I got a blast from the past—well, from last year, anyway—when Lisa Cooke e-mailed that she's started a Genealogy Gems podcast.

Cooke and her family had applied to be guinea pigs on PBS' "Texas Ranch House" reality show, which aired in May 2006. She's a veteran genealogist, too. So for the June 2006 Family Tree Magazine's Branching Out news column, I asked her how it felt to be transplanted to 1867 and walk in her Western forebears' shoes.

Hot and sweaty, but satisfying, it turned out. Fast foward 150 years and Cooke is dispensing research advice through her podcast.

I just listened to this week's session about creating a genealogy iGoogle page. Kind of like making your dream home page, with tools ("gadgets") that will search for GEDCOMs, find genealogy blogs, keep your research to-do list, and lots more.

Once you start your page, click Add Stuff and then type "genealogy" into the iGoogle search box to find the gadgets.

Here's my iGoogle page, so far: