iGoogle, Google's customizable homepage, has some pretty sweet-looking themes. In fact, I rounded up the 10 best on Download Squad not too long ago. Google keeps adding themes faster than I can change my homepage, though. The latest fresh batch of themes is food-related, and a bunch of food-themed homepage gadgets have come out at the same time.

While this news probably isn't going to rock your world unless you've always wanted some beautifully-shot food porn on your home page, some of these food widgets are pretty useful. Sites like Urbanspoon, Epicurious and Food Network can now deliver recipes and reviews to your homepage. Aside from making us salivate, this addition has got us wondering: what's Google's plan for this continuing expansion of iGoogle? Social gadgets, video chat, food themes? What's next?

Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin, spoke to some reporters yesterday, after the Chrome OS presentation. Citing the common WebKit and Linux code found in both operating systems, he said "Android and Chrome are likely to converge over time."

"We're reaching a perfect storm of converging trends where computers are behaving more like mobile devices, and phones are behaving more like small computers," Google said in a statement responding to questions on if and when the two operating systems would converge.

Sergey's frankness on the matter is a little odd and must be part of a very recent internal about-face, considering Google CEO Eric Schmidt said only a few days ago that there was space for both operating systems and no need for conflict between them.

It would make sense though. Mobile devices are becoming more PC-like. PCs are certainly becoming more mobile (excluding the brick-like gaming laptops of course). With mobile data packages from AT&T, Verizon and other international providers regularly dropping in price, Chrome OS and its fast, easy access to everything in the cloud would make for one, sad, lonely Android.

[via CNET]

Google has launched a new mobile version of Google News, designed specifically for current-gen smartphones: the iPhone, Palm's WebOS phones (the Pre and Pixi, so far) and Android phones.

Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian already had their own Google News page, so its only fair for the new kids on the mobile block to get in on the action, too.

Google's pretty vague about the changes in the official blog post, but it looks like they've just managed to do more with the same amount of screen real estate. Navigating between sections is easier with the new layout, and you can now customize your Google News the same way you've been able to in a full desktop browser.

So Google finally let loose with a real glimpse at Chrome OS today, unveiling it at an event in Mountain View today. It's pretty much what we've thought all along: a bootable browser with an affinity for web apps - especially Google's.

As you'd expect from a "browser OS," Google pretty much admits that Chrome OS isn't really intended for offline use. They see devices running Chrome as a compliment to the existing systems in your home or office. Local storage? That's not really part of the big picture either. Everything you save heads straight for the cloud.

And Google's staunch "no third party apps" stance means that no, you won't be running Firefox on Chrome OS. Google doesn't want other apps playing in their sandbox, it would seem.

Personally, it looks like I'll enjoy playing with Chrome OS but I can't see myself relying on it for day-to-day computing. I'd prefer to at least run a lightweight but fuller-featured linux distribution like xPud or Crunchbang where I have more flexibility.

Google has given users the ability to caption their YouTube videos for a while now. But that can be a cumbersome, time-intensive process and most of the millions of videos hosted on YouTube are uncaptioned. That could change soon, as Google is beginning to roll out a new automatic captioning system that will analyze speech in videos and create machine-generated captions.

This means that users who are hard of hearing will have an easier time using YouTube. And because Google can translate text into 51 different languages, it means that you'll have a much easier time understanding those German and Japanese videos you're so fond of watching.

The technology for the machine-based captions is the same as the tech that allows Google Voice to automatically transcribe your voicemail messages and send them to you as emails. That is to say, it's not perfect, and we can expect to see a fair number of mistakes in YouTube captions for the foreseeable future. But this is an excellent start at making web video significantly more accessible.

Automatic captions are only available on a handful of YouTube channels right now, including Google, YouTube, PBS, National Geographic, MIT, and UCLA. A wider release is scheduled soon, with auto-caps expected on English videos by the end of the week.

Google is holding a press event to talk about the upcoming Google Chrome Operating System. The company is not ready to release the OS yet, and won't actually have a finished product ready for another year. But Google announced that starting today the project is open source, which means that you can download the source code today.

So what exactly is Chrome OS? It's an operating system based on a web browser called... Google Chrome. The idea is that you won't have to (or be able to) install a single application directly on your PC. Rather, all of your apps will be run from the web and all of your data will be stored in the cloud.

That doesn't mean the computer won't be able to play games or interact with USB peripherals. For instance, Google demonstrated that you can plug in a camera and watch videos using a web-based video player or copy files to cloud-based storage. And because Google has been working to give web apps access to your PC's hardware, even video games with 3D graphics should be possible as long as you have a video card that's supported by ChromeOS.

The version of ChromeOS that Google demonstrated today is still a work in progress, and we were told that the user interface could change significantly before the final product is released. But the OS already boots in just 7 seconds, and Google says it takes another 3 seconds to launch applications.

The screenshot above shows an app menu that you can use to launch some web apps. You can create permanent shortcuts to these programs by "pinning" them to the ChromeOS toolbar. See those tiny tabs at the top? Those are pinned tabs.

There will also be persistent "panels" that pop up and stay on top even when you flip between browser tabs. For instance you can bring up a Google Talk panel, a music player, or a notepad.

ChromeOS will be automatically updated each day by connecting to the web and making sure that you have all the latest updates.

What do you think? Are you ready for an OS that's effectively useless without an internet connection? While the operating system stores some data on a local storage partition, Google says it's basically just a user cache area and that data will all be synced with the web. That means if you lose your netbook or buy a new one, you should be able to pick up where you left off without missing a beat.

Stay tuned for details. The news conference is still underway. In the meantime, you can check out a few more photos after the break.

Update: You will be able to perform some tasks while offline. For instance, you can cache movies, music, or eBooks and access them while you're on a plane. But the OS is primarily designed for interacting with web services.

Update 2: If you have absolutely no intention of picking up a machine with Google Chrome OS, there's good news: All of the new features that show up in Chrome OS will be able to work with the Google Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

We've just been tipped off that 1080p or 'the highest-quality HDTV standard' has begun to appear on YouTube.

So far there doesn't seem to be a way to search for the high-high definition videos, and the only example I have is a Nokia video of some poor, disadvantaged Indonesian farmer -- but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before YouTube/Google officially announce the changes to their video player.

In the meantime, if you find any videos that have been enabled for 1080p playback, share them in the comments!

The Nokia video is included after the break, if you want to see what the quality looks like.

[thanks to Revo for the tip!]

When Google brought its amazing global map application, Google Earth, to the iPhone, it was a match made in heaven. (Okay, it was match made on Earth, but bear with with me, here.) The pinching and rotating gestures on the iPhone made exploring the globe on a handheld device fun and easy. Well, now Google Earth is back with version 2.0, which introduces some of the useful features you've come to expect from Earth's sister project, Google Maps. You can grab it from the app store now.

Although it's nothing earth-shattering (ha!), Google Earth can now access your saved maps - and other people's public maps - by logging into your Google account and using the My Maps interface. Bringing Maps and Earth even closer together, Google has also made it easier to search businesses, photos and places in Earth, just like you can in Maps. Also, in a move that seems fitting for an app that maps the entire world, Earth 2.0 supports 31 languages, up from the original 18.

Google Image Search is already a great way to find images from all corners of the Interwebs, and it just got more interesting with a new way of visualizing results. It's called Image Swirl. Searching for an image with swirl will give you a list of 12 images, and clicking on each one brings up a cluster of related pictures. Picking one of those will spin the wheel around and give you even more to look at.

This new way of exploring images may be more fun than it is useful, but it does definitely deliver the goods. If you're a visual thinker, it's probably a quicker way to browse results than the existing "similar images" link in Google Image Search. The underlying technology for Image Swirl comes from Similar Images and Picasa's face recgonition features. If you want to give Image Swirl a spin (har har) it's available in Google Labs now.

[via Official Google Blog]

Remember that rumor last week about how Google was going to unveil the first beta release of its upcoming Chrome operating system this week? Yeah, it's looking like that's not going to happen. But the company is holding an event Thursday morning to talk about Chrome OS and show some honest-to-goodness demos for the first time so that we can all stop using conceptual mockups with every blog post on the topic.

Google Chrome OS is expected to be available sometime next year, although it's still possible that a beta could be launched before the end of 2009. From what we know, the operating system, which will be initially aimed at netbooks is designed to blur the lines between desktop and cloud by essentially treating an always-open browser as the desktop. For instance, that will make it just as easy to save documents to Google Docs as to your desktop, if not easier.

The now-defunct Google Page Creator made it easy to create a reasonably attractive web site without an advanced degree in HTML or CSS. But Google has killed off Page Creator and replaced it with Google Sites, a service which has often been described as a tool for creating Wiki-like pages that are hosted for free by Google and which allow you to collaborate with other people on tasks such as planning a vacation or managing your office calendar and workflow.

You can also use Google Sites to create a public web site. But it's much trickier to make a page on Google Sites look, well... good. But this week Google rolled out an update that should make the service much more attractive, literally. There's now a template gallery allowing you to select and customize a template for any new page you create.

Currently there are templates arranged in categories such as business collaboration, activities & events, schools & eduction, and Personal & family. Google is also making it easy for users to submit their own templates to the gallery, so the number of available designs to choose from should climb pretty quickly.

Google Translate just got a lot better, with a nice, clean new look and several new features. The first thing you'll notice is that you no longer have to click to translate. Translate now works instantly, as you type. If you're trying to translate something into a language with a non-Roman alphabet (like Chinese, for example) Google will also show the phonetic pronunciation underneath the translated characters.

If you're translating into English, you've got an even better option: you can hear an audio pronunciation of the English translation. This feature is awesome, and I'm looking forward to a time when Google inevitably implements it for other languages, too. There's a new feature for English-speakers, too, though: if you type in the phonetic, romanized version of a word from a non-Roman language (Google cheekily gives Fake Steve Jobs' trademark sign-off, "namaste," as an example), Translate will attempt to show the proper characters in the original language.

Jay posted yesterday about the arrival of bookmark sync on Chromium for Mac, and it appears as though Linux users have been invited to the dance as well.

After finishing the updates on my Ubuntu 9.10 dual-boot, I gave the --enable-sync command line switch a go on my 64-bit Chromium install. Sure enough, sync is now working on Linux. Head to the wrench menu and press "Synchronize my bookmarks," enter your credentials, and within a few seconds your bookmarks appear.

The change is certainly making my work day a heck of a lot easier. With the LastPass extension already handling my logins and passwords and Chromium now providing cross-platform access to my bookmarks, jumping back and forth between Linux and Windows is a much smoother process.

Chromium (and Chrome) on Linux is shaping up rather nicely. I'm in agreement with the devs on this thread - it feels speedier than its Windows counterpart. With about 80% of my computing time spent in a web browser, Linux is becoming a more compelling option for me - thanks to the Chromium project.