Netvibes, My New Start-up Page

My Main Netvibes Page

A few months ago I got fed up with My Yahoo as my browser’s home page, I could not stand all of the advertising any longer. I know advertisers pay the bills but on Yahoo the ads are out of control. If you inadvertently mouse-over some ads they expand and take over most of the screen and others automatically play audio. Yes I know about Adblock but that doesn’t get all of them and I’d rather surf the web than try and figure out the optimal settings to block ads for Yahoo.

My search for a My Yahoo replacement first took me to Google, but Google just didn’t do it for me either. Google limited me to a single page and the customization options were rather limited. With all of the RSS feeds and modules that I wanted to use I ended up with a really long page. The good news is that Google is ad free, so I used it for a while.

That is until recently when I discovered Netvibes, which is highly customizable and allows for multiple pages (and is ad free too). In short, it is a start-up page that uses AJAX extensively. You’ll need a broadband connection and a relatively new computer. I’m on a Apple Mac that’s about five years old (G4, OS 10.3.9, 768MB RAM, Firefox web browser) and I haven’t had a problem.

Content
Briefly there are modules for the usual sort of things: web search, email, chat, news, bookmarks (tagged for your convenience), time, weather, calendar feeds (try iCalShare for feeds), TV listings, sports scores, etc. Netvibes has a directory of various feeds (including Newsvine) or you can use feeds of your choosing; any RSS or Atom feed can be used. I don’t know the limit to the number of pages (tabs) allowed but I currently have seven.

Loads of Customization
A page/tab can have from 1 to 4 columns and you can select an icon for each tab. You can change the color of the individual modules/feeds too. Modules can be arranged by drag-and-drop.

Podcasts
You can add podcast feeds as well, they play in a player at the top of the page (see screen captures at end of entry). However some feeds don’t play in Netvibes, those that are enhanced for iTunes seem to be a problem.

Share Your Content
In grand Web 2.0 style, you can also share your content. I set up a tab of my Newsvine articles and seeds along with my del.icio.us links and Digg feed. Visit my Home Page for the feed.

In Conclusion
I’m very happy with Netvibes and recommend its use but be aware that it is still officially in beta. It doesn't replace my newsreader or iTunes for podcats but it is far superior to My Yahoo as a web portal. You may also want to give PageFlakes a try, it’s similar to Netvibes.

Screen Captures
My main Netvibes page/tab.

My Podcast tab, showing the RSS reader.