The days of the cliche middle aged man walking out to the lawn in his boxer shorts to get the morning paper are over! Well not really, but it's now a lot easier (and a lot less public) to get your news everyday, the personalized homepage for your browser.

I've been using this method for a while now so there's nothing really new about it, but there are always new ways to personalize it and make it more efficient. There are probably plenty of options out there, but I personally prefer igoogle. Google came out with a way to personalize the homepage not too long ago, and to be honest it took a bit to get over the nostalgic feeling of going to "google.com" and not being directed to the simple, blank, trademark homepage that helped make google as popular as it is. Eventually though I got used to it, and the benefits have been incredible.

Before igoogle I used to use google news, which was a great tool designed by google that would scour the internet for the most relevant and important news articles for the day. It was nice also because you could choose which particular topics you're interested in. It would also start to learn which subjects most interest you and show you related articles on the top of the page whenever you would go to the site.

As nice as this was, it wasn't as fully customizable as I would've liked. For example, you couldn't choose where it would draw its news from. Also, how can you replace the traditional newspaper without the comics section?! igoogle solved both of these problems for me. Google provides you with countless options for 'gadgets,' which are the little sections that you add to your homepage. These gadgets range from games and pictures, comics and jokes, to news and weather. You can also easily arrange these gadgets into different tabs, so one tab can be for news and another for comics and games.

Now more specifically about how this can replace the traditional newspaper...
The options for gadgets to add are very impressive and wide ranging. The most notable advantage to this is, for the first time, you can read a newspaper that is completely non-partisan. On the same page, you can have headlines for the New York Times and Time magazine as well as National Review editorials. The other advantage, as I mentioned before, is the diversity of gadgets available. For example, if you like the articles that google news searches out, you can add a google news gadget, picking out which particular sections you want. If there is a particular blog that you like to keep track of, many have gadgets that keep track of updates for the blog. For example, I'm a big Apple fan and I also own Apple stock, so I find it very useful to have the Apple Insider gadget that updates me on everything Apple, from new product releases to minor software fixes and rumors of the future.

Speaking of Apple, this leads me to the potential of websites like igoogle. With such portable web enabled devices coming out such as the iPod Touch and iPhone, there's a lot of potential for the personalized homepage as a replacement for the traditional newspaper (of course Amazon did come out with their kindle, which was partly intended for just this purpose, although it's had limited popularity). To get an idea of what I mean just imagine going to Starbucks, picking up a coffee and banana bread, then sitting down at a table, pulling out your iPod Touch and signing in to your igoogle page. Then you're free to search through everything from the Iraq war to the newest Garfield cartoon all on a super slim 3.5 inch touch screen (from which you can also listen to your music, watch a tv show, check your schedule, etc... like I said, I'm an Apple fan). So if you're tired of having to wake up early and walk out for the whole neighborhood to see you in your underwear to pick up a newspaper that only gives you one perspective, try just sitting down at your computer (you can stay in your underwear if you want) and signing up for igoogle.