Google Future will be receiving a complete redesign and makeover in the next week or two. Apart from upgrading to Wordpress 2.1, the latest version, it will receive a brand new designer styling (pictured) by Thord Hedengen.

As this site is affiliated to our 21st-Century Phi network magazine, the colours will be blue based but similar in styling to the example shown above.

There may be some disruption to service while this work is carried out, and fresh posts will be delayed for a few days.

Jeffrey M. O’Brien of Fortune Magazine writes :”The Web, they say, is leaving the era of search and entering one of discovery. What’s the difference? Search is what you do when you’re looking for something. Discovery is when something wonderful that you didn’t know existed, or didn’t know how to ask for, finds you. When it comes to search, there’s a clear winner — a $145 billion company called Google.”

If the Semantic Web (Web 3.0) is about making better sense of data and content, so that real people can use it, it will be an improvement on the dreary Web 2.0 stuff. Google has been at work on this for a while now — person-centric IPTV advertising (pitching adverts to a single person’s interests) is one of its major goals.

The new search engines will seek out connections and intelligent comments that have real meaning and value to the reader. Google is beginning to do this with its sidebars of extra choices within a search topic.

O’Brien says : “But there is no go-to discovery engine — yet. Building a personalized discovery mechanism will mean tapping into all the manners of expression, categorization, and opinions that exist on the Web today. It’s no easy feat, but if a company can pull it off and make the formula portable so it works on your mobile phone — well, such a tool could change not just marketing, but all of commerce. ”

Google today announces a selection of gadgets for your website.

Google Gadgets for your webpage can help make a site dynamic and rich with content. Google Gadgets, which have long been available for users to add to the Google homepage and Google Desktop, are now available for webpage owners to add to their own webpages. Google Gadgets are miniature-sized objects that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the web.

“Now anyone can have a great-looking website with automatically updating content,” said Adam Sah, Google Gadgets Architect. “By making Google Gadgets available for you to add to your webpage, we’re working to connect developers with enthusiastic consumers and to make information universally accessible and useful to the individual user.”

There are games, news clips, weather reports, maps, and much more.

That cornerstone of the Google Empire, Matt Cutts, “without whom nothing happens on the index”, has been writing on his blog about The Google Lifestyle.

He writes : “Earlier today I had to cancel a dentist appointment. I looked in the file where I normally keep my contact info, but didn’t see the dentist’s phone number. So I searched for [mydentistsname cupertino] and up popped a Onebox with his business address, phone number, and a little Google map.”

Now, normally I wouldn’t describe that as a “lifestyle”, but, in this case, it’s so impressive, I’ll make an exception.

Check it out, it’s good advice. Look for the mathematical tip that follows the map.