The myAOL team has made a brand-new theme available this week just in time for Valentine's Day! If you like pink, you're going to love this theme. It's called Magenta, and you can try it out by clicking on the Themes link at the top right of myAOL, then by selecting Magenta from the Themes window.
Also, there are continually new gadgets added to myAOL that you might want to add to your experience. There's a "See New Gadgets" link to the right of the blue Add Stuff button that takes you to the Recently Added category of our gadget gallery.
If you are a current yourminis startpage user and would like to continue reading your feeds, using your widgets, and explore some new content - come and try out myAOL as your new startpage experience.
Here is a quick tutorial on how to export your feeds data to myAOL from yourminis:
1) Go to http://www.yourminis.com/start
2) Click "Add Content" at the upper left hand side of the yourminis startpage.
3) Click "Export OPML" at the bottom of the menu and save the OPML file to your desktop.
This OPML file has all your feed subscriptions from yourminis. Follow these 3 steps to import them to myAOL:
1) Go to http://my.aol.com/page/favs
2) Click on "Import Feeds" in the lower left hand corner
3) Import the OPML file that you had saved to your desktop.
Now you can continue reading the same feeds as you had on yourminis on myAOL today.
Did you know that you can also add all your favorite yourminis widgets to myAOL also? If you find a minis widget that you like, click on the "Copy Me" button (usually located in the upper right hand corner) and look for the myAOL icon to add it to your myAOL page.
Be sure to sign up for a free account so you don't lose any of your new information.
When myAOL launched just over a year ago, our goal was to open up the platform to allow other companies, startups and independent developers across the world to build widgets for the site, populating myAOL with content and functionality that would hold personal appeal across broad and niche audiences. It took a little longer than we hoped (rolling out myAOL in 25 countries took up a bit of our time!) but... today we are thrilled to announce the launch of the new open developer site at: http://dev.my.aol.com.
The new site offers developers links to information and tools for building gadgets and the opportunity to submit existing gadgets to share via the myAOL Gadget Gallery, which already includes many gadgets built by the myAOL team, widget factories, and third-party developers.
Working with developers from Google and other members of the OpenSocial community to adopt the gadget spec ensures that developerswith existing gadgets are able to submit them to the myAOL Gallery, and makes it easy for widget factories to offer their developer communities a simple way to submit their work as well. For example, yourminis is now live with the ability to easily add any of their widgets to a myAOL page or submit them to the myAOL Gallery.
CONGRATULATIONS to the entire myAOL team – from Mountain View to Bangaloreto Dulles!
THANK YOU to our colleagues at Google who have been so helpful throughout the process.
Our combined efforts have resulted in a variety of fun gadgets for the myAOL audience (with many more on the way!) and the creation of a site that will allow us to fill myAOL with more choices and more great content. Check out our post on the opensocial blog too! Jen Consalvo Director, Product Management, myAOL
New visitors to myAOL this week will see a whole new welcome experience designed to make first-time setup quick and easy! First, you can select from a subset of our stylish themes, then choose any or all interests and last enter a ZIP code. Clicking "I'm Done" will apply the selected theme, add special-interest pages to the newly-created site, and apply the ZIP code to any location-based content modules.
Another site update is something existing and new users alike will enjoy -- we've made adding new stuff like content modules, feeds, themes and pages to your page easier! Simply click on the blue "Add Stuff" button now located on the right-hand side of the page above your modules and you'll see a window open below offering featured items which can be added with one click to your page, or you can click into the gallery to browse all modules.
You can also select Feeds, Themes and Pages on the left-hand navigation. Clicking on Feeds will allow you to quickly enter any blog or RSS feed URL into the field to add to your page in a new module.
Clicking on Themes allows you to browse all of our awesome page skins and click to apply them to your page. Select Pages and browse our ready-made pages full of cool content modules -- this is a quick and simple way to make your site more robust.
Facebook junkies can now get notified of updates right from myAOL - Yay! Check out the new Facebook Notifier myAOL Gadget which we recently launched. The widget displays information from your Facebook account including new updates, status messages, photos and more. Click the button to add it to your page now.
The new myAOL Facebook gadget makes it easy to keep track of Facebook while also keeping up on all of your news, weather and email updates on myAOL.
Please note: This widget requires you to login to a Facebook account in order to see updates. You may need to make sure your browser allows popups to signin to Facebook from this gadget.
Everyone is looking to save money at the pump these days! myAOL has just added a Local Gas Prices module that you can customize to any U.S. city and find the lowest gas prices within a 10-mile radius. Add it to your page and start saving today!
We have some updates for you. We have added new themes! Simply click on the Themes link in the header, and you'll notice we've added a second page of new theme options. Of course, we'll be continually adding new themes:
We've also added new modules. One module I'd like to highlight is Pandora. Pandora is an online music radio service. They have a variety of great music radio stations! You can currently find this module under the "Recently Added" section or you can simply search our widget gallery for 'Pandora'.
Let's take a brief and closer look at YourMinis, which AOL acquired last week. YourMinis create widgets for you to use on your blog, website, startpage, and desktop. Yes, all 4!
So how does it work?
First, go to the widget gallery, and let's choose the "YouTube Videos" widget which is currently under the Top Rated widgets:
Next, after selecting the widget, you will see a preview of the widget. In the grid view, select the "COPY ME" button to select your destination for the widget. You should see this now:
Next, you choose your destination for the widget. For example, if you are using Windows Vista, you will choose the Windows icon in the 3rd Row. Or, if you want to use it in FaceBook, you will select the FaceBook icon in the 1st Row. I will choose the first option 'Copy Embed Code', which will provide me an HTML code snippet and I simply just copy/paste the code into this blog entry. Each blog type differs in how they require you to embed HTML code, but many of the popular blogs are listed as default options (shown above).
Done!
**NOTE: currently, only a limited number of YourMinis work with myAOL. For the specific list of widgets, please view this previous blog post.
Goowy is a hot company that offers a variety of sleek and fun widgets for you to use. We already offer a number of rich yourminis widgets created by Goowy within myAOL but you can definitely expect to see new Goowy's widgets soon in the myAOL product, so we can offer you more new and improved widgets!
Please welcome the Goowy team to the AOL family, and more importantly, we hope you will equally like what they have to offer.
Do you love movies? If the answer is yes, then we've just added the perfect new module for your myAOL page. It's the Moviefone module, and it is packed full of great movie info and functionality. While browsing movies that are coming soon to theaters, you will get a live countdown and can click to watch the trailer. Or, you can browse movies that are currently in the theater to get showtime information. The "Find Listings Near You" link allows you to enter your ZIP Code to get a rundown of your local theater's listings.
We just added another new module today - the MapQuest Module. MapQuest is America's #1 mapping website on the Web. You can use this convenient module to instantly get maps and routes, or you can use it to find businesses and places.
Below is a sample map of San Francisco:
You can find the module here to add to your own page!
We recently added a new module, thanks to TheFind.com, that could be very helpful this holiday season as you try and keep track of what you are going to get everyone for the holidays.
TheFind.com miniShopper module (shown above) offers the ability to create and maintain a simple shopping list as well as search TheFind.com for all of your shopping list items.You can add the module to your page today by visiting HERE. Happy shopping!
You are now able to add the "What's Hot" module from Mgnet onto your own myAOL start page! What's Hot will provide you with all the latest and hottest news across the Web. The module itself is a nice image cloud that updates itself in real time.
You can also tailor it to your interests. You can choose Sports as your specified topic of interest, for example, or you can even enter in a search query if you want to narrow your results. Below is an example from searching for "Tiger Woods":
This module is available in the myAOL module directory, and you can find it here. It is also available for iGoogle, and you can find it here.
A few weeks ago, Frank Gruber, myAOL Product Manager, introduced myAOL at the Widget Summit organized by Niall Kennedy in San Francisco on a panel dedicated to discussing the personal homepage space. The session was an hour long discussion with a cast of industry experts. I had a chance to capture a video clip of his introduction.
AOL 
A few weeks ago, 
