Building iGoogle Gadgets

I recently started dabbling with building iGoogle "gadgets". If you aren't familiar with iGoogle, it's a service from Google that allows users to create a highly personalized web-based portal with various pieces of news, weather, content, and a slew of other types of web-based applications in one handy location.  It's the first place I go each morning to view my local news, check the weather, monitor stock prices or even kill time playing silly online games during the long train ride to work.

The most intriguing thing about iGoogle is that they provide an open API that allows just about anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript to create some really useful applications. In a matter of days I was able to create a fairly robust market data quote display that works well on both a standard desktop web-browser and equally as well on an iPhone (screen shot is from iGoogle running on my iPhone web browser).

If you're a serious application developer, iGoogle provides a robust platform on which you can build some pretty sophisticated web-based applications.  With an estimated user-base of 25 million users, it's also represents an intriguing business opportunity.

Interested in my iGoogle gadget? Click here.