There was a fair amount of enthusiasm for it, but we don’t really hear that much about it these days. In October, Google announced it was shutting down some social features. Those changes went down on January 15, by the way.

Now, some users are seeing a new version of iGoogle (pictured below, hat tip to Google Operating System):

The changes have reportedly been being tested for quite some time, but apparently more people are seeing them now .

Do you use iGoogle? What do you think of the changes?

“In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+,” says Google VP, Product Bradley Horowtiz in a blog post. “While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.”

“Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past,” he says. “We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today’s announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome.”

The other services Google is shutting down include: Code Search, Jaiku, iGoogle’s social features and the University Research Program for Google Search. These will all be shut down on January 15.

iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle apps will stay the same.

Google is also officially closing the Google Labs site today, as previously announced. Boutiques.com and Like.com will be replaced by Google Product Search, also as previously announced.

Will you miss any of the products Google is shutting down? Let us know in the comments.

“In addition to the visible design changes like new colors and spacing, we’ve made some changes to functionality to showcase the content that really matters to you: we’ve hidden buttons and navigation links until they’re actually needed,” says product manager Conrad Lo. “Now you can collapse the left panel to give yourself room for more gadgets, or pop it back out when you want to chat with a friend.”

So far, the iGoogle gadget directory is lacking any Google+ gadgets, and with more and more people using Chrome and its default tab page as a homepage, it doesn’t seem like iGoogle is playing to Google’s main points of focus these days, but that’s probably why it’s just now getting the redesign.

The fact that it did get a redesign at a time when Google is cleaning house and eliminating a number of its products, is probably a good sign for iGoogle users that it isn’t going away any time soon.

In fact, Google hints that more updates to iGoogle are on the way. With the Google+ APIs in testing, I would imagine that we will see a lot of Google+ related stuff coming soon.

It does provide a way for Google to control more of the web experience for non-Chrome users though. And it still does add a little something extra for Chrome users. The search box includes the recently launched voice search feature.

"Over the years, we worked closely together on a variety of projects, including the launch of a number of global OpenSocial based gadgets. Recently, we decided that we could do more if we were part of the same team…" says Don Loeb of Google’s iGoogle team.

"We are looking forward to working with Labpixies to develop great web apps and leverage their knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall," he adds.

"We both felt the time was right to come together," says Labpixies in its announcement. "We started LabPixies to create a truly personalized online experience and develop fun widgets that people find useful every day. Working at Google will help us scale to more users as well as giving our team greater opportunities. Google and LabPixies teams have worked on many projects together including the launch of global OpenSocial based gadgets. The acquisition is an opportunity to learn from each other to bring more apps to users, help developers and improve the overall developer ecosystem."

The Labpixies team will be based out of Google’s Tel Aviv office, and will anchor the company’s iGoogle efforts across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

This is only the latest in a string of acquisitions from Google. Other recent acquisitions include Agnilux, Plink, Aardvark, and Episodic.

A post on the Google Talkabout Blog announced this afternoon, "Starting today, you can share photos, documents, and other files while chatting in iGoogle and orkut.  To give it a try, just click Send a file… in the Actions menu while chatting with a friend (no download required):"

That should come in handy for a few folks.  What’s more interesting, though, is that Lizhen Wang, a software engineer at Google, also stated, "We’re working on bringing it to Gmail as well, and we’ll keep you posted when that happens!"

That may happen soon, too.  Gmail has millions and millions of users who depend on every component to work reliably, of course, but Orkut has millions and millions of users worldwide (it’s extremely popular in India and Brazil), meaning Wang and the other engineers Google’s assigned to this job have already scaled up the feature quite a lot.

We’ll be sure to report back when the implementation takes place.

"We have had video chat in Gmail for a little while now, but the nice thing about video chat in iGoogle is that you can video chat with friends who don’t have gmail accounts, all you need is a Google account," says Google software engineer Robin Schriebman. "One less thing to worry about when you want to stay in touch."

iGoogle users who wish to video chat with friends, need simply: 

- Download the voice and video chat plug-in, quit all open browser windows, and install the plug-in.

- Sign in to chat.

- Select the contact you want to call. If they have a camera icon next to their name, you can make a voice or video call; just click ‘Actions’ and ‘Start video chat.’

If they don’t have a camera icon, it means they don’t have the app installed, but you can send them an invitation to download it. Cameraless friends can still participate in voice chat through the app and have a conversation where only one side is in video.

"Since sometimes reading ‘lol’ doesn’t deliver the same punch as actually hearing your friend laugh at your jokes, you can now use voice and video capabilities in chat," says Google. "You can have an actual conversation with someone (seriously, out loud), or even chat face to face over video."

System requirements for the app are Windows XP or later or Intel Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

The social gadgets let users share, collaborate, and play games with their friends. There are 19 of them at this point that have been debuted today. They include things like:

- Who has the biggest brain?
- Chess
- Scrabble
- NPR
- The Huffington Post
- YouTube
- To-do List

"Your friends are able to see what you share or do in your social gadgets either by having the same gadgets on their homepages, or through a new feed called Updates," explains a joint post on the Google Blog from Marissa Mayer and Rose Yao. "Updates can include your recently shared photo albums, your favorite comics strips, your travel plans for the weekend and more. To help you manage who you are sharing with, we’ve created a Friends group. You can add and edit friends in this group at any time. If you already have a Friends group within your Google Contacts, you’ll be able to easily share with those friends on iGoogle as well. If you don’t care to share, iGoogle’s social features are optional and can be disabled on a gadget-to-gadget basis with just a few clicks."

This appears to just be Google’s latest move in becoming more like one big social network. It all starts at the home page or your profile page right? This kind of reminds me of the social experience provided by Facebook apps.

Initially, people in Australia are the only ones who will gain access to the new gadgets.  There are twelve of them (more should come out later), and they provide gateways to things including News.com.au, YouTube, GoComics, and chess.

As for what the point is, a post on the Official Google Australia Blog explains, "[B]y adding and enabling social gadgets, you’ll be able to have an even deeper, interactive experience with your gadgets when you share them with friends."

The post then continues, "In fact, we’ve created a Friends group so that you can share things with the people you care about.  If you have a Friends group within your Google Contacts, you will be able to share with those friends on iGoogle without any extra work."

It looks like Google is borrowing a page or two from Facebook’s playbook, then.  It should be interesting to see if the experiment succeeds (and spreads beyond Australia).

In the meantime, Google’s at least promoting this move as a reason for gadget developers to get more involved with iGoogle.

Are you attending Comic-Con today? Let us know.

The big draw for many event goers are the exhibitor booths, where various fanboy/fangirl items can be purchased. With so many exhibitors at Comic-Con, how can booths maximize their visitors? (Below is a map, which shows how massive Comic-Con truly is. Click to enlarge)

Some booths (NBC Store, Halloween 2, Fox Home Entertainment, Paramount DVD’s, etc.) have taken to Twitter to lure in guests with promises of swag or special events, below are some examples:

With so many phones able to access the Internet, and with iGoogle sponsoring Comic-Con’s free Wi-Fi, a large percentage of attendees will be Twittering heavily. So, if you think about it… Twitter truly is the best way to get the word out, to the masses, about your booth.

Do you think this tactic will help lure in Twitterers? Let us know your thoughts.

You can see his work below.  Over 3,600 students entered the contest, so winning counts as quite an accomplishment.  What’s more, Halasz, who attends the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary, should gain a $7,500 award in addition to a sense of pride.

As for how the previous round of the competition shaped up (Google didn’t make any announcements between asking for votes and announcing a winner), a post on the Official Google Blog reports, "The six finalists who got the most public votes were Amelia Ortzar (Chile), Fahad AlDaajani (Saudi Arabia), Matjaz Tancic (U.K.), Mikhail Simin (U.S.) and Vesna Stojakovic (Serbia) – congratulations to all of them!"

And the jury "also gave a special commendation prize to Aliyah Hussain from the U.K."

All of these themes should be on display at the Saatchi Gallery in London through the 28th.  It’s possible to adopt all of these themes for your iGoogle homepage, too, if any happen to catch your eye.