Is iGoogle the uber customizable / personalizable portal?
May 15, 2007 Leave a comment
Well, when I was working at Microsoft, I hoped not. I wanted us to get there first. 😉
It’s not any more functional than MyMSN, but is a logical next step; but what’s next-next? At what point is will this extend to other devices and include data from outside a walled garden?
I referred to this paradigm in “What do you call the uber personalized site for information snacking?“, “The next thing: Minis, Flakes, et. al“, “The User at the Center” and most recently “Information Snacking in the real world“.
In these posts, I’m guessing this concept would emerge as the next big thing on the web: a ‘blank slate’ where users could connect to the data that matters to them, no matter the source.
I christened the concept “Information Snacking“, describing a user-centric view of a user’s own data, aggregated from multiple sources; likely outside the sources’ native interfaces. Data that is available on multiple devices through layers of abstraction.
Heh. See why I call it “Information Snacking”? The description is practically a thesis.
In a few words, your data, when and where you want it:
- You might use Yahoo! mail as your primary email account.
- You might have oft-traveled cities and want to monitor weather.
- You might use Flickr for your online photo storage (I use Live Spaces).
- You might have a few favorite RSS feeds.
The page that can pull all these sources together will win the much-coveted Home Page position on all my browsers. It might also net a blog post or twenty-two.
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