O's Shortcuts to Simplify Your Life

Get the News You Want in Two Minutes
Build your own info-packed iGoogle home page with feeds from your favorite newspapers, blogs, and websites by going to Google.com/ig and opening an account (Gmail users can sign in with their e-mail address and password). A blue box will appear at the top, asking you to pick from popular sites (like Weather.com, CNN.com, or BBC News) to get started; check the ones you'd like and hit Save.

You can then arrange the feeds, which appear as boxes with linked text and pictures, by clicking and dragging them. To find more feeds—including videos from The Daily Show, or a photo from DailyPuppy.com—click on Add Stuff in the top right-hand corner and begin your hunt. Once you've got all the news and eye candy you need, click on Back to Homepage in the top left.

Manage Your Healthcare
Self-diagnosers already turn to the web to find out what their symptoms might mean. In 2008, Google started to deliver more targeted health results by asking industry experts to flag reliable sources of medical information. In a presentation at the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Marissa Mayer, the company's head of search announced that users would also be able to—Eureka!—find an actual doctor by searching on specialty, affiliation and location, and store their personal medical records.

The biggest breakthrough for the consumer could be having digital and portable health records, "maybe so portable you can carry it on a USB drive," said Mayer in her presentation. "You could travel around the globe and know that your records are a few keystrokes and password away."