When you log into Google Apps, click on the Web option in the lefthand corner of the black bar at the top of your browser. If "Web" does not show up there, click on "more" and access it from there. You can customize your opening page to suit your needs.

Just as an example of how individualistic these pages can be, take a look at mine below. I especially like the "Tasks" gadget. Yes, it's just a To Do list, but it sure beats my former legal pad system! I never knew what was going on with that, except that I had a lot of legal pads.
To search the Gadgets, click on Add Gadgets where I put the arrow farthest to the right on the screenshot below.

As you can see in the following screenshot, you have lots and lots of gadgets (of varying quality) to choose from. Don't worry about picking something you hate. They are easy to remove and replace with something you will like better.

I'll be the first to admit that some of the iGoogle page themes are dreadful, but there are lots of them to choose from. If anybody figures out how to make customized themes themselves, let me know. There has to be a way to do that because some of these themes look as if they were done by a sixth grade boy with extremely bad taste. (No offense to sixth grade boys.)