Google’s Chromecast media streaming dongle looks set to receive some major home screen enhancements.
The current Chromecast set-up is a pretty stripped-back one. Leave it running without any media pumping through it and it offers a pretty-but useless photo frame mode. Oh, and a clock. That’s always handy.
Google is already planning on offering more, it seems. One intrepid Reddit user has been trawling through the Chromecast’s HTML code, and has uncovered signs of the next step for the Chromecast UI.
Said user has found multiple mentions of 'weather' and 'png' in the Chromecast home screen source code. This seems to suggest that Google will, at some point, provide images that change according to the weather.
In addition, the user found links to a number of weather-related icons, including a jacket, an umbrella, a pair of shades, and the like. All of which appears to point to a subtle weather forecast widget of sorts.
Delving into the Javascript, the user also found signs that Google was testing the use of personal photos on the Chromecast homescreen. Might we be able to set out own pictures as wallpapers in future? It seems like a good bet.
In our review of the Chromecast we conclude that Google’s media streaming dongle has much promise and a tempting price point, but that there is "a long way to go until Chromecast realises its potential."
Making the device fundamentally more useful from the moment you switch it on would certainly be a step forwards on that journey.
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Via: Gigaom
