Thanks to Techcrunch, I came across Netvibes a couple of months back. It was listed as one of the “Start Pages” based on Ajax. If you don’t know what is Ajax or what is Web 2.0 then try Googling for them. Check this page for a listing of the Ajax based websites.
Earlier, I was using the web based RSS reader from Bloglines. It offered me the functionality of storing all my RSS feeds online which helped to a great deal, as I needn’t worry if I have to move across systems. The problem with the web-based RSS reader was that I have to login everytime I have to check the feeds. Also, I found them to be slow and difficult to configure and these also posed lot of navigational problems. I used Bloglines for quite sometime before I decided to move to these start pages. I had tried Google’s Personalize and for some inexplicable reason didn’t like it. Maybe it was too early or I just didn’t know how to use it effectively. Then I came across some more Start pages and two of those which I tried were Netvibes and Pageflakes.
Netvibes and Pageflakes offered similar functionality. Both were configurable, offered good feeds to start with. Initially I tried Pageflakes as it had won the SEOmoz’s Web2.0 awards. The initial setup was easy and I played around with the settings for a few days before I decided to move all my RSS feeds from Bloglines to Pageflakes. Till now, I had liked the site a lot but he troubles began when I tried to import my OPML file which I had exported from Bloglines. It just didn’t maintain the categorization that I had done in Bloglines. This is not something really important, but something like this would help in reducing the setup time. Maybe the file exported from Bloglines had some problem, but that I won’t find out unless I move back to Pageflakes in the near future. Anyway, I could have tried arranging my RSS feeds into their respective categories one more time, but at that time I decided to give Netvibes a try.
The first screen on Netvibes (for some reason) caught my eye. It was actually quite slow to load compared to Pageflakes, but I liked the screen. Maybe the blue background appeared very nice or the widgets that were shown were good (I would love to see Pageflakes with a blue background or some background similar to Netvibes. The pageflakes background doesn’t look too appealing) . For a reason unknown, I loved the page. I then played around with it for about an hour and then decided to import my OPML file. This time the file got imported properly and I was able to arrange my feeds properly. I managed to setup whatever I wanted in the required pages. Adding a feed was no problem, but I had a lot of trouble if I had to move feeds across pages or move a feed from “My feeds” to one of the categories that I had. The menu in those places is not very intuitive. I had to search as to how I have to do these things. It also offered Sudoku as a part of its ecosystem. I have shared a couple of my pages. I shared the pages of Blogs and Business from my Netvibes site.
Then I exported all the feeds from the Netvibes site to a OPML. All this while, I was doing the setup while I had logged in. Though Netvibes (and Pageflakes) doesn’t insist that you login it is better that the first time the settings are being done you login and do them. This offers you the advantage that a web-based RSS reader would offer. Once I have saved my settings under my login, I exported the OPML from netvibes and then imported it on my system without a login. So, whenever I go to netvibes.com, I get my own page. However, this doesn’t maintain any page setups that you might have done under your login. So, you have to again setup pages though the categories are maintained properly. Another problem with Netvibes is that it doesn’t seem to have a setup for the system. I haven’t ventured to find out how they are exactly storing the information, but it seems that if I use a different browser, I have to do the setup again.
My Netvibes page on my system (without logging in)
After logging in
The problem I was talking about earlier was that the OPML imported did not give me the structure in which I had saved the page. This might be a restriction as the OPML format might not allow them to do so. Maybe, they can move to a netvibes format in which this information can also be sent. So, there can be another menu option which gives the user the option of either just exporting the OPML (for use with other readers) or exporting with all netvibes settings.
With the advent of these kinds of start pages, and with the news aggregation facilities offered by these sites, Google News might start facing a new kind of threat. Even though I love Netvibes, Pageflakes offers a little more functionality and stability. It lods much quicker and also hasn’t thrown any error at me while loading so far.Some day I would like to try Pageflakes again, but for now it is going to be Netvibes.
I use Netvibes too – Didnt like Pageflakes that much, mainly the UI and the layering when the browser size is reduced. This one uses Ajax and hence consumes more internet bandwidth as compared to Feeddemon (Hard client installed on ur system and with a cache folder) as it does full background rendering every time the page is accessed. But u r right, Google looks really primitive as compared to this – so does the windows live versions.
I used all of them including google, netvibs and http://www.pageflakes.com but the one i like most is pageflakes, because you have skins to choose , shared page, and they have a very huge gallery of flakes. so you can choose from many of them,
[...] I have been using Netvibes for the last few weeks and this was my initial post about Netvibes. Based on the experience of the last few weeks, I have a few suggestions for the Netvibes team.1. Have a Pin-Up facility for a feed. (By Pin-Up I am referring to a sticky facility. Basically, if I should be able to lock the position of a feed to a place on the screen.)2. Ability to highlight only the feeds that have new entries after a refresh/reload. Along with this the facility to expand only those feeds which have new entries would be really helpful. (This can be another option next to “Expand all”.)3. Have a newspaper style browser similar to what pageflakes has.4. Provide a Save facility for the Webnotes. There can be a “Save to Desktop” or “Save by Logging on” facility added. This would be helpful in accessing the notes across computers.5. Provision for storing the structure of the pages in the OPML file. (If this is against the OPML standard then call Netvibes Markup Language or by some other name and provide this facility as an option.) This facility can be useful if I want to use the same structure which I am logged in and when I am not logged in. The other important thing about this facility would be to provide an OPML which other sites can also use without any problems.6. If possible a provision to display all the new feeds from the time the last feed was read. This might be difficult due to space constraints.7. Please, please a faster load time. It takes at least 15-20 secs to load on a broadband connection. (Speed > 512Kbps). Please do something about this. [...]
[...] Looks pretty impressive. I have been using the Ajax based start pages for quite sometime and for the last few months, I have been hooked on to Netvibes. I actually tried Pageflakes first and then switched and this is what I wrote sometime back. At that time the pageflakes site didn’t look impressive at all and I felt that the background colour was really pathetic. That is the first thing that has to be nice about a website. If the background is disappointing then half the audience is lost. Anyway, after that I didn’t venture to find out what was happening in that site after that. [...]