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 userÄôs 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).
Poll (note: was re-set last night)
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.
