Ultracool iGoogle Widgets

Homepages are not the same anymore. Gagan did a story a while ago on cool AJAX-powered startup pages – or mashups, if that’s what you prefer to call them. I like iGoogle the best, and would recommend signing up pronto. Once you’re signed in, you can attach widgets and customize the home page to suit your tastes. The best way is to create tabs for each aspect of your life, such as a general tab with widgets for time, email, weather, reminders, etc… and then create customized ones for work and play.

Now I’m not going to recommend rubbish widgets such as daily horoscopes or Microsoft Outlook. It’s ‘play’ I’m interested in, so let’s look at some audio-video widgets. I tend to waste a lot of my time fooling around on my home page, so let me pass on the addiction by showing you some of the coolest iGoogle widgets ever. (Note that these are not for Google Desktop – those are slightly different.) Once you sign up (a one-minute process), you can add widgets or themes by simply clicking the ‘personalize’ link on the top right.

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Last.fm Radio Station
The most important thing for anyone who can’t do without music while working. This widget is a stripped-down version of the uber-cool online radio site, and basically represent the flash player they have. It works exactly by the site’s principles: you type the artist’s name in the box and the radio starts playing music from that space, including music from the artist you mentioned. Here’s a secret: If the website is blocked at your workplace, use the widget – it works perfectly.

Soma.fm
This is another awesome radio station widget that represents the original site. Soma is THE place to discover underground artists, and is often better than Last.fm. The only thing is that the playlist is generated by them; you can’t choose an artist or change the track. But you get some killer radio stations such as Secret Agent (spy movie music), Cliqhop (IDM, glitch), Sonic Universe (avant garde jazz), Tag’s Trip (trance) etc.

The caveat with these two widgets, or any online radio station for that matter, is a compromise on sound quality. Soma has an option to opt for AAC streaming, though that’s on the site, not the widget.

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Official YouTube Gadget
YouTube naturally has a widget for Google; after all, it’s all in the family. I think the widget is better than the site itself, as you type the video name in the search, get yourself a nice long list, click and spend the time. No comments, flash animations, nothing.

Guitar Chord Finder
This is for anyone learning guitar (or not); it’s a neat tool with a guitar fret board laid out face up. You can click individual notes and press ‘play’ to hear how they sound. It is very useful for learning new chords, and to MIDI-program a software synth. Music producers who can‘t play any instrument (there are lots of them) should check this out, to see how guitar chords position themselves and how they sound. Overall it’s a great fun tool for the musically inclined.

Cricket
How can you not have a cricket game in your repository of slack? This one is a quick and light game, and even if the gameplay is a bit stupid, it’s fun. It’s a better option than solitaire for sure. There are lots of widgets for flash games available, but you have to navigate away from your homepage most of the time (so what’s the use of a homepage then?) In this game you get to choose your teams and use the arrow keys to whack the ball around.

These are just a few of the widgets available. There are actually over 20,000, but many of them aren’t up to the mark, or useful at all. Look around and let us know if you stumble on any favorites.