Thing 28: Customized Home Pages

I set up an iGoogle customized home page for myself, but a few days later was no longer allowed to access it because I do not have a gmail account. Why would I need to have a gmail account? For customer support from Google in case something goes wrong? Would I get better customer service from them if I did have a gmail account? It seems a bit silly to have to maintain a 3rd email address just for the customized home page. Most of the features on the customized home page I already have on my desktop, and it seems to be very repetitive.

These days I am suffering from technological overload. Every day I check and/or use the following: work email, personal email, online course management system, library catalog and databases, Microsoft Office software, search engines, LiveJournal, Blogger, Facebook, Pandora, and now Twitter. That is at least twelve pieces of technology every day.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to learn about new Web 2.0 tools. To be fair though, they should not force me to set up more email accounts than what I already need, and they should not already replicate what I can do through tools provided through my browser or my desktop.