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A new Facebook gadget for iGoogle is available that lets you directly access the News Feed and update your status from your iGoogle home page. The stream is updated without having to refresh the page. However, you can’t comment or Like stories from the gadget just yet. (You can view a subset of comments for now.)

Here’s what the process of adding Facebook to iGoogle looks like:

1. Click here to add the Facebook Connect gadget to your iGoogle home page.

2. Once the gadget is added to iGoogle, you’ll be asked a series of requests for special permissions to allow iGoogle to a) update your status, b) remember you for constant reauthorization, and c) access the News Feed and Wall.

3. Now you can view live updates from your friends and the Pages you’re fans of, as well as update your status from iGoogle.

Notice that back on Facebook, my status has been updated via "iGoogle Gadget.”

This is not the first Facebook Connect widget that has taken advantage of Facebook’s "open stream” API. Desktop applications from Seesmic and TweetDeck allow users to monitor and update the stream from desktop applications. Now, gadgets like this one for iGoogle show that Facebook’s stream API is bringing more social context to portals as well – and driving more content sharing inside Facebook.

Update: A previous version of this story said that the gadget was developed by Facebook. It appears that this app was designed by Facebook but developed by Google, however. Thanks to Facebook and Michael Bauser for the correction.