Comments on: Why iGoogle Is a Stupid Model for the Intranet Home Page

By: Chris McGrath

Chris McGrath — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:31:43 +0000

Thanks for weighing in, Seth — nice to hear from someone who’s actually implemented a widgetized portal.

ThoughtFarmer does indeed produce RSS feeds throughout, which can (at the administrator’s option) be made publicly available for embedding in other contexts. http://www.thoughtfarmer.com/features/feeds/

By: Seth Gottlieb

Seth Gottlieb — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:25:34 +0000

I totally agree with your points. I think that employees are even less likely to customize their intranet page than their iGoogle page. The intranet page can never compete with the amount of content and functionality that iGoogle can deliver. Plus, now that employees change jobs on average every three years, they tend to invest less energy in internal systems.

I would also add customizable portals are more difficult to test and undermine the value of the Intranet as a communication tool (the administrators have less control over what the visitors see). Personally, I thought the internal “My Intranet” portal was a failed idea when I first implemented one back in 1999. Back then, it felt like we were hiding the lack of useful content with useless widgets like weather and stock tickers. Now, nifty AJAX technologies can only obscure the lameness of the idea for so long.

I think a better model is to create a feed of intranet information that the employee can embed in other contexts: rss reader, gmail web clips, iGoogle… I am particularly interested in the idea of a Javascript gadget that authenticates and pulls RSS directly from the source to the browser. This way, semi-private company news can be integrated with other content on 3rd party customized portals.

By: Carlo Aiello

Carlo Aiello — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:54:06 +0000

Drag and drop widget intranets are the present and future – maybe you should get busy and not miss the wave.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:35:16 +0000

@bex that’s my argument exactly bex. site managers should be able to do intelligent personalization on behalf of the users, based on role. james robertson has a good piece that weighs the pros of both user personalization and audience segmentation: http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_personalisation/index.html

By: bex

bex — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:55:20 +0000

But that raises the question… how do you determine the optimal defaults for any specific role?

The highly customizable portal-like interfaces do have one main benefit… if you discover better defaults later on, or a new task becomes important, it’s easier to reused what’s there.

In other words, I’d argue that this level of personalization is best left to the “site managers” who try to create the optimal interface for users… it’s less important for users or developers to call the shots on what features they want in a personalization engine.

By: Sameer Patel

Sameer Patel — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:09:39 +0000

for the most part, what Chris said

By: Steven Walling

Steven Walling — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:57:47 +0000

So I’m guessing you would extend the same thinking about iGoogle to the use of OpenSocial gadgets in other enterprise software platforms?

I think role-based personalization is a compelling idea for the enterprise. But I can also think of more than a few enterprise software companies who’ve added customizable dashboards, both OpenSocial and not, in the last few years…

By: Andre Speek

Andre Speek — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:27:47 +0000

You just nailed it right there Chris. A User friendly application is about understanding what the user needs, not about giving an overdose of functionality and hoping that the few things the user wants is included with that. Speed does not come from fancy technology but by delivering what the user needs when he needs it.

And yes, role-based personalization is as important to any intranet application as is a remote control for your TV set; you can do without but you simply don’t want too.

Cheers,

Andre

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:07:43 +0000

@eric corrected that last sentence using your arithmetic; thanks for that. enjoy tinkering with your widgets

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:00:17 +0000

5% of 1000 = 50.

iGoogle rocks. Deal with it.