I Heart Cool Stuff

[Click images for larger view, Danke!]

I’m probably a little late at writing this, and people may already know about it, but I still wanted to share. I don’t think Google is a boring place. In fact, it provides me with all my stalking research needs. ^___^ But, I am a huge fan of making things my “own,” I’m selfish like that. I was curious and clicked a tab to something called iGoogle. It’s pretty much your own Google. It’s all the awesomeness that Google already is and then some. Basically, you give your regular Google home screen an uplift.

Above is a screen shot of some of the “artist” themes that are available. After the jump, you can see some screenshots of the theme I’ve chosen to take over my screen.

Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy totally rules, and therefore, it has the priveledge of taking over my Google. The above screenshot shows the three phases the Google banner will display. The morning, afternoon and evening. Yes, you are correct- the images change based upon what time you go to Google. I really loved the idea of seeing Astro Boy during different times of the day. Not all the themes have 3 screens, but they do have at least 2.

When you choose to use iGoogle, it doesn’t affect your Googling experience, at least not in a negative way. You still type in ‘google’ whenever you want to google something and it goes directly to your iGoogle. I have yet to experience any delay time while using this, which leads me to loving it even more.

Also, you get to add widgets to your Google screen. I, personally, have google as my opening screen. For a while I was using Blackle (an energy saving version of google that keeps everything white in black to use less energy), and I almost feel a little guilty using more energy with regular Google, but adding a post-it widget for reminders, a calendar, to-do, mario flash game, etc. really make up for it. Each theme also comes with their own widgets, that you can choose to use or not [screenshot at left].

I suggest if you’re someone who gets bored, or likes to spruce up an old look, that you look into making google a little more homey for you. There are various artists you can choose from, including Jeff Koons, Marc Ecko, Michael Graves, Alice Mak, Anne Geddes and many more. If none of these artists are to your liking, you can always go with their “standard” selection separated by themes.

Simply go to google.com and on the top right corner you’ll see a link for “iGoogle.” Follow it, make Google your own. I feel like such a Google fangirl right now.

Tags: Design, Google, iGoogle

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 2:59 am and is filed under Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.