Google home pages get more personal
Want to add some pizzazz to your Google personalized home page? This week Google is offering six themes that people can use to decorate their page. Google typically prefers simple, clean, text-only pages for its sites, with the notable exception being the doodle on its main search page. With this announcement Google is recognizing that some people might want to add some some color to their personalized home pages.
The themes include a beach, a cityscape, a Japanese tea house, the four seasons, the sky, and a bus stop. They will change dynamically, depending on the time of day and the weather conditions. For example, the beach scene will show a sunrise or a sunset that corresponds to the local time and the characters in the bus stop theme will hold umbrellas if it is raining.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
Unlike many of the other personalised start pages available, there's no need to create an account and it's all already set up for you, with the most popular gadgets organised by category and sub-category. So there's virtually no setting-up work required by the user. More advanced users can choose to add their own Google gadgets and RSS feeds, but most people just use the gadgets and tools provided.
It's free to use and you can check it out at http://www.funkyhomepage.com