Tag Archives: NetVibes
Netvibes Co-CEO Leaves To Work Fully On Wikio
Due to a disagreement between Tariq Krim and Pierre Chappaz about the future of Netvibes[1]and Netvibes Universe efforts, Chappaz left Netvibes (while remaining a shareholder) to work fully on Wikio[2]. Wikio is a news submission website with a voting system that is similar to Digg.
Through Wikio, users can customize the types of news they prefer to see though. How so? Users can create new tabs and then select tags or add tags that relate to the news they want to read (see screen shot below).
Does Chappaz’s departure mean bad news for Netvibes? Not likely. I think Chappaz did the right thing because whenever there are disagreements between upper management, business can only go down-hill from there. Isn’t that right, Semel?[3]
To truly advance take any web company to the next level, upper management must have similar visions. This is probably why PageFlakes (Netvibes’ competitor) appointed Dan Cohen, Yahoo!’s former Head of My Yahoo![4]
And I think Wikio has potential. If Chappaz does to Wikio what he did for Netvibes, Kevin Rose and the Digg team should watch their back.
[1] Netvibes.com
[2] Wikio.com
References:
[3] Wired 15.02: How Yahoo Blew It
[4] GigaOM: Netvibes, now with one less CEO
Categories NetVibes, Wikio
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NetVibes’ Load Time Decreases
NetVibes.com, the RSS aggregator company that I use as my homepage has recently found a way to decrease load time. Initially, NetVibes would load up all the RSS feed tabs at once when directing your browser to the website. Now NetVibes loads up the RSS feeds only when the tab is clicked on.
Why is this important? All of the major search engine companies now offer some form of customizing a homepage. For bloggers and publishers, finding information to publish at a fast pace is essential. This is where NetVibes comes in.
A typical daily blogger or publisher has to filter information between hundreds of RSS feed stories. Now imagine having to sort through thousands of stories. Sometimes your browser cannot handle loading all of those RSS feeds at once and may crash because the publisher thought that multitasking during loading NetVibes with other applications. Its a rare scenario but speed optimization and information transfer is becoming increasingly important.
A lot of other RSS consolidation websites should take notes from NetVibes because of its clean look, easy to add content, and now a decrease in load time. Also, the customization effect is a great feature so you can decide what colors you prefer.
Categories NetVibes
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NetVibes’ New, Aesthetic Wallpapers and Themes. They Are Customizable Too!
My RSS aggregation website of choice, NetVibes.com has unleashed several new themes and wallpapers. The new themes are called Veerle, Darkvibes, Fresh, and Fluo. My favorite is Fresh:
In the above screen shot, you will notice that there is an option to “Create My Own Theme.” What this means is that you can select your own custom color for your homepage. Below I selected a medium-toned green:
Users can input their own color hex codes or select it from the color palette.
There are also several new wallpapers that users can select for the top of their page and the bottom of their page. Users can also select the height of the header so they can see more of the header image if they wish. Header images can be imported from Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, or from a direct URL:
After playing with some of the settings, I decided that the below screen shot will be my new permanent look for NetVibes. Once I get an invitation to NetVibes Universe, I’ll share the theme and feeds:
[Information Source: NetVibes blog]
Categories NetVibes
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Google Personalized Page Gets a Makeover
Google has been on a roll in adding features to the personalized pages. It was announced earlier today on the Google blog that on one’s own personalized page, there would be themes added and would coincide with one’s own time zone. For example, if you have a beach theme, the page would determine that if it was morning or afternoon in your time, then the beach should be lit up. And of course, if it was night time in your time zone, then the beach would be dark.
As I’m writing this, it is night in my time zone, so my theme looks like this:
Other themes that Google is currently offering in their personalized pages are Classic, Beach, Bus Stop, City Scape, Sweet Dreams, Tea House, and Seasonal Scape.
Another feature that Google added to the search results pages and to personalized pages is the + box idea. When you click on the + for certain pages, you can read data without having to leave the page. The example that the Google blog gives is the ability to open the stock quote for Apple Computer, Inc. on the search results page for “apple.” This feature was also integrated in the Google personalized page.
And speaking of personalized pages upgrades, NetVibes isn’t too far behind with improving features as well. Tariq Krim adding better RSS experiences through the Coriander launch edition of NetVibes. To read about new NetVibes features, refer to Tariq’s blog.
Categories Google, NetVibes
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Meet Feedable, A Slightly New Web 2.0 RSS Consolidator
There is a slightly new player in the market of RSS consolidation, Feedable. The current major players are PageFlakes, NetVibes, and the search engines that allow you to customize homepages.
Currently, my vote for the best one out there is NetVibes because with PageFlakes, once you click on a link, you are immediately taken to an external website. NetVibes provides a pane with a text/image preview and then you can choose to move to the external page also.
Feedable is slightly different from the rest of the RSS consolidators though and could come out to be a fighter. While PageFlakes and NetVibes support tabs, Feedable goes by more of a cascading folder style. This is a definetely a different approach and I could foresee this as being an advantage.
NetVibes load time takes a blow for every RSS feed that you add to your customized page. For example, I subscribe to over 100 RSS feeds and NetVibes loads all of the stories from each feed. In the title of your customized NetVibes page it displays the number of feed articles that is being loaded. Basically, my NetVibes customized page isn’t finished loading until 717 articles are loaded into the system. To my understanding, Feedable doesn’t actually load the feed until you call upon a folder or category. So if you don’t want to read up on a certain category or folder, why should it have to be loaded?
This is an advantage that Feedable should consider exploiting. Below is a screen shot with an arrow pointing at the folder scheme. You’ll also notice that the navigation once inside the folders look slightly similar to a product that we all know (hint: iTunes).
In summary, I really like the idea of Feedable’s navigation, but I think that the site looks a little bit tacky. There is just something about it that makes me not want to switch from NetVibes just yet. Feedable has potential and thats what counts. Maybe I’m just so used to the panes that PageFlakes and NetVibes provide.
Categories Feedable, NetVibes, PageFlakes
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NetVibes RSS Boxes Now Stretches Horizontally
For those who aren’t familiar with NetVibes, the website allows users to import RSS feeds from all types of other web applications and publications, including Wall Street Journal, Flickr, YouTube, NY Times, etc. NetVibes is customizable and is one of my homepages. Tabs can also be utilized for all of the feeds that you want to subscribe to.
Earlier this morning, NetVibes had a slight outage of servers because of its upgrade. After the upgrade was complete, there was a great new feature added to NetVibes as part of its Coriander initiative: Resizable columns for the RSS feed boxes.
“Until now, you could adjust the layout with 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns to take advantage of all you screen space. Today, we are pushing the layout possibilities a bit further by allowing the columns to have a custom width. Have a module with your favorite comics? Simply make your column wider so you can read it comfortably,” wrote Tariq Krim, founder of NetVibes on his blog.
In the above screen shot, I drew an arrow to point out where you adjust the column width within NetVibes’ RSS boxes.
I’m really looking forward to some of the upcoming features NetVibes is looking to add to its user interface such as the ability to choose a background image and the stock quotes module.
Categories NetVibes
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