[PLUG-TALK] Build your own start page to replace iGoogle?

[Keith Lofstrom]

I have a love-hate relationship with iGoogle - I get
to customize my start page, but Google recustomizes it
with crap I don't need, extra space-wasting pixels for
decoration, etc.  And now we are told that Google is
pulling the plug on iGoogle in November 2013.

The thing is, most of the things iGoogle paints on my screen
could be done /without/ Google, as a local start page written
in javascript and jquery, which reaches out to the web only
as needed.  Many of the resources I care about (calendar,
man pages, sticky notes), don't need web access at all.
Other things I use frequently, like bus schedules, local
library searches, worldcat, addall, etc. don't have an
"iGoogle presence" now.

Indeed, I can imagine a local start page accessing resources
that should NOT be on the web, for example status information
for all my machines, password file access, etc.   Much local
information could be massaged into html at frequent intervals
by background daemons, and available as local files that only
my browser can get at.

I could spend a month or so writing my own start page code,
but I imagine that some combination of applets and a stripped
down html editor would make this process a lot easier and
faster for average users.  The design process itself could
be running on a remote server,  though I suspect it would be
safer as a locally run app.  

If I can imagine it, so can somebody else.  Is there something
like a start page design tool already out there?  Is there 
some reason why this would be a bad idea?  Is somebody looking
for a business, selling tools that take away Google's "retail"
business, turning them into one of many bulk search wholesalers?

----

Google is developing the regrettable tendency to ignore more and
more of the world around it, abandoning big swaths of users in
its drive to be flashy and superficial and present one uniform
face to the world.  It's the web, I don't see why Google needs
to be uniform - they can offer many different experiences. 

This creates opportunities for new companies, which can get fat
and happy on Google's abandoned former users.  Chances are, in
a decade or so, those new companies will grow to replace Google.
Observe carefully - this is how big companies commit suicide.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs