For the purpose of this course we want everyone to have a gmail email account if you don’t already have one. This will prove very useful anyway and you can forward messages to your existing email account if you have one.
- Use tabbed browsing. This means IE7 or Firefox. FIREFOX IS PREFERABLE
- Right click on this long and select open link in new tab to Go to http://mail.google.com/
- Click on “Create a new gmail account”
- Fill in the details. IF YOU DON’T HAVE A SECONDARY EMAIL ADDRESS TO FILL IN ASK ME AND I WILL GIVE YOU ONE
- If you already have an existing (and perhaps preferred) email account you can make sure any messages to this new account reach you.
- Log onto your email and Click on “Settings” in the top right hand side.
- Click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and enter the address of your other email account.
This can also be done by making Yahoo your personal home page but my method of preference (for now) is iGoogle.
- Go to www.google.com/ig
- Because you just created a gmail account you will be signed in.
- It will look like this (below)
Click to Enlarge
- Untick all the boxes except Gmail
- Click on SAVE By making iGoogle the default page your web browser opens up with you can have a range of links and resources to manage your entire web experience (when you are logged in) and this can be your experience wherever you log in (e.g. the library). This can be done with Yahoo too and possibly other resources but my experience is with iGoogle.By way of example below is my own iGoogle account with explanatory notes below. This posting also contains a complete how to guide on how to set up your iGoogle.
Click here for details of what each thing is in the picture above
- You can set a theme for your personal page. Over on the right hand side you should see “change theme from [name]” Click on this and you will be presented with a range of available themes. Some of them change during the day depending on your time zone/Post code.
- Next we’re going to add a “widget”. Over on the right hand side click on “add stuff”. In the box on the right “search for gadgets” type BOOKMARKS.
- When you see Google Bookmarks click on “add it now” and then over on the right hand side click on “back to iGoogle Home” You will see you now have Gmail and Bookmarks Gadgets. You can drag these around to your preference.
- In your new google bookmark gadget click on “Add Bookmark”. Enter www.saltburn.org.uk and give it the title SALTBURN then Click ADD. You can add book marks to all your favourite sites this way and then any computer you log onto anywhere will show these links.
- Click on ADD STUFF over to the right hand side and type DOCS into the “search for gadgets box”. You should see “Google Docs”, click ADD IT NOW and then on the left hands side “Back to iGoogle Home”. You can reposition the Google Docs Gadget.
- In your Google Docs Gadget select the dropdown “NEW” and select from the dropdown list “SPREADSHEET”. You will see a spreadsheet.
- You can have many documents and spreadsheets and you can do all sorts of things. I am suggesting that you should use this spread sheet to keep a record of all the passwords for all the Web accounts you set up during this course. I DON’T MEAN THE PASSWORD FOR YOUR BANK ACCOUNT or anything like that – just low level passwords. All you need to remember is your iGoogle password and then you’re in.
- Enter something into your new spreadsheet and click SAVE (top right). Enter a name for your spreadsheet. Your new spreadsheet should appear in your Google Docs Gadget.
- NOW FOR SOME FUN. Click on the NEW dropdown again and this time select TEMPLATE. Take a look at soem of the templates and try them out.
- MORE FUN – over in the top left there is a little drop down arrow beside the word HOME – click on it and select ADD A TAB
- Give this tab a name. It could be FUN, COOKERY, HOBBIES – anything. Leave the tick in the box marked “I’m feeling lucky. Automatically add stuff based on the tab name” and click on OK
- Your new TAB (page) should be populated with useful (or not) Google Gadgets. You can move these around or delete some of them. You can also click on ADD STUFF and try out some other gadgets.
- FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS COURSE PLEASE KEEP YOUR HOME TAB CLEAR OF STUFF OTHER THAN COURSE REALTED. LATER YOU CAN PUT WHATEVER YOU WANT IN THERE.
FOR THE RECORD THERE ARE OTHER startpage apps and social aggregation tools besides iGoogle. You could check them out http://suprglu.com/ http://friendfeed.com/ http://www.pageflakes.com/Default.aspx http://www.pageflakes.com/Default.aspx http://feedly.com/ http://feedly.com/ http://guzzle.it/
