21 Feb
The post about Netvibes
Category: web 2.0, web design | Leave a comment
I don’t know if you have ever heard about netvibes; don’t worry if you haven’t heard about it. Despite the fact it has four million subscribers plenty are still in the dark about it. And I was one of them until Christmas 2006, and that’s saying something, as I know pretty much everything about anything.
So what is Netvibes?
Netvibes in their own words is:
A custom made web 2.0 home page solution
This service is free and gives the user the ability:
* To create a personalized page with the content they like.
* To put together data feeds and services from web 2.0 with a very simple interface
* To access your page anytime and from any computer.
It is also possible to:
* Browse, modify, and import your RSS feeds with our integrated RSS/ATOM feedreader. You can easily import an OPML file as well.
* To import, download and listen podcasts without any additional software
* To check your mail on one or many gmail account, to stick webnotes, weather and many more to come!
I have no idea how Netvibes expect to attract your average web user with all this RSS/ATOM /OPML nonsense. But I will try and explain it; basically Netvibes helps you read the Internet quicker. Obviously you can only read as quick as you can read, but this site cuts down the time on actually visiting websites, because Netvibes visits the sites for you and then displays just the news headlines from the sites you tell it.
It can check your email/myspace/bebo/ebay/flickr/traffic and travel and countless other sites all at the same time and then present the information for you in easy to digest chunks. So you can scan read the headlines quickly and see if there is anything of interest to you. It can also listen to Podcasts, but I have no idea why you would want to do that from within your web browser.
You can also go one step further and have tabs, so you can have multiple pages within the one homepage. For example you may enjoy reading about your favourite football team, or the soaps. Well you could have all your info for each topic on separate tabs.
Here’s an example of a tab on my homepage for the greatest football team in the world. Click on it for a big version
So make sure you do yourself a favour and check netvibes out. It WILL improve your life.
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