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Organize Your life with a Dashboard 2008-05
Dashboards have been adapted by business managers as the central information center. Executives use them for "at a glace" status updates or the jump off point for additional information. The usefulness of a dashboard can be extended to our home to help us get organized.
Apple's new Leopard OS has a build in dashboard with a host of useful gadgets. If you don't have an Apple PC, you can still create a personal or family dashboard using iGoogle. Take a look at this sample dashboard created using iGoogle. At a glance, you can see the date, time, weather, appointments, email, and a to-do list.
A word of caution; iGoogle, Google Calendar, and GMail are great tools; however, be careful how much personal information you put on the web. Also keep in mind, because these are internet tools, an interrupted internet connection means you can't get to your information.
If you are cautious and are willing to take the occasional internet outage that's possible, you can setup your own iGoogle dashboard very quickly. To setup set up an iGoogle dashboard, follow these steps.
- open up your internet browser and go to www.google.com
- Make www.google.com your home page. For Internet Explore, go to tools/internet options, and on the General Tab's Home page section, click Use Current, then close the windows.
- On www.google.comﾒs page, on the top right hand side, click on the iGoogle link. You can then create a simple dash board. If you like it, you can register and create an account with Google to maximize the utility from the iGoogle tool.
Once you have the iGoogle account setup, you can start adding "stuff" to your page. You can create multiple tabs to keep things organized. For example, we have a traffic and Maps tab that shows live traffic conditions in the San Francisco Bay Area.
On the News tab, we keep track of the techCrunch blog, top news, and our stock portfolio.
Use common sense and caution, you can use the great Google tools to help organize your life and give you more time for fun.
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