“Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up ’til now themes haven’t been an integral part of Gmail,” said Gmail engineer Annie Chen in a blog post. “We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we’re launching today, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your in-box into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company.”

Google’s enterprise customers, however, are allowed no such levity: Gmail themes are not available to Google Apps users, a Google spokesperson said.

Google’s personalized home page, iGoogle, has had themes for over a year.

To apply a new theme, select the Settings link in Gmail and click on the Themes tab. Those who don’t have such a tab yet should see one in a few days, as the Gmail update propagates across Google’s servers.

Gmail has been the focus of much attention from Google lately. Last week, Google added voice and video chat to Gmail. About three weeks ago, Gmail gained the ability to send and receive SMS messages, though Google temporarily withdrew that feature in order to fix a show-stopping bug.

Just last month, Google launched seven features for Gmail: Gmail Gadgets, emoticons for messages, Gmail for mobile version 2.0, Canned Responses, contact manager improvements, advanced IMAP controls, and Mail Goggles.

Original URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100915

Their aim is to provide all of the support and guidance you need to setup your website, and ensure that you have a website that appeals to people, works well in the search engines and meets the legal requirements.

StartupTech work with people who want their first website designed or are on a low budget. Most of their business is associated with small companies and charities, start up businesses and individuals.

For more information click here.

The first phase went live tonight with an e-mail module allowing users to check on AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail accounts from the top right-hand of AOL.com and expanded left-hand navigation to various points within AOL. Over the next few weeks, AOL will add an innovative global status update for major social services—write your status once and it shows up on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Twitter at the same time—and the ability to follow multiple social net activity through one module from AOL’s front page. Bill Wilson, AOL’s EVP of programming, walked me through the new front page.

The changes don’t stop with e-mail and social nets. Some are skin deep as AOL introduces new color schemes and a more stylish approach, swapping muted pastels for options that include black backgrounds. (Screenshot here.) It may sound purely cosmetic but it gives the portal a new look and feel even tough the basic structure remains the same. On the top left, people can add their own links. AOL Radio will get a top spot. AOL.com also will incorporate “engagement modules” or pop-up players for video, photo galleries, polls and the like that can be moved to other locations on the page to watch video while reading email or the like.

It is an insanely long page but Wilson insists that their click maps show users scroll “if you provide value in the middle of the page as well as the bottom.” Much more detail after the jump.

More on e-mail
Hovering over an e-mail service after login shows the latest messages; composing messages or viewing all mail in an account takes the user off the page. Microsoft’s Hotmail poses a problem though; it can’t be accessed or previewed through AOL.com so AOL is providing a link that can be inserted in one of the module email slots—and a link to Microsoft feedback so people can ask for the feature. In addition to being more open, AOL hopes the e-mail aggregation will help recapture some of the user attention it lost before people leaving the ISP were allowed to keep their AOL addresses. Make it possible for Yahoo e-mail users to scan their inbox from AOL.com and they may stick around.

Leveraging acquisitions
Some of the new content on the front page comes from integrating AOL’s acquisitions. For instance, local news, something AOL hasn’t highlighted before, will be powered by Relegence, the financial news and info technology firm acquired by AOL in late 2006. Relegence, which pulls news and info from more than 3,000 sources, is already powering AOL’s finance, sports and entertainment coverage. Wilson says the portal avoided local news until now because news from nearby big cities tended to overwhelm the result. AOL will use Relegence to provide real-time news pegged to zip codes: “We’re really going to lean into local here.”

– An RSS reader in a module at the bottom will start default categories but can be supplemented by user choices. Recent acquisition Sphere will provide related content from the web; it was integrated quietly into AOL News last week and will be launched across AOL’s network.

Personalization not the goal
Wilson: “We’re not trying to create a replacement for myAOL or iGoogle or My Yahoo. … Based on our experience, personalized sites range usually to under 20 percent of the mainstream. If you look at My Yahoo, it does 20 million where My Yahoo does 90 millions; myAOL is roughly 8 million where our portal is about 48 million. Here, we’re trying to create an experience of great scale for the masses.” Beginning in Q109, though, the front page will start to respond to use. “If you as a user never click on finance news, we would swap that module out and provide you a different module based on things you do click on.” For instance, someone who clicks on style but not finance might get a style feed.

– The e-mail aggregator, social net module and other new features will be available eventually for myAOL.

Advertising
AOL is keeping the 300×600 display ad introduced for the Olympics and is testing placement for sponsored link ads from another acquisition, Quigo. The ads currently are integrated in various modules but the new look has them bundled together on the bottom left. “We’re constantly working with Quigo to determine the best placement for monetization but also leveraging that with the consumer experience.” The engagement modules “are all going to be highly customized from a sponsorship standpoint with rich media. We’ve been sharing that with TV networks and movie studios and some of the CPG as well as retailers.” That’s new advertising in the middle of the screen that doesn’t exist today. Will it pay off in revenue? The inventory being added should provide a boost.

Original URL: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-redesigned-aolcom-front-page-will-feature-third-party-content-cross-soc/

Photoshop Premiere Elements 7 adds significant features to video editing, while Photoshop Elements 7 incorporates major enhancements to the photo-editing program. Mobile features cover only a limited number of phones.

Many Enhancements
Have too many grumpy-looking locals in the background of your shot of the Eiffel Tower? Elements 7 promises you can “scrub” unwanted elements from pictures with its new Scene Cleaner feature. Quick Fix tools whiten teeth, enhance colors, and soften details, among other things. A powerful new Smart Brush allows users to assign repetitive tasks to the brush tool, then use it on multiple sections of a photo, like removing wrinkles.

The Premiere video suite gained a few IQ points with a new analysis mode that scans video files for picture quality, number of faces and sound levels, and applies Smart Tags as placeholders for what the software believes are the best clips. If you agree, you can just click a button to assemble a finished movie.

InstantMovie is a quick way to assemble a themed video. Dragging and dropping clips into a theme, such as Birthday, will add appropriate music, transitions and graphics. Green-screen technology has a Videomerge feature to superimpose you and the family going for a stroll on the moon, for example. Version 7 now outputs to DVD, Blu-ray and the AVCHD high-definition tapeless file format, and it supports instant uploads to phones and YouTube accounts.

Video and Photos to Go

To compete with online sites such as Flickr, Adobe announced an enhanced online service for Photoshop Elements customers called Photoshop.com. A basic subscription with 5GB of storage is available free for storing and sharing photos and videos. The plus package ups the ante to 20GB for $49.95. Both provide online backups of stored files. Plus members also receive additions to the software, such as new themes, tutorials, movie trailers, and special effects.

With Elements 7 cell-phone users can upload pictures directly to Photoshop.com from their phones. The application runs in the background, and Adobe promises it uploads photos while you talk, instant message, or use other phone options. The Palm Treo, Samsung Blackjacks, and Motorola Qs are supported now. The company Web site promises support for the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry Pearl, Motorola Razr, Nokia 5310, and Nokia 6301 in September.

According to an Adobe spokesperson, the Photoshop.com application now includes the online offering Expressions. Online content can be managed directly from within Elements 7 applications.

Photoshop Elements 7 and Photoshop Premiere Elements 7 will be available for $99 each. A bundle of the two will cost $149. Anxious customers can preorder at Adobe’s Web site or wait for it to show up at retailers.

Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080826/tc_nf/61553

A formal release is set to go out on Monday, and the first new features will show up on the site on Wednesday.

The redesign effort has been under way for more than six months, with the goals of appealing to a broader demographic and letting users interact with the site more (i.e. keeping them around), and has involved in-home studies for testing purposes.

The relaunch of the homepage proper has been kept somewhat under wraps, likely because a “major” advertiser is set to take over the site when it debuts. But MySpace has been liberal with the details of most of the other new improvements. They’re not particularly revolutionary, but should still do a thing or two to combat user experience complaints on the social network.

The MySpace profile editing tool, for example, has been modified so that HTML expertise is less of a prerequisite. A sidebar lets users browse through themes and alter them with a color palette, rather than hard-coding changes.

The MySpaceTV player, which technically competes with YouTube, has been improved to support high-definition video and improved full-screen mode as part of the Flash 9 release. The embeddable player now has internal search as well as a way to view the top MySpace videos; it’s still playing catch-up with the likes of YouTube, but it’s still a big improvement.

One of the most heavily altered sections of the new MySpace is search; now, MySpace members will navigate through a set of tabs to search personal profiles, music profiles, the entire MySpace site, videos on MySpaceTV, or the Web as a whole. The site has also worked with the Lucene open-source search engine project.

MySpace’s chief rival, Facebook, is also set to unveil a redesigned profile page in the near future; developers on its application platform are already testing it out. MySpace’s redesign does not appear to alter the experience for developers who are building on its OpenSocial-compatible platform.

MySpace additionally has a data portability project, “Data Availability,” on the way.

Original URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9967731-36.html

At the Web 2.0 Summit Friday, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield plans to demonstrate two new features, which are scheduled to debut in coming weeks. First is a revamped Flickr map page, an interface that lets people look at the photos taken at a specific location. Next is a new “places” feature that lets people explore specific geographic sites–a catalog of more than 70,000 so far.

For a look at the new pages, you can look at a gallery of Flickr screenshots posted by CNET.

The changes bring some refinement to the current world of geotagging, which is not for the faint of heart. (Though my experience has been a lot smoother once I got the time zone issue straightened out.)

Flickr’s current map interface presents users with a map dotted with pink circles; a number in each circle indicates how many photos tagged with that location have been recently uploaded to Flickr. The new maps interface replaces those circles with the descriptive tags commonly used to label regional photos.

For example, some areas are likely to show tags with geographic descriptions such as “London.” Others could get event-based tags that show a spurt in popularity, such as the San Francisco Bay to Breakers race, Butterfield said. Not too many words fit on a map of the world, but users can click a button to bring up a fresh supply.

“The current user interface is slow and confusing. People don’t get the idea of a paging through photos in this kind of user interface,” Butterfield said.

So far the tag interface appears at the global map level, but Flickr will gradually spread it to more local views, said Dan Catt, a Flickr engineer who works on the mapping technology.

The places pages offer a pre-packaged view of thousands of locations. Clicking on a link on the maps page can take a user to the nearby place page, sifted to show the tag on which the user clicked. The page itself shows recent and interesting photos taken at the site, featured photographers who have photographed the region often, and popular and recent tags that lead to a new category of photos for that area.

Original URL: http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9800194-39.html

There could be many reasons for an image to feature an undesirable blank area – a patch of bright light that needed to be cropped out or perhaps a shadow, a person or an object ruined an otherwise perfect shot.

The algorithm tackles this problem by completing a given image in a number of different ways leaving the user to select the one which is deemed most suitable. This can be achieved without the user having to label the image fragments being used, or for that matter, offer any direction at all.

‘Holes’ in images are ‘patched’ as suitable image fragments are found and re-arranged to complete the image in a manner that is claimed to be semantically valid. That is, the patched area is consistent with the rest of the image. Hays and Efros claim that their algorithm is a means to restore data missing from an image that ‘should have been there’. Existing methods of filling such blank areas have largely involved drawing image fragments from other parts of the same picture. This algorithm is quite unique in that it draws from an exterior database and also in the means by which it achieves this.

Original URL: http://www.gizmag.com/go/7812/

The new iMacs, which will sport thinner aluminum casings, have displays measuring 20 inches and 24 inches and will cost $1,199 to $1,799, depending on their configurations, said Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs at a media event at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.

The cost of the 24-inch iMac has been dropped by $200, and Apple has eliminated the 17-inch iMac computer, Jobs said.

The last update to the iMac line was in September 2006, when Apple introduced a model with a 24-inch screen — its largest — and said the entire model line would be powered by Intel chips instead of ones from International Business Machines Corp.

“Apple has grown two to three times the market for the past several quarters,” said analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research. “This product launch should position them well for the back-to-school and holiday seasons.”

Apple recently launched the iPhone mobile device in a bid to build a third major product line alongside its Macintosh computers and iPod media players, but desktop and laptop sales still account for the bulk of its revenue.

In its third quarter, Apple sold 634,000 desktops for revenue of $956 million, accounting for about 18 percent of total revenue.

“The iMac has been really successful for us and we’d like to make it even better,” Jobs said. “We’ve managed to make it even thinner than before.”

Apple laptop sales totaled $1.58 billion in its most recently reported quarter. The MacBook laptop line was not affected by Tuesday’s announcement.

Sales of Macintosh computers have grown faster than the overall PC market, but Apple’s share of the market by unit sales is estimated to be less than 5 percent.

Apple has also used the iPod and, now, the iPhone as “halo” products to draw customers into stores and get them interested in its computers.

Jobs also said that the company was adding a software “button” to the iPhone that allows users to upload photos taken with the built-in camera on the iPhone to Apple’s .Mac online data and Web-hosting service.

Apple shares rose $1.30 to $136.55 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq. The stock has risen 59 percent so far this year, largely on anticipation of strong demand for the iPhone and that enthusiasm for the device will translate into stronger sales of other Apple products.

Original URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=apple-unveils-redesigned

According to Mozilla, only fifty percent of the people who download Firefox actually try the browser and only about half of the people who try it continue to use it. Although this is a pretty decent user retention rate for a piece of software that can be downloaded for free, Mozilla recognizes that improving retention is probably the most productive way to increase overall market share. Mozilla has been working with the community to devise strategies for improving retention rates, and the result is a 12 point plan for getting users to stick with Firefox.

Mozilla is working on creating a new support site to address documentation issues and plans to create new download and first run pages that are more instructive. On the development side of things, Mozilla plans to make common plug-ins work better out of the box, work on user interface enhancements that make the browsing experience more natural, and make add-ons easier to manage and install. On Windows, Mozilla plans to change the Firefox icon name to make it more apparent to users that the program is a web browser and improve desktop and quicklaunch icon placement to make the program more accessible. Mozilla is also going to work on brand marketing.

User retention is likely a problem for other cross-platform open source software applications as well. Mozilla’s efforts in the area could provide valuable insight into practical methods that could potentially be employed for other open source projects.

Original URL: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/08/…rates

On the Mozilla Labs blog, Alexander Faaborg, a user experience specialist at the Mozilla Corporation, has posted several mockups of possible interface improvements for the Firefox Web browser.

Faaborg stresses, “[W]e currently have no official plans to implement these features for Firefox 3,” even as he concedes that a prototype extension may eventually be released through Mozilla Labs.

After elaborating on the respective merits of command line and graphic user interfaces (GUI), Faaborg laments that interfaces combining the best aspects of these two approaches “have gone largely unexplored by interaction designers,” and he proposes several possible Firefox actions that could be implemented using just such an interface.

The fact that the command line is again part of the interface discussion, after decades of GUI development, owes a lot to Google and other search engines.

As Aza Raskin, president of interface and software design company Humanized, observed earlier this year on his company’s blog, “The move back to language started with Web search engines in general, with Google placing the capstone when its name became the house-hold verb for ‘typing to find what you want.’ In fact, Googling is almost always faster then wading through my bookmark menu (which says there is something wrong with using menus as a mechanism for accessing bookmarks).”

So it is that Faaborg has suggested a keyboard-based Web search interface mockup, to hasten online searches. And he provides examples of how switching between browser tabs and navigating through browser history links might work using an interface that relies both on text input and mouse interaction.

“Just because the command line predated the graphical user interface doesn’t mean interfaces based on windows, icons, menus and pointers are always superior to interfaces based around using the keyboard for input,” said Faaborg.

The command line: It’s the new black.

Original URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=200900849