New Google Homepage content directory
with new author info page

http://www.google.com/ig/directory

This looks a lot better than the old page.

Yeah, way nicer.

Could they be setting this up ready to integrate the iGoogle themes directory?

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-10-30-n63.html

The authors page has a "show by country" kind of dropdown box, I think it's new. Here are the current top 3 gadget developers from Germany, along with the country as Google shows it:

1. Whizz (The Netherlands)
2. Adam Bowman (Hallowell, Maine)
3. Benno Kruit (Delft, The Netherlands)
http://www.google.com/ig/authors?hl=en&gl=us&rl=de_de

Hmmmooookay....

I thought for a minute you were saying hmmmoookay because you were't there, but I looked again and THE NETHERLANDS?

Hahaha?

<<The only thing that seems to be missing on the new homepage is the quite crucial former “Add by URL” link to add a gadget of which you know the URL>>

It's the Add RSS Feed link on the side menu now.

>> It's the Add RSS Feed link on the side menu now.

Maybe not, I tried with an RSS feed by mistake. Yes, the failure to directly add a Gadget is a flaw...

It occurs to me that if we're going to have a bunch of Social "Apps" that track and display music preferences, movie reviews, etc. ... then we're going to need a central page to manage these apps and their information.

Like an iGoogle tab.

Martin: I agree. I made my own adaptation of an existing gadget and uploaded it to Google Pages, then added it by URL in the old version. I couldn't do that now, it looks like.

I can't test it, though. Trying to load the directory gives me an empty page. I tried signing out and back in, but that didn't work. I can access /ig/authors, though. Weird...

I contacted Google and indeed the "Add RSS feed" function supports adding modules. This is very confusing, as not every module is an RSS feed (certainly the module XML language is not an RSS feed at all, even when iGoogle supports RSS). The "Add RSS feed" is confusing for another reason: it displays an RSS icon, which people traditionally use when you can *subscribe* to the page, e.g. in this case get a feed with updates to the iGoogle directory...

I'm amazed to see so many engineers working on one project for now about 2 years and still not getting it right. For example feeds and gadgets are confused in the search. Which renders the search useless because there are so many more feeds than gadgets. You're not able to test a module before adding it. Once added you have to go to your page to remove it. It should be newest by default and not hotest to promote authors from submitting their modules. Put a damn link on iGoogle logo to go back to the directory. Finally an author page but the url is not setup right so he won't be indexed by google (the author is a parameter of the url). The whole navigation in the site is confusing and gives pinples just trying to figure out where things are. Etc etc etc etc ...

here's a gadget in action:)-

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?q=google.com%2Fig%2Fmodules+real+estate&hl=en&root=%2Fig&dpos=top&start=14&url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/realestate.xml

> You're not able to test a module before adding it.

Actually they got a gadget for that nowawadys Alex, it's called the Google Gadget Editor, and it's pretty cool because you can edit the code & then preview it, and even host it on their servers. But I agree with some of your points... it's kinda weird how some things are still wrong.

I covered this a couple of days ago at http://www.seoish.com/the-google-gadget-directory-changes/

You picked up on some things I missed... :)

Since writing that, I noticed that the "view source" is gone from the iGoogle gadget directory (but it is still available in the syndication one)

Speaking of the syndication directory, I also wrote an article on the new importance of it now that you can add gadgets to Blogger, and the potential importance of it in Open Social.

http://www.seoish.com/google-gadget-syndication-directory-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-care/

I would love to hear your thought on it.

Thanks,
Pat

Nice

myself: And now I can get at it. Must have been a server glitch.

googleminiapps.blogspot.com is yet another gadgets directory, although its a third-party directory built with the blogger platform.

Check out this babe of the day gadget:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/102166092821921628284/babe.xml

can anyone tell me why there are so many ebay gadgets?

do people make loads of money out of them?? does anyone know if there are there any stats on gadget earnings?

thi sone seems to be advertised everybloodywhere

www.ebayongoogle.com