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.

Check out these new experiences today and let us know what you think! We love feedback! :)

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.

AOL announced yesterday the acquisition of the company Goowy.

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.

Read a TechCrunch review and hear from Goowy's CEO. Welcome Goowy!

We just launched a new feature for myAOL: themes. You can now select and choose your own theme to personalize your page. It has been a highly requested feature!

You can add your own theme by clicking on the Themes link in the upper right corner of the page, shown here:



Then, simply choose the theme that you prefer:


Please contact us if you would like to see any particular new theme. We will be adding new themes throughout the year - enjoy!

In addition to the AOL Mail module, you can now also add the Gmail Module and Yahoo Mail modules! Check them out if you have a Gmail or Yahoo account.

You can find the Gmail module here:


And find the Yahoo Mail module here:

At just under six months old and still in the beta phase, we are pleased to announce that myAOL was nominated for the Open Web Awards for favorite site in the category "Start Pages." So help us win the major prize by voting for us! Vote up until 11:59pm PST on Sunday, December 16th. At that point, the top 3 choices will be selected and we'll move into the final round of voting.



Vote for myAOL!


Thank you to Mashable and the rest of the Web community for nominating myAOL for favorite "Start Page." With our users support we might just make it to the final round and could win the major prize - vote for myAOL!

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 hope you enjoy this module as much as we do!

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:

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.