Since SO's question database is becoming an excellent first point of call for finding answers to coding problems, some people (like me) might like to be able to fire up searches from their iGoogle home page, among the other searches you might launch from there.

I've created a very simple gadget to do this, and put the source below. My hope is that this might provide a foundation on which community members with better ideas for performing this function, or ideas for enhancing it, can update it. Perhaps we could make it configurable to search via a site scope search from Google and / or a question search, for instance.

I've hosted and registered this first version but if anyone makes changes and can host a new version / new pics elsewhere, please feel free.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs title="Stack Overflow Search" 
    author="Community Wiki" 
    author_email="[email protected]" 
    author_affiliation="Stack Overflow" 
    author_location="The Internet" 
    author_aboutme="All sorts" 
    author_link="http://stackoverflow.com" 
    author_quote="Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." 
    description="Stack Overflow is rapidly becoming one of the best resources for finding answers to your programming questions. This gadget adds a question search box to your iGoogle homepage" 
    screenshot="http://arkios-solutions.com/misc/sogadget/SOGadget.png" 
    thumbnail="http://arkios-solutions.com/misc/sogadget/SOGadget_Thumbnail.png" 
    singleton="true" 
    title_url="http://stackoverflow.com" />
<Content type="html"><![CDATA[
<img src="http://i.stackoverflow.com/Content/Img/stackoverflow-logo-250.png" alt="Stackoverflow Logo"/>
<div style="font-family:arial;font-size:0.8em;">
This gadget allows you to search the Stack Overflow question database.
</div>
<form name='SOQueryForm' action="http://stackoverflow.com/search" method="get" target="new">
<p>Your question: <input type='text' size='34' name='q' /></p>
<p><input type='submit' value='Go' /></p>
</form>
]]>
</Content>
</Module>

The source / installable gadget xml are also hosted here.