Netvibes.com - Review Centralize all your emails RSS feeds and much much more into 1 Interne

[PSTUBb 0]

I'm writing this review to tell you about the new website I use as my homepage from now on. It's called http://www.netvibes.com/en. It's a customizable home page that allows you to read your favorite RSS feeds (think Digg, CNN, any news/blog/article/e-zine site should have an RSS feed), the weather, your emails, to-do lists, reminder notes, and plenty of other modules. If you can't find the module you want, request to have someone build it, or learn the awesome Universal Widget API yourself and code your module just the way you like it.

You can drag modules around to the layout you desire, create multiple tabs for your different needs, it's great. I have in the default tab my emails, CBC news, my Myspace comments, Local Weather and a To-Do list, a few of the latest posts on blogs which I check often, and a search module (so I can search google or msn or yahoo or whatever I feel like at the moment). Then I have a technology tab which I use to keep up to date on the latest Digg posts in the section, plus Technorati and some other tech news sites. Then I have a "Search" tab (all tabs are nameable btw) which has all my modules for regular searches, image searches across multiple sites, video searches, Reverse Phone number lookups, all that mumbo jumbo in one central page, most of these modules can search multiple websites, depending on what your favorite is. That's just a minimal use, but I'm sure you can start to see how this website would be useful to you. You could even have a module count down to a certain event and remind you when it's coming up. The best part about this whole thing is: After you've created your page(s) you can access them from anywhere in the world on any computer with internet access (and Javascript support ).

This service is truly beautiful and also in constant developpement. Just recently they released their new API which allows programmers to code widgets/modules that are not only compatible for http://www.netvibes.com/en but also googleIG, Apple Dashboard and now even on your own website with a little Javascript. Even more recently, netVibes.com became skinnable! Currently there are 4 predesigned themes, one designed by my favorite Webdesign blogger: Veerle. If you don't like any of those, and don't like the original colours of Netvibes, you can change the entire thing to whatever colour you like, and import your own wallpaper. It appears you can even import Myspace and Twitter themes. I am sure we will see further customizability very soon.

Another recent innovation being developped at http://www.netvibes.com/en: NetVibe Universes allow you to create a page customized to a specific topic and allow anyone to view it. Currently in Beta Phase, several Music artists and companies have been given invites to create Universes. Now you can keep up with the New York Times, 50 Cent or even Snoop Dogg's interests. Soon you'll be able to make them too.

"That's great, but are there any down sides?" Good question. Perhaps the only downside is the load time, which depending, can be rather slow compared to regular websites. I think it's also a bit resource heavy, considering the heavy use of Javascript and Ajax, although this is what makes the site just so damn sexy . Plus they say they are constantly tweaking the core to load just that much faster, so perhaps we will see things speed up over time.

All in all, if you like keeping your things organized and centralized, (who doesn't?) I highly recommend taking Netvibes for a test run. It's 100% free and you don't even have to register! I do recommend registering (it's quick and as far as I remember doesn't even require email activation) because it lets you type your email and password in from any computer in the world and access YOUR page(s)!

Visit http://www.netvibes.com/en

And no, I'm not affiliated with NetVibes.com in any way
btw, does Xisto have an RSS feed for it's forum?

EDIT: This should be in "Website Reviews" my bad I missed it when I was reading all the forum titles.

Edited May 23, 2007 by PSTUBb (see edit history)