Michael Voong HCI Researcher @ Birmingham University

Google’s New Personalisation

Anyone who uses Google’s personalised homepage might have noticed they added a feature enabling people to select 6 new themes for their page. The cool thing: the background image changes according to the weather in your local region. Instant, non-distracting, ambient information!

I tested this out, and I can surely say that the feature is cute, and so worth checking out if you like cute stuff. It’s nothing amazing, though, but this is a sign that Google is really learning from the insane desire we have to customise our mobiles.

• Similar to this: weather desktop background changer (MyDreamApp.com)
• Read more at Google’s blog

It takes a real geek to get excited about “ambient information” which would traditionally be provided by a window. You know, one of those frames with glass in - the original meaning of “window”.

Now if you could set it to display weather conditions for a certain time of day or a certain number of hours into the future, that would become vaguely useful.. possibly. But you’ve still got to ask - what are you going to do with that information? Unless you’re sufficiently geeky that you use Google before you get dressed, I suppose.