Two of my daughter’s favorite bands are The Wiggles and The Beastie Boys. She is 4. We try to carefully monitor how much and what of both bands is appropriate. Of course, I try to steer her towards the Beastie’s, like any good father would. (Please don’t call Children’s Services. We don’t let her listen to all of their songs). Anyway, I always thought that my home would be the only place where I might find these two musical acts living side by side until today that is. Along comes Google with yet another fun surprise — Artist Themes for iGoogle.
Quick note: iGoogle allows you to customize the Google home page by adding content from around the web. Very cool tool, and something that I have integrated into my daily life. Totally worth checking out if this is a new to you. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
iGoogle launched customized themes several months back. These range from scenes of the beach, to an animated bus stop, to a zen garden and so on. This empowered the user to easily change the look and feel of Google. More fun than function, but interesting none the less.
Well, today I discovered something new in Artist Themes for iGoogle. These themes were designed by folks like Todd Oldham, Michael Graves, Coldplay, John Maeda, Jackie Chan, Lance Armstrong and yes… The Beastie Boys and The Wiggles. There are many to choose from, and each has special little surprises within them. Activating them is as easy as finding the one you want and clicking. Done.
Another really fun aspect of this is that iGoogle allows users to create tabs within the home page — each of which can be customized with a different theme. So, for example, I have a page that is my normal home page. When I type in google, it is where I land. It has my gmail, calendar, and other regularly accessed information all in one spot. I have now decorated it with The Beastie Boys. I then have a page titled News. It has headlines from a wide swath of sources giving me the latest and greatest from around the world. It is adorned with “The Wiggles” — reminding me of my daughter. All in all there are 6 pages, each displaying different information, and each with a distinct look and feel.
From search results delivered by Elmer Fudd to the Wiggles and Beastie Boys, Google continues to make it more fun for me to use their products.
My daughter has just turned five and is now leaving the Wiggles behind (phew!) in preference for Lily Allen, “Undonna” and Justin Timberlake (she’s going to love the new “4 minutes to save the world” song).
I haven’t tried the Beastie Boys yet but I think you’re right to go that direction. Better she learn a few unsavory words than you lose your sanity! Three years of the Wiggles (and Tellytubbies) is enough!
Meanwhile, we’re recording our daughter’s creative use of language here:
http://emmispeaks.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the i-Google tips. I realize I’m not using half of the features.
Yeah,
Personally Barney is much more scary to me than the Beastie Boys. I love the link. The “Men with Big Boobies” quote is priceless. What a great idea.
As for iGoogle, I am beginning to see this as an alternative to collaboration platforms like SharePoint. I know that it is a long way from that now, but the leap is not out of the questions — especially as more and more content moves from the desktop to the web. I think there is a post in that thought. I had better get writing.
Thanks for the comments and for visiting the site…
and thanks again for the link on your site, brandmix.blogspot.com which is great.