Personalized Google

I realize that most of you who zoom around cyberspace and stop here to read are probably much more computer savy than I, but here is a neat little feature that I discovered awhile ago that some of you may be interested in using. (Of course, those of you who are more computer savy than I have probably figured this out a long time ago and have probably moved beyond this to something even better - in which case use the comments section to let me know.)

Google (the well-known search engine) has a feature called "Personalize Google."

With Personalized Google, you can set it so that when you go to Google, it gives you information you want, rather than just a place for you to enter your search terms.

For instance, you can set up your Personalized Google to do the following:

1. Check your local weather.
Simply enter in your zip code in the weather section and bam! there it is. You can also add other places you may be interested in knowing what the weather is like for some reason.

2. Bookmark your favorite spots.
Add your bookmarks of places you like to visit and they will be right there for you whenever you go to your personalized google place. If you make your personalized google your home page, they will available as you click the "e" (unless you are a Firefox user or something else). And since when you personalize google, it can be reached with any computer with an internet connections, you can still check out your bookmarks or other information when you are away from your main computer.

3. Read top news headlines
Have the top headlines from Google News or other source right on your personalized google. You can select from a number of sources such as New York Times, Reuters, Washington Post, CNN, etc. - helps you know what the MSM is talking about today. You can also get the headlines from sites not listed (such as Fox News) by entering their RSS feed addresses in the "Create A Section" area.

4. View Feeds of Your Favorite Blogs.
Use the "Add Content" and "Create a Section" link to have the most recent entries on your favorite blogs show up right on your personalized google. Of course, you will want to use this so that you can see when I have updated information on this blog - just type in www.athinkingmansthoughts.blogspot.com in the "Create a Section" block!


5. Keep track of the topic of your choice.
If you want to see new news items that come up regarding any particular topic of interest to you, you can set it up so that Google News will do a search for you on your given terms and everytime you go to your personalized google page, it will show you if there is anything new posted about your topic. For instance, since I am a graduate of Bob Jones University, I set up one of Google News searches to look for "Bob Jones University." Because of that, I have found out some interesting tid-bits in the last month, for instance, there is a BJU grad running for D.A. of Centre County, PA (Michael Mediera), that a former BJU student named U.S. Army Spc. Tim Watkins was killed in Iraq on October 15, that Evangelist Steve Petit got a nice little write-up in the local paper when he spoke at Ken Endeen's church in October, and that The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) named Iris Aschenbrand, a BJU grad, as "Outstanding Elementary Social Studies Teacher of the Year"


6. Provide you with trivial information. Things such as a "Word for the Day", "How to of the Day", "Quote of the Day", etc., are available.

Anyway, it seemed like a nice feature to me and I thought some of you may be intested in this as well.

Just my thoughts,


Frank