Celebrities pick their favorite iGoogle homepage gadgets

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Celebrities listed on iGoogle Showcase.

Google seems to have a case of celebrity envy. Renowned entertainment personalities like Ashton Kutcher and Ryan Seacrest can’t seem to stop shouting about their love for Twitter.

But Google has gotten their stamps of approval, along with more than two dozen other stars, with iGoogle Showcase.

The page displays Google homepage gadgets handpicked by each celeb, along with, in some cases, a snippet of commentary about individual ones.

With iGoogle, users can customize the search dashboard with tons of little widgets that show weather, news or e-mail. Showcase allows users to add the celebrity pages as tabs or choose individual gadgets to install.

Showcase gives a quick glance into these celebrities’ daily haunts -- assuming they do actually use Google’s custom homepage -- without having to dig through hundreds of tweets.

For example, Al Gore picked the ‘Notable Jon Stewart quotes’ and ‘Rolling Stone: Features’ gadgets in addition to Current News, which is run by the company he owns. On ‘Rolling Stone,’ Gore wrote, ‘I’ve been a fan of this publication since my college days.’

‘Punk’d’ star Ashton Kutcher and wife Demi Moore chose similar gadgets, including Twitter, Digg and YouTube. They’re so hip with the new media.

We also learn that Rachel Ray is a huge movie buff, as she notes in her use of Flixter, and that Martha Stewart is an avid photographer, as she mentions in her choice of Picasa. Oh, and apparently musician Dave Matthews really wants to own a monkey.

Wow, who knew there’s actually a gadget called Monkey Photos?

-- Mark Milian