Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Lazyweb: Google Themes Directory

The idea (thanks to NateDawg!): build a Google Personalized Homepage directory where people can upload their themes.

The site includes an online editor to guide you to the theme creation process (you can upload graphics, wizard-style, and see live previews of what it will look like – this is because Google homepage themes need to follow a certain pattern). There will be a small optional clickable area on every homepage reserved for self-promotion of the theme creator.

When users browse through the directory and find a skin they like, they can immediately “add it now” (Google Gadgets directory style) via e.g. a Greasemonkey CSS replacement script, or something even simpler. (Plus maybe an explanation of how to add this as user stylesheet for IE users.)

Every theme can be commented on and rated by the community, and new themes are pushed to an RSS feed (like GoogleModules.com). The site itself is ad-financed, possibly. The address might be GThemes.com or GoogleHomepageThemes.com, which are free at this time (GoogleThemes.com is taken, though it sounds cool). Caveat: Google will be easily able to replace your service by making a themes directory of their own linked from google.com/ig.

Is this good, bad, boring, cool? Any takers?

Update: The Custom iGoogle Skins gadget does some of these now, and it’s even easier to handle than a Greasemonkey script would be.

Lazyweb: Google Themes Di ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (14)

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