Webware

A look at the iGoogle Artist Theme created by Brazilian label Havaianas.

(Credit: Google)

Many a couture designer might frown on Google's trademark primary colors (what do they say about putting yellow next to red again?), but that doesn't mean that Mountain View doesn't have some fashion sense. To commemorate this month's New York Fashion Week in midtown Manhattan, Google has introduced a new set of themes for its iGoogle personal homepage service, created by some of the biggest names in high style.

The 19 designers and labels included in the special edition of iGoogle Artist Themes (a project originally launched in May) include Gucci, Betsey Johnson, Vivienne Tam, Kate Spade, Burberry, and my personal favorite--funky Brazilian flip-flop line Havaianas. Several other fashion labels, like Diane von Furstenberg and Marc Ecko, were already on iGoogle as part of the original Artist Themes launch.

Google also launched nine more themes created by musicians, including Bob Dylan, Gnarls Barkley, and Radiohead, the pioneering British act that already has a big following from the Googleplex.

The debut of iGoogle's fashion themes, to take place Wednesday through Friday at New York Fashion Week's headquarters, will be lower-key than the glitzy affair in May that splashed colorful projections all over the cobblestone streets of the downtown Meatpacking District.

But having a presence at Fashion Week is a savvy move for Google, regardless of how many iGoogle users want to put Jimmy Choo on their personal homepages, as the biannual sartorial confab isn't just a big deal for the fashion business. It's also a big occasion for Google's dance partner of choice in New York--the ad industry.

This post was updated at 7:58 a.m. PT.

Netvibes, a company offering services for creating personalized home pages and a platform for widgets, announced on Thursday that founder and Chief Executive Tariq Krim is stepping aside.

Although Chief Operating Officer Freddy Mini will be taking his place as CEO, Krim will remain on the Paris-headquartered company's board of directors. No concrete reason for his departure was provided.

In a release Thursday, Mini called Krim "a true visionary" and touted the fact that nearly 1,000 clients are using the Netvibes widget platform, which went open-source last month. Mini, a former employee of CNET News.com parent company CNET Networks, has been Netvibes' COO since 2006, working on expanding the company's U.S. operations.

Moving forward, Netvibes will likely continue to focus on its widget platform, which has a much sunnier outlook than the personalized home page service. Sites in that niche have had a tough time in the face of competition from Google's iGoogle and Yahoo's My Yahoo, not to mention the fact that personalized home pages just aren't as chic as they were in 2002.

Smaller rival Pageflakes was acquired last month by LiveUniverse, after rumors floated that it needed to find a buyer.

Bloglines has just launched a new beta version of its site. Bloglines has been an immensely popular Web-based RSS reader since its launch in 2003, so it's great to see that it is stepping up its game with this new release. It went in the obvious, but logical, direction of offering a customized start page, with the feeds you are the most interested in. I've talked before about how the personalized start page market is already very crowded, but Bloglines might have a loyal enough user base and a good enough reputation to make it work here.

First off, this new release allows you to easily create a customized start page by dragging and dropping feeds from your list in Bloglines. It's very smooth and "Ajax-y," and has all the makings of a successful service. It doesn't complicate the matter with various widgets to add to your page, which may be a good thing for some people. It's really easy to use and allows you to quickly reference news, at a glance, that you need to read first.

The addition of the new start page is great, but the real question is: How is Bloglines going to compete with Google Reader? Google Reader surpassed Bloglines as the most used Web-based RSS reader, with ease, when it appeared that Bloglines was not doing much to improve user experience.

Bloglines' latest release brings great new functionality to its core feed-reading experience. In addition to Bloglines' traditional view, which it is now calling "full view," it has two additional feed-reading views called "quick view" and "three-pane view." Quick view is essentially an e-mail-style view of the unread posts in any given feed. Only the titles of the posts and the time that they were posted are presented and you can click on individual posts to read them. The three-pane view is a mix of quick view and full view. The quick view element is on the top half of the page and the full view, on the bottom half, comes into play when you select a post to read.

Bloglines' new 'quick view'

It is great to see that Bloglines is innovating again. I personally switched over to Google Reader when Bloglines started getting a little stale, but this new release is making me rethink that decision. This could be a sign of good things to come for Bloglines in its quest to regain a position of power over Google. We'll have to wait and see, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

You can also get Richard MacManus' take on this release over at Read/Write Web.

Flickr slide shows show up a little grainy, but otherwise smooth and easy to use.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Google pushed out a nice update to the Web version of their Talk application earlier this week. Users can now have more than four conversations at once, embed Flickr slide shows into chat, and my personal favorite, pop out the chat list as its own window.

The Flickr slide show implementation is pretty slick, although I got a little confused trying to paste in the slide show URL, only to get a dead-end. Users need only paste in an album URL, and Google Talk will automatically convert it into a slide show for you. You can shuffle back-and-forth between photos, which resize dynamically depending on the size of your chat window. A word of warning though: pictures will appear a little grainy, so if you want to see the clear, full-size shots, you'll have to view them on Flickr.

Google also added a button to fire up the chat on blogs, or Web pages, which I've added below.

It's always neat to see a product or service improve after criticism. There are still a few nagging things missing, like file transfer, the lack of a warning message to ask if you want to close out a window with active conversations, and the necessity to have Google Talk installed on your PC to use the VoIP call feature. In the meantime, the Web version has become a really full-featured alternative to the Windows client, and the new-media sharing options set it a step ahead other Web-based chat tools like Meebo and KoolIM.

Google has released a new module to use on its personalized homepage that retains the look and feel of its Windows-only installable chat application, Google Talk. What's interesting is that the Web-based version ends up having a few extra features you don't get with the desktop client. For instance, starting a conversation with a contact creates a new tab on the top of the interface. You can jump through these like tabs on a Web browser. It's far better system than the Google Talk application, which uses expandable horizontal bars like Microsoft Outlook.

There's also a neat new feature that lets you view Picasa albums as well asYouTube videos right inside the chat window, simply by inserting the URL. Interestingly enough, for videos it uses a semitransparent control interface that looks like something you'd find on OS X's Dashboard instead of YouTube's somewhat dated metallic player. I'd be interested to see if it makes its way into YouTube (assuming there still is a YouTube) in the near future.

Google has had a Web-based version of their chat client within Gmail since last June. This new module is coded in Flash, whereas the Gmail one is HTML. Fittingly, the new one is flashier and much more responsive. Despite this, I'd still like to see Google let you 'pop' it out to be placed on the desktop, something you can do with Meebo and conversations in Gmail's chat. Windows Vista users can use Amnesty Generator (review) to put it on their sidebar.

The only drawbacks thus far are a four tabs at-a-time limit, reliance on the Windows app for the call feature, and less customizable interface. Expect those things to be fixed in later versions.

Google has done a short video overview, which I've embedded in this post. In the meantime, you can grab the module here.

[Found on The Google Blog]