DIY Replacement for iGoogle.

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iGoogle will be gone at the end of this month.

I love iGoogle. It was free, convenient, and worked well. But because it was provided free by Google, it’s their right to pull the pin on it if they want to.

This event made me realize that any free service online may be cancelled. So if you don’t want the inconvenience of losing a free service that you love, you’re best off doing it yourself.

Here’s my modest attempt at writing my own iGoogle replacement page.

You can download the source for the page here: http://nbe.me/demo/d.zip

When you’ve downloaded the zip, you can unzip it to your own hard drive, or put it on a web server somewhere.

Before you start using it, you need two things: A Google API Key, and a Wunderground API Key.

Google API Key

1. Go to https://code.google.com/apis/console

2. If prompted, click on the “Create Project” button

3. Click on the “Services” button and change the status of “Custom Search API” to “ON”. Accept the terms.

4. Click on the “API Access” Link

5. In the “Simple API Access” section, click on “Create new Server key…”

Leave the “IP Address” box blank, and click “Create”

6. Copy the “API key”. This is your “Google Key” that you need to put in your index.html

7. Edit “index.html” and scroll to line 21 or there abouts. It will say something like:

var GoogleKey = “XXaaAaAAaAaAA9A9a9aaaaaAAA99a9aaaaA9AAA“; // Get your Google key here: https://code.google.com/apis/console

8. Replace the red key with your Google API key.

9. Save the index.html file

 Wunderground Key

1. Go to http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/

2. Click on “Sign Up for FREE”

3. Create your free account

4. Activate your membership

5. Login to Wunderground

6. Click on “Explore My Options”.

7. Select “Developer” option ($0) then click “Purchase Key”

8. Complete the questionaire honestly.

9. Click on the “Key Stettings” tab.

10. Copy the “Key ID”. This is your “Weather Key” that you need to put in your index.html

11. Edit “index.html” and scroll to line 23 or there abouts. It will say something like:

var WeatherKey     = “99999999999aaaaa“; // Get your API key here: http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/

12. Replace the red key with your Weather key.

13. Save the index.html file

You might want to change “WeatherCountry” and “WeatherCity” to reflect your home country and city.