can do with an iGoogle and personalizing your homepage with a bunch of these gadgets that of course will--are always updating if there's something like this YouTube gadget, they'll always be updating or they might do something like search a particular website like all these other ones do. So, to get started, you probably want a Google account. So, you know, you want to get an account so you can save your set up and see it every time you go again. So if you have a Gmail account, you already have a Google account. So just sign in to your Gmail before you go to google.com/ig. But if you need to sign up for an account, well just go to sign in at the top, that is after you go to Google.com/ig just--again and if you don't have a Google account, you click right here to create one. And you'll need to enter an email address, password, dual word verification then you want to read through the terms of service and if you agree, hit "I accept. Create my account." So you can create just a Google account or if you want, create a Gmail account. So you could go to Gmail.com and create an account that way. Then you'll be able to use Gmail and Google calendar, two other really great products from Google. But in this series, I'll show you how to use iGoogle and everything you can do with it."