You’ve got gadget mail

For a while now, we Googlers have used a bit of shorthand to refer to the Personalized Homepage — a name that connotes interactivity, the Internet, and personalization all at once. Please meet iGoogle, the new name for the Google Personalized Homepage.

Developers around the world have been working hard to make more and more of the world’s content available for iGoogle. Can you get, oh, some of the world’s most beautiful pictures, updated daily? Check. Thousands and thousands of gadgets to choose from? Check. A personal note and picture from your sweetie? Now you can make your own, because starting today, without having any programming or web design experience at all, anyone can create Google Gadgets for iGoogle and send them to friends. Simple gadget templates include a photo gadget, a “GoogleGram” greeting card-style gadget, a YouTube video channel gadget, and a free-form gadget.

To make yours, choose the gadget template you’d like to use, enter your info, and enter your friends’ email addresses. You can always make changes to your gadget, and you can even set some kinds of gadgets to update automatically so your friends will see a new message daily.

Today we’re also making the themes that have been so popular on iGoogle in the U.S. available on every edition of iGoogle around the world, and we’re making iGoogle available in 22 new locales. Visit iGoogle and click “Select theme” to pick a theme for your own page.