Centralize and Customize Your World With Netvibes

After repeatedly hearing about Netvibes lately, and reading Veerle’s post about her new theme the other day, my curiosity was piqued and I decided to try it out. After a few minutes of playing around, I suddenly thought of Google, and wondered if they would be making improvements to their Homepage service to compete with Netvibes’ popularity. It had been a while since I last logged in, so of course I had to go check it out, thinking a comparison of the two services might make for a good review. I was pleasantly surprised to see Google had indeed revamped Homepage into something more fun… iGoogle.

Starting with Netvibes, I gotta say - it’s really cool! Not only is there a ton of stuff you can add to your page via modules, but you can customize almost every aspect of it. Move modules around, add tabs (or pages) for modules of a specific topic, apply a ready-made theme, or create your own. You can also insert third party modules or create your own.

Some of the most useful features include webnotes, to-do lists, a module for pulling your email in (almost like a feed) from the most popular services, like Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and even POP3, and of course actual feeds from any of your favorites sites. You can also set up modules for tracking Alexa rank, viewing your del.icio.us bookmarks, searching on flickr or YouTube, and even streaming in the latest and greatest from Digg, Twitter, or Myspace. Like I said - a ton of stuff.

None of this requires a login. You’re page will be “saved” on the machine you create it on. You do have the option to create an account, however, and if you do (it’s free), you can access your page from anywhere, on any machine.

Ok, now iGoogle. There are some slick new skins to choose from, (some of which conform to your local weather if you set it up) and a number of useful Gadgets (as they’re called) which you can add to trick your homepage out. The most common items like a calendar, news bits, and map search are available of course, but more notable is the integration with Reader, search history, and Notebook.

Due to the extensive documentation on Google Gadgets and API, there are also countless third party Gadgets you can add, ranging from old Atari style games, to cool stuff like a random color scheme generator. A hefty portion of the Gadgets are just cheesy or pointless though.

While you don’t need a Google account to use iGoogle, but you’re not going to get much out of it without one. Things like your bookmarks, search history and Reader (if you use them) are not available unless you sign in.

My biggest problem with iGoogle is that it seems very slow in comparison with Netvibes. I think they still have a way to go as far as theming and integration with social services go. Netvibes takes the win when it comes to centralizing and customizing your digital life. If you haven’t scoped it out yet, you should. It looks like a promising service.

Tags: tools | utilities | web-apps