NOTE: Please see important update about this week's R/WW Poll below, on the topic of Personalized Homepages. We had to re-set it and so are asking for you to re-submit your vote.
Today Google launched 6 new themes for its Google Personalized Homepage. The themes to choose from include: a beach, a city, a sweet dreams theme, a teahouse, a winter hills theme, and a bus stop. It seems like an attempt to re-create the PC desktop background theme experience, but for personalized homepages. Plus the 6 new themes by Google are all interactive, similar to Microsoft Vista's new desktop backgrounds. Each Google theme changes dynamically, based either on the user’s time of day or local weather conditions.
For example I chose the "sweet dreams" theme for my Goog homepage, which currently shows the middle of the day (which it is in NZ, as I write this). Later tonight, my time, it will change into a night scene. The intention with this cute functionality is to make your Goog homepage feel more like "home". Google also says it used a new CSS framework "to optimize our ability to scale images and easily add new themes."
The new themes is one of several new features that have been released recently for Google Personalized Homepage. Last week, Google launched a Google Talk gadget and a "Magic Tabs" feature - which auto-generates a tab based on a category the user selects (e.g. sports, news, movies).
So now to our poll. Unfortunately we had to re-set it 12 hours after we published it on Monday, due to suspicious voting behavior. So if you previously voted in this poll on Monday, please cast your vote again below. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we've strengthened the voting process now to avoid dodgy activity.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Google Gives Personalized Homepage "Personality".
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Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb, with the results of our poll at the end. Top Web News Much of the discussion in the blogosphere this week revolved around two pieces of big news.... Read More
Hot news! Google is offering a new option that plants its Web search box in panoramic settings that change with the time of day and the outside weather. The colorful graphics represent the latest bizz of pizzazz to be served up on Google’s home page ... Read More
Comments
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This is very interesting. I agree with you, Google does make it feel more like 'home' and it was expected really. Personalised homepages have been around for a while and they are some what 'established' between the community. They never reached out to the 'general public' though mainly because of their 'ugly' design and UI.
Google is trying to change this with the new themes and I am confident that it will succeed to some extent. Personalised homepages, in general, need a lot of improvements UI and design wise.
Posted by: Nicolas R | March 20, 2007 8:08 PMas mentioned before Google isnt Netvibes and Pageflakes, so they have to stay away of the shiny design and attractive features.
Google is a key stone in modern web so every move they make should be carefully planned. I dont expect them to change dramaticly.
About these current themes, the top logo is a little bigger, and overal skin is heavier.
They have to provide facility to upload users's theme - thats real personalization
Cheers
Posted by: Biser | March 20, 2007 11:12 PMThis adds a nice touch to the homepage. Very surprising coming from Google as they are known for their clean clutter free look.
Very nice!
Posted by: Matthew R. Miller | March 21, 2007 4:27 AMJust voted the read/write web poll. MyYahoo home page is just 5%. I remember reading somewhere in tech crunch that MyYahoo has the largest user base. I guess we are a small sample how doesn't represent the crowd.
Posted by: webtech | March 21, 2007 7:00 AM