15 iGoogle Gadgets for Web Worker Productivity
September 5th, 2007 (6:00am) Leo Babauta 51 Comments
While there are still many who love Netvibes, iGoogle has its share of fans in the start page world. And with more than 25,000 gadgets available for iGoogle, the array of choices is sometimes overwhelming.
Choose wisely, and iGoogle can be a great tool for productive web work of any kind. But put too many fun gadgets and games on your start page, and your productive time will go down the drain.
Instead of scrolling and searching through 25,000 gadgets, we’ve found 15 of the best that you can choose from to increase productivity.
1. Today list. This isn’t actually a specific gadget, but an idea for how to use one. Choose from among the many to-do list gadgets available (whichever works best for you) and call it your “Today list”. Now only write down the 3-4 most important things you need to do today, and use that to drive you to get those things done.
2. iReminder. This is an insanely useful gadget from Todoist (maker of the useful to-do list service) that allows you to set reminders that can be sent to your mobile device, email or Twitter.
3. Timesheet recorder. Freelancers and independent contractors need an easy way to keep track of their time. What easier way than through an iGoogle gadget?
4. Procrastinator’s clock. You’re habitually and continually late for everything. You procrastinate on procrastinating. You need this clock, which could be up to 15 minutes early … or might not.
5. My earnings. Enter your data into the gadget, and it calculates your earnings by the millisecond.
6. Google Analytics. If you have a blog or website, you like to keep track of your stats. You know you do. Instead of opening Analytics every 5 minutes, just leave the gadget on your home page.
7. Google services. If you’re like me and use a lot of Google services, get their gadgets (or put them in the compound gadget below): Gmail, Google Reader, GCal, Google Docs, Google Talk. It’s extremely useful to have them all in one place.
8. Compound gadget. Clean up your iGoogle page by combining several gadgets into one tabbed gadget. It makes things much more organized.
9. World clocks. As web workers, we often work with people from across the globe. And figuring out what time it is for them can be a hassle. No longer, with this set of world clocks on your start page.
10. Document to PDF. Need to create PDFs often? This tool makes it quick.
11. Microsoft Outlook. If you use Outlook, put your inbox and calendar on iGoogle with this gadget.
12. Days since. This gadget tells you how many days since any event you enter. While this can have many, many uses, one of the most productive uses is following up on things such as invoices — you’ll always know how many days have elapsed since you sent an invoice.
13. Web stickies. Add stickies to your home page for quick little notes on anything. Very useful.
14. Activity tracker. An extremely useful gadget that allows you to track how much time you spend on multiple activities.
15. Make your own gadget. If you can’t find the gadget you want, Google created a wizard that allows you to create your own, using seven templates, including ones for photos, a countdown, lists, You Tube and more.
What’s your favorite iGoogle gadget? Let us know in the comments.
51 Comments Post your own comment
Amie Gillingham says: September 5th, 2007 8:51am
does this post mean we should feel guilty for the time-waster fun gadget we’re currently adapting for iGoogle? ;)
(will post a linky dink once we release it)
aniMOte says: September 5th, 2007 9:23am
I’m still not a fan of iGoogle.
Matt says: September 5th, 2007 9:55am
Wow, iRemind looks really cool, might be just the thing I need to replace the wonderful reminder service on Backpack (as I don’t really want to pay $5/mo anymore). Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work for me. I enter in times like 1:45pm and 2pm and it sets the reminder for 6:01pm and 6:16pm. Odd eh? Anyone else have this problem?
M
eLearning Service » Blog Archive » Tech links for September 5, 2007 says: September 5th, 2007 10:14am
[...] more than 25,000 gadgets you could potentially put on your iGoogle start page. Web Worker Daily shares their list of the 15 best gadgets to increase [...]
Business Hacks » Make Your Homepage Work For You on BNET says: September 5th, 2007 3:01pm
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kiran mova says: September 5th, 2007 6:35pm
Google has been my home page.. since forever and naturally am a big fan of iGoogle. My widgets include : google calendar which is my reminder and todo list, gmail, google bookmarks, and google custom search engine. apart from these, my front page includes dilbert, quote of the day and word of the day.
I am a web developer and i have a tab with web development widgets like open source web design, web reference news, web design from scratch and css remix.
links for 2007-09-06 « Poetic Geek says: September 6th, 2007 12:24am
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SearchPartner says: September 6th, 2007 4:51am
Excellent collection. Thanks!
Niti says: September 6th, 2007 7:45am
I started using “Activity Tracker” after it was featured on lifehacker.com. I’am glad it was mentioned here as well. I just love the gadget. I’am pretty sure most of you like me need to fill timesheets at the end of the week and is always a pain. It made my job really simple. I especially liked the alert and graph feature.
bueller says: September 6th, 2007 12:41pm
i just starting using (by just i mean yesterday) google docs and google calendar and of course iGoogle. this could be the most helpful post i have ever encountered. you are awesome
http://www.drunkenpanda.com
links for 2007-09-06 | blog.ftofani.com // blog de felipe tofani says: September 6th, 2007 1:20pm
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Jessica says: September 6th, 2007 11:09pm
i heart igoogle! :)
links for 2007-09-08 says: September 7th, 2007 7:23pm
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Someone says: September 8th, 2007 9:13am
Got a most productive list for Netvibes?
Peter Kahn says: September 8th, 2007 9:56am
I have been jonesing for a GTD like web gadget for some time. Activity tracker is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks…
Jeremy says: September 8th, 2007 10:01am
I love iGoogle. Thanks for the article. What about Remember the Milk, and Box.net? Anyone use them?
Two Cent Daily says: September 8th, 2007 10:41am
iGoogle Top 15
Over at Web Wo …
jason says: September 8th, 2007 2:22pm
This widget is really useful:
Email Scheduler
It creates an email scheduler, which has to be the easiest way to find a good time to gather your people together for a meeting, or for fun, or whatever. The widget composes and lays out a time-line / participant grid which gets forwarded along to all involved and filled out. Really simple and effective.
-j
jp says: September 9th, 2007 9:51am
remenber to the milk gadget
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Klondike says: September 10th, 2007 6:56am
I’ve gotten pretty numb to Top 10 productivity lists, but this one was above average. A lot of these were new to me, and I’m a long time iGoogle user. Sweet, good post.
Trevor says: September 10th, 2007 9:22am
Great list. I have used iGoogle for a while and have not heard of some of these. I might as well plug my gadget. There is no productivity value in it. If you are a fan of the television show ‘The Office’ check it out: http://trevdev.com/theoffice/ggoffice.xml
Matthew says: September 10th, 2007 6:01pm
Thanks. I think this is great. Can’t wait to see the top 30.
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GMAFan says: September 28th, 2007 11:22am
Yes, I too love to have igoogle as startpage. But although there is alot of gadgets its hard to find the ones you want. Google’s gadget directory tries to put them in categories, and Google modules uses tags, but I would like to see more third party gadget directories such as the Google Mini Apps directory, and why not use both tags and categories? Neither Google Mini Apps or Google Modules uses both.
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Jody Florian says: December 23rd, 2007 11:16am
TimeGadget is a productivity tool which logs your time spent on projects, clients, tasks and exports to excel.
Gadget Badger says: January 2nd, 2008 4:39pm
I’m blowing my own trumpet here, but I’d add the Ultrasearchula Gadget to that list. I produced it to cut down on having to visit all the sites I search. It’s proved to be a great productivity tool for me.
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GMAFan says: March 10th, 2008 3:32am
I said this in an earlier comment: “…third party gadget directories such as the Google Mini Apps directory, and why not use both tags and categories? Neither Google Mini Apps or Google Modules uses both.”
It does seem like Google Mini Apps now use both categories and tags.
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