iGoogle’s themes were an instant hit. More than 30 percent of the users changed the default theme in the first weeks after the launch.

Now you can have different themes for each of your iGoogle tabs. If you select a new theme, you’ll notice that only the current tab has a new look.

Google promised to release an interface that lets you create your own theme, but for the moment a good way to create custom themes is this third-party gadget. Even if you don’t want to create a theme, you can choose one from a gallery. Note that you need to add the gadget for each tab you want to have a custom theme.

{ spotted by Colin Colehour }

While there are many start-ups called by the media “Google killers“, becoming more popular than Google is increasingly difficult. Even if Google started with an algorithm for search, it built an infrastructure that prepared its later expansion and became more important than the initial innovation. From New York Times:

Consider the question of Google’s greatest business secret. Is it the algorithms behind its search tools? Or is it the way it organizes vast clusters of computers around the globe to answer queries so quickly? Perhaps predictably, Google won’t disclose the number of computers deployed in its vast information network (though outsiders speculate that the network has at least 450,000 computers).

I believe that the physical network is Google’s “secret sauce,” its premier competitive advantage. While a brilliant lone wolf can conceive of a dazzling algorithm, only a superwealthy and well-managed organization can run what is arguably the most valuable computer network on the planet. Without the computer network, Google is nothing.

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, appears to agree. Last year he declared, “We believe we get tremendous competitive advantage by essentially building our own infrastructures.”

Process innovations like Google’s computer network are often invisible to the public, and impossible to duplicate by rivals. Yet successful companies realize that maintaining competitive advantage depends heavily on sustaining process innovations. Great process innovators often support basic research in relevant fields, maintain complete control over the creation of every aspect of a product and refuse to rely on outside suppliers for important components.

Google built a file system “for large distributed data-intensive applications”, a programming model and a distributed storage system called BigTable that works on top of Google’s file system. Hadoop, an open source project supported by Yahoo, wants to replicate Google’s distributed systems.

{ Image from Eric Schmidt’s presentation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in April 2004. }

The Cuban government proclaimed its intention to exchange its computer operating systems for free software in 2005, but the state agencies that are in charge of the switch have done little to make it happen. Indeed the exchange seems to be contingent mainly on the efforts of a small community of enthusiasts.

Implementing business performance management isn’t a one-time project — it’s an ongoing business process. As organizations refine and improve this process, they will realize significant benefits. Acting on information provided by the BPM information system, managers will be making more informed decisions, which will lead to better performance and greater profitability for their company.

It has not yet been released in the UK but jealous rivals are already ganging up in a determined — and almost certainly forlorn — attempt to kill it off. Apple’s iPhone, with its seductive mix of drop-dead gorgeous looks and irresistible features, is expected to become the must-have gift this Christmas for well-heeled lovers of fashionable gadgetry. However, Apple’s competitors are not standing still.

Just past 2 p.m. on Sept. 3, with the sun glaring overhead, there is a flurry of activity among the waiting crowds at Tindivanam Taluk Hospital in Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state. Bugle players straighten the tassels on their instruments, line up on each side of a long red carpet, and start to blow. Drummers accompany them in a cheerful welcome.

One of the reasons why YouTube became successful and Google Video didn’t is that YouTube built a community around videos. Each registered user has a profile, a list of uploaded videos and favorite videos. You can subscribe to the videos uploaded by a user and send him a private message.

Google Video doesn’t have any of these options: the only thing you can see about someone who posted a video is a list of other uploaded videos. But what if you want to get notified when this unknown person posts other videos? In Google Video, each user has an unique alphanumeric ID. To find all the videos posted by a user, you need to search for: [source:USER_ID]. The ID can be retrieved from the page’s source code, but I made a bookmarklet that gives you the URL of a feed that contains all the videos posted by a user, sorted by date.

GVideo Author Feed

How to add the bookmarklet?

1. Make sure the link toolbar is visible in your browser. You can enable it if you go to the View menu in your browser, click on Toolbars and check:
* Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox
* Personal Bar in Opera
* Links in Internet Explorer

2. For Firefox and Opera, drag and drop the blue box above to the toolbar. For Internet Explorer, right-click on the blue box, select “Add to Favorites”, ignore the security warning and choose “Links” from the list of folders.

A good example of interesting Google Video channel is “Google Tech Talks”, that shows presentations on different topics from Googleplex. If you go to this tech talk and use the bookmarklet, you’ll obtain a feed for all the tech talks uploaded by Google. You can subscribe to the feed using any feed reader, but Google Reader is a good choice because it lets you play videos without opening a new page.

One of the best things about high-definition TV is that you can get to see things with such startling detail that it almost negates any desire to ever leave the comfort and safety of your home. If you have Apple TV and access to the iTunes Store you could download a few episodes of “The Chill Room.”

Just when you thought your kids already spend too much time on the phone, along comes a new service that offers free mobile phone calls and text messages for 16-to-24-year-olds who agree to accept advertising delivered onto their handsets. On Sept. 24, the hotly anticipated startup Blyk made its debut in Britain.

Google tested last year a way to embed videos from different content providers and monetize them with video ads (only MTV participated in this test). Basically, you had a video channel that displayed a playlist selected by the content provider. The playlist was changed every three to seven days and it was an opportunity to deliver premium content that keeps your visitors on your site more.

Google wants to use a similar idea for YouTube. The new YouTube video units will let you create a video channel related to your site’s content a monetize it with text or image ads. It’s not clear what kind of videos you’ll be able to add, but it’s likely the videos will be from YouTube’s content partners. Music labels and other important content owners already had a special YouTube interface that included AdSense ads, but they didn’t allow to embed their videos because they didn’t gain revenue from the embedded players (or at least not directly).

“[Relevant, premium content] Deliver high quality video content to your site. Choose categories or have Google target your site content, and decide which categories you want to exclude.

[Targeted, non-intrusive ads] Earn revenue from ads targeted to your site content and to the videos being played. Ads appear as part of the YouTube player and outside of the video content to ensure a smooth user experience.”

The new video units are an extensions of the custom players, so they’re customizable and look better than the standard YouTube player. The option to create a video unit is not yet available for everyone, but you should be able to see it when you generate the code for a custom player.

{ spotted by ProBlogger }