Saturday, March 24, 2007

A personal touch to Google

Can you imagine getting the feel of a beach while you are searching? And obviously, when I say search, I mean Google(though I wished not to make this a 'Google' Blog, but for these innovations !). Google, had introduced the Personalized Google home page long back, on which you could have RSS feeds from hundreds of sites. And as days went by, a growing number of sites, dealing with varied topics, started being available for such feeds. So, this page has become a one-stop update for many people like me. My current homepage includes feeds ranging from the usual Times of India to word/quote of the day to my regular dose of technology news from multiple sites. Of course, a smart move by having tabbed page, thus helping us organizing it better.

On the 20th of this month, Google added one more interesting feature to it - themes! The banner of my home page can now contain images depending on various themes, which currently include only six - city, teahouse, winter scene, sky, beach and bus stop. And to add to this, the banner changes its appearance depending on the time of the day, so that you are in the mood, always! Here's my Google home page's technology tab, with beach as the current theme.


But then, there's always a Googley twist to it. According to tech observers, Google has put in some kind of tweaks in the code(e.g here's the Sweet Dreams xml), which results in the banner changing its appearance everyday at 3.14 AM (Remember pi !!). And that too, is different for each of the themes.

Here are the UFOs that appear in the City Scape and the Pi appearing in Sweet Dreams themes.
(Though I have tried setting my local time to 3.14 am, I have not yet encountered this hidden images :( )

And that's not all, Google is asking its users to suggest many more themes here, so that it can provide other themes in the future. And I assume in the near future, it will also allow users to upload their own images in their homepage. (I can't stop imagining my face beside the famous Google logo!). So now you know where to head, when you want a search engine that knows your mood..

8 comments:

Janani said...

Wow.. One more post about google. Great. I think I will make your page as one stop place for knowing the updations abotu GOOGLE.

Unknown said...

I quite liked the Google desktop search utility... searches your computer better than the regular search engine. useful for finding that particular phrase in that particular doc file.

Unknown said...

Are u a brand ambassador of google?? :)

Seshadri said...

@janani
thx..btw, i can suggest many sites where u will get more info earlier, if u wish :)

@vishy
surely..more important is the googley way of doing it-fast and relevant

@barath
free le intha mathiri evanavathu kidaippana? appadi iruntha, i wud have been Seshoogle by now :)

Aditi said...

hats off to google and to you for collecting such information, hope this theme banner starts soon, so that blog looks like a site.... lets hope it starts soon..

Seshadri said...

@aditi..
sory i cudnt recognise u...thanx for the comments..btw the themes have already been introduced...(and dats wy u see them in my home page.).check out the personalized GHome page

Unknown said...

oh.. just read that particular comment..
Seshoogle.. That sounds interesting :-)

Savita said...

Whats with this whole google publicity thingy?? you getting paid or sumthing?? :).. was wondering if google started sumthing like google posts instead of google ads... jus kidding... I know you are not selfish...

And sorry for the spelling mistake.. you are so 'F7'ish..:)..I said that becuase I know that someday youll write a great book...then ill buy your book from crossword... but iam still not against PIRACY....