Just a Leaf

schmedley.com

For those of you who did not take to Netvibes because it was either too complicated or not attractive enough for you, you may want to bookmark Schmedley.

The authors are taking a fundamentally different approach with this start page. Not only is the presentation much more beautiful than its competitors, but it “serves” you the web rather than “smashing” it together.

I could spend a few more paragraphs trying to explain what I mean by that, but I think it is better if you simply go check it out . Take special notice of the channels up top (my favorite being the weather, stocks, and amazon) and see how they are serving you your favorite websites in a much more compressed and intuitive environment.

With email widgets (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, and pop3) about to be released and the prospect of eBay (with snipe!), calendar, and radio channels, Schmedley (even at it’s alpha state) is looking to become a very comfortable place to be.

In my recent discovery of AJAX powered home pages, I’ve been trying out every offering I could get my hands on. Eventually, I settled for Webwag which met most of my needs in a home page. To its credit, I haven’t seen anyone else pull off their “widget on-demand” functionality as well as they did… but I found the RSS reader(s) and layout functions lacking. While it proved to bet a significant benefit to my work flow, it still fell short in some key areas.

NetVibes, on the other hand, fills those needs quite well! Some of the major advantages that netvibes has are as follows:

Your content is divided into 3 columns, like webwag. But unlike webwag, you can change this value, easily, to 1-4. Using just one column allows you to embed an entire website into your homepage, which I have found to be very useful so far. Here are a couple examples:

Google Calendar fully embedded in one of my “tabs”.

Google Docs, a specific document I use frequently.

I also have Google Reader embedded for RSS. So, from my home page, I can edit my calendar, read and edit common documents, and read and manage my RSS reader. Not only are these things pre-loaded (faster than using bookmarks), but it uses less system resources because you use only one browser window.

I have also been struggling to find an online solution for my RSS feeds. NetVibes finally got me online. You actually have two options here, I’m trying both.

The built in reader frequently checks your feeds for updates and gives you a preview of the contents when you mouse-over. So far, nothing new.

This is where the competitors usually drop the ball. Click the article you want to read and you are instantly using a full built-in reader. It’s not the fanciest reader around, but all the basic functions are there. With a click you can visit the original article, switch to another on the side bar, or revert back to the main view. Very nice.

Although I don’t have the screen shot to prove it (guilty of laziness), I also have an embedded Google Reader… not some plugin or something, the full Reader. And I see no reason you couldn’t do this with any other online reader if you are attached to one in particular. Of course, you can import your feeds from any other source as you would expect, which worked nicely for me.

Lastly, there are hundreds of user-made “modules” that expand the functionality of your home page. The “Embed URL” for instance, is the module I used to access the Google apps. All the smaller apps you would expect to see are present as well (to-do list, notepad, weather, calendar, stock tickers, etc). There are even some chat clients (gtalk, yahoo!, AIM, MSN) if you really want to go mobile.

NetVibes enjoys, perhaps, the most active user-base in their niche.

Ok, so nothing is perfect. I don’t find it quite as attractive as its competitors and it’s not quite as easy either (the price you pay for power, I guess). It also was not able to load Gmail, using the embedded URL although there is a decent Gmail module ready from the get go. While I’m sure I will find more to complain about as time goes on, for the time being I’m happy to make NetVibes my new homepage and my new RSS reader(s).

At the speed development appears to be occurring though, I wouldn’t doubt if my few gripes were overcome very soon.

NetVibes