Protopage

Originally, I used Yahoo! as my home page. However, I never liked how everything sort of got clumped together with ads and other things that just made it seem overly cluttered and without any sort of purpose. When Google released iGoogle, I switched to that because I could finally create tabs of information, separate out things I wanted to see, and keep some sanity on my home page.

Google recently announced that they are doing away with iGoogle in November of 2013. At first I was upset by this, as I had used iGoogle for a number of years as my home page and it displayed information in a way that made sense to me. I had a lot of control over the display and how I saw and interacted with the data I wanted. But, now, I'm thanking them for making this decision, as it has turned me onto Protopage.

My wife sent me a link to an article that gave the pros and cons of both NetVibes and Protopage as good iGoogle replacements. After reading the article, I decided to try Protopage and see if I could recreate what I had in iGoogle quickly and easily. If I could not, or didn't like how it worked or what I had when I was done, I was going to move on and try NetVibes. However, I was able to easily recreate every tab I had in iGoogle with more color choices, more column choices, and more freedom of where and how I placed the widgets and gadgets of information. I was able to recreate all but two of the widget I had in iGoogle, and those two are really just "would be nice" ones (seeing my stock portfolio via Google's own stock ticker widget and the Dailyhoroscope.com widget that I can't seem to find a replacement for in Protopage... yet). Protopage allowed me even greater freedom.

I now have some widgets spread over multiple columns. I have at least four columns on each tab, and five on a couple (iGoogle couldn't do more than four, and had best results for three or fewer columns). There is even an option for manual placement anywhere on the page! I have color themes for each tab so that I can tell at a glance which one I'm on, and I am actually now using more widgets and gadgets than before, as I found it so easy to add them. There is a search tool at the top right that I customized to the things I most often search (Google, IMDb, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Yahoo), and there are literally about 100 more I could turn on if I wanted to -- but I don't see a reason to clutter my search area up with those at this time.

In deciding to do away with iGoogle, Google said they felt there were plenty of other options available to users. Thanks to their decision, I have found one that, for me, works as well or better than their's. Thank you, Google!

ADDENDUM (1/4/2013)
Protopage has added a Yahoo Stock Ticker that you can put on your page. It is not complete and it only does certain stocks, but it is a start. Click Add Widgets and look in the Add a Widget section. There will be a "Stock Ticker" option.