Tim Hardy

The google personalised homepage is back up with a new feature. The search giant has added themes to the pages, a charming series of bright, cartoonish skins that change depending on the time or weather.

To enable themes, you need to have modified your page already otherwise the option is not triggered. The impatient might consider adding random widgets until the option “Select Theme” appears to the left of “Add Stuff” at the top right of the page.

Mac users may have difficulty viewing themes (and/or the option to view themes) on their default home page, http://www.google.com/ig.

If you are using a Mac - Safari or Firefox - and themes are not showing on the google personalised home page - you should instead try the following url: http://www.google.com/ig?hl=en.

Again, if the option is not there yet, try adding some widgets and adjusting their settings (you can always delete them later).

Nicholas Negroponte coined the phrase “the Daily Me” in the mid-nineties to describe a digital newspaper personalised to the individual reader. Google ig is that newspaper but it’s not been working for the last few hours.

My configuration appears to have been (I assume temporarily) lost. I am missing it already.