Confessions of an iGoogle User
I admit it. I was one of the 7.1 million users of the ill-fated service, iGoogle. For over eight years, Google offered a quick glance of your favorite news feeds on a customizable, fast loading, and ad-free homepage. Similar to Reader's fate a few months earlier, Google retired the service in November 2013, leaving its users to look for alternatives.
For the past few months, I have tried a number of these alternatives. Unfortunately, most are either riddled with ads or exist as JavaScript heavyweights. Ad Block Plus can remove most of the ads, but it often leaves giant holes on the page. Because I set the page as my homepage, I also don't like waiting for the browser to load every JavaScript library know to man just to render the page's "Web 2.0" layout.
Luckily, I'm a developer - a developer with an itch. Therefore, Pipedot now offers a user-customizable feed page! An example feed page can be seen here or you can go to your Pipedot user-page at http://yourusername.pipedot.org/ to set up your own page.
For the past few months, I have tried a number of these alternatives. Unfortunately, most are either riddled with ads or exist as JavaScript heavyweights. Ad Block Plus can remove most of the ads, but it often leaves giant holes on the page. Because I set the page as my homepage, I also don't like waiting for the browser to load every JavaScript library know to man just to render the page's "Web 2.0" layout.
Luckily, I'm a developer - a developer with an itch. Therefore, Pipedot now offers a user-customizable feed page! An example feed page can be seen here or you can go to your Pipedot user-page at http://yourusername.pipedot.org/ to set up your own page.
Checking in on it made me notice their home page looks a lot better than before, and their search engine delivered better results than I was expecting.
Not sure what their new CEO is doing, but she's doing something right and I hope she continues to do more of it.