Want iGoogle made for laptop / netbook screens? Use PimpMyiGoogle

Download updated PimpMyiGoogle (May 2011):
Install Pimp My iGoogle – Userscripts.org

View Pimp My iGoogle – Userscripts.org
 
Writing userscripts for most sites feels a bit like a game of cat and mouse.  Everytime Yahoo! or Google or anyone else who has a site that I write scripts for changes their page the following occurs:

1. My existing scripts partially or completely break
2. I go to work on writing an update
3. I get most of the way there and hit a roadblock
4. I need to relearn a bit of the differences between script behavior en Firefox and Chrome
5. Updated script is fixed and posted to userscripts
6. Make a new post on spanishgringo.blogspot.com

I am pretty much at step 6 again.  This time it was PimpMyiGoogle.

Google looks to have completely rewritten its content layout and changed its backend JS functions.  I noticed that on 1 computer in Chrome a few weeks back that the script no longer worked.  However, it kept working fine in Firefox and on my computer at work.  I figured that they might be running a new test.  Well, fast forward to last week and all browsers on all of my computers stopped respecting most of the improvements made by the userscript.

So, this weekend, I dove in and made the fixes.  Basically, the script had to be rewritten from scratch.  I decided to clean up a bit and change the old "show sidebar" button to a new CSS3 button.

ToDo for the script:

• Get min/max buttons to work in Chome (odd Object does not have click method error although the JS inspector shows that their is a valid click event listener).
• Check the module status (expanded/minimized ) to determine which button icon to show.

Any other suggestions for the script? Please let me know.  One idea I want to play with is pulling gTalk out of the sidebar and make it a floating menu.

Where did Charlie Rose go? (Appears to be victim of Google Video's demise)

I love the Charlie Rose Show.  It is a fantastic forum for reasoned discussion and it covers a broad set of topics to stay fresh and topical.  There are few places where you can find these types of (usually) non-trivial conversations with this depth and level of thoughtfulness.  He is a master of building rapport virtually immediately without almost any guest.  Tavis is very good as well, but his show suffers from being only half as long as the CRS.

I really only have three complaints against the show:

1) Charlie is friends with a lot of the powerful guests he has on the show, and sometimes is too soft on those guests (especially Wall St. executives such as Mr. Dimon at JP Morgan).  Although he is still better than most popular journalists, being tougher would yield responses and ultimately create a better show.

2) Charlie says the word "exactly" too much in response to a guest's response as if he needs to show he is smart enough to have had the same insightful thought as his guest.  I am probably splitting hairs here, but I had to say it because it happens so often.

3) The show is not available as a podcast (neither video nor audio).  

It was not until I moved to Spain that I began my regular appointment with the CRS.  I used to see it every once in a while while I lived in LA, but being on late at night and with a young kid at home, I did not stay current with the show.  Once I noticed that the show was available via Google Video, I realized that I could hack together my own podcast of the CRS.  In fact, Google Video was the video platform that the official website, www.charlierose.com, used to power its online video.

At first it was easy because Google made the MP4 download available via the rss feed on its site.  Then the rss feed changed at Google Video, eliminating the MP4 from the standard enclosure, and someone uploading the videos for CRS stopped making the MP4 download available.  So, I decided to use Yahoo! Pipes to make my own personalized feed to view the videos.

Everything was good, and I was receiving my daily dose of the CRS until the end of July.  That appears to be when Google Video stopped accepting new videos.  Google had announced previously in January that Google Video would be closed to new video in the near future and others had reported this.  At first, I noticed that I was not receiving any new episodes in my podcast feed.  Then, I went to the official site and I saw that there were no video clips available for the most recent episodes.

Contacting the "contact us" folks for the show via the web, they told me that they are migrating their streaming servers and that video would be back online "soon".  It was only after I contacted them, a small text notice was added to the site indicating that "Videos are temporarily unavailable...".  

It has been now 2 1/2 weeks since the last updated Charlie Rose video has been made available.  It seems that they were not prepared to handle the switch away from Google Video as their service provider.  

I do not know what kind of advanced notice about the actual shutoff date Google made to its main video suppliers, but with the public notice made back in January, the folks at CRS should have migrated away to another platform well before and avoided this situation.

I sure hope they figure it out soon and go ahead and add proper podcasting support (video and audio).  It is public television so they should not rely only on paid services (they have a paid audio version via audible.com).  Furthermore, they are looking to syndicate via Bloomberg TV so this should be seen as another way to spread the CRS brand, influence and public service.  Tavis Smiley serves as a pretty good example for syndicating out his content in many useful ways. Charlie could learn a lot by following Tavis' example.

Hopefully he'll be back online soon and those of us without easy access to PBS channels can go back to getting our CRS fix.

Pimp My iGoogle – Greasemonkey Script

Update May 2011: Complete rewrite to handle new internal structure of iGoogle.



Update: I ported the script to Chrome:

Pimp My iGoogle - Chrome Version  use the main userscript on userscripts.org

Pimp My iGoogle – Userscripts.org
I am not a big fan of many of the changes to the new iGoogle. I tried it back many months ago when it first was launched. I sent them a lot of feedback. Unfortunately, a lot of that feedback seemed to fall on deaf ears at Google (what a surprise - sarcastic emphasis added).

Anyway, there are 3 main things that Pimp My iGoogle does:

1. Simplify and reduce the space needed by the header - I also unbury the link to Google Reader
2. There is a button to hide/show the annoying left-hand nav bar (they really should allow users to customize the order and styling of those links in the nav bar).
3. Brought back the max/min button to load and unload modules. Google decided to move this funtion from its original home to the options drop down layer...forcing users to make 1 more click to move open and close the modules. This script puts the function back where it belongs (on the header of the module)

Sadly, I have not yet fixed my last main gripe with the new iGoogle.
Individual feed items used to have the same max/min functionality as modules. That was great if I wanted to read a post then and there without really changing the screen. Well, that is gone now and you only get a snippet of each post. That makes each feed module take up too much space by default and it forces users into the expanded mode.
UPDATE: Google has since brought back the old functionality

My suspicion is that these moves are mostly aimed at forcing more people into canvas mode where Google will have more ability to show ads targeted to the active module's content. If they try that, I'll just update Pimp My iGoogle to block d'em ads.