Netvibes RSS Aggregator
Thursday, June 8th, 2006I have about 30 RSS feeds in my rotation at any given time. I know, 30 feeds isn’t necessarily a lot but they can still become hard to manage. When it comes to reading my feeds I am pretty particular of my RSS reader and I seem to cycle through readers pretty quickly. Here is a brief list of the features I usually look for:
- The ability to export my feeds to OPML.
- Some kind of article preview that allows me to easily see the first few lines of the post.
- I need to be able to access my feeds from any PC with any browser. I stay away from anything requiring an installation.
- A way to categorize my feeds.
- Easy registration.
I was previously using the Google reader but it was lacking on a few features so I decided to give Netvibes a shot. Netvibes easily satisfies my minimum requirements and even offers some additional perks I wasn’t expecting. My single favorite feature is the ability to navigate Netvibes with your keyboard. Netvibes has many additional features I have yet to try and with a busy ecosystem they are always coming out with new modules. Here is an abbreviated list of modules that come with the standard setup:
- GMail, Yahoo Mail, or PopMail
- Weather
- Flickr Photos
- Writely Documents
- Bookmarks
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Ebay Account Link
- Netvibes ecosystem - This is an area that has information on new modules, popular feeds, and events.
This isn’t to say that Netvibes is without faults. Netvibes is very web 2.0 - almost too much. Every action you take is done asynchronously and at times I feel this takes away from the experience. The synchronization of the blogs operates on a timed basis and inevitability fails after my browser has been open for a few hours.
These minor complains aside I still feel Netvibes is a winner and once you are accumstomed to the Ajaxiness of Netvibes it is a really nice experience. Perhaps Netvibes is just what this finicky cat has been looking for.
