POODWADDLE!

I hope you like my little alarm clock. You can move the hands to have it go off when you want. I set it whenever I put my lunch in the oven. I downloaded it from Poodwaddle, a great little customisable home page. Perhaps "little" isn't right - it's actually quite a major achievement, especially given that it's been put together by one man. Shane describes it as his "hobby, brainchild and family run business" and says he is "just a solo lunatic dodging manual labor by punching keys for a living".

So there are other ways of customising your home page, but I happen to like this one. I like that Shane hopes to use his profits to found a Central American charity, and I especially like that when he says he answers all his emails, he actually does, and really quickly, too.

There are lots of clever free programs on the site, like the World Clock:



It takes its basic data from sources such as the CIA World Factbook, the World Health Organisation and the US Census Bureau, and makes real-time adjustments based on estimated rates of change. It may not be spot-on, but that isn't really the point. It's really thought provoking, and somewhat hypnotic to watch.

A lighter widget is the Christmas countdown - which fills me with excitement and wonder, although I suspect some would regard it with dread:



There are loads of clocks, games, a CSS widget, calculators and much more besides. They can all be used to customise any page you like, including the Poodwaddle custom home page. It's really worth a look, especially if, like me, you quite like to have everything laid out in front of you when you're surfing, but haven't quite warmed to iGoogle.