Watch out Windows Live…here comes Netvibes!

I was browsing my referral stats on Google Analytics and I saw a domain called Netvibes.com show up. Of course, that piqued my interest so I started some research on this. Well, I must say that I was impressed! This is a clear cut example of a Web 2.0 type of site. (What is Web 2.0? Take a look at Wikipedia’s definition.) While Windows Live has a similar type of style (tabs where you can add content, feeds, gadgets, etc), I personally believe that Netvibes did it better. They heavily rely on AJAX to allow you to drag and drop content, so be sure that you use one of their “approved” browsers. The nice thing is, they have many of the hot Web 2.0 sites as ready-made content channels. It’s easy enough to add RSS feeds (with a nice full page reader built in), iCals (import in your Google Calendars), bookmarks (including del.icio.us), Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Pop/IMAP mail and other third party modules. You can drag the panels around on a tab and between tabs.

I did have a little bit of an issue adding some RSS feeds, but I’m going to chalk it up as user IN-experience. I plan on spending some time browsing the “Netvibes ecosystem” which is basically the repository for third party customizations (e.g., RSS feeds, podcasts, iCal events and others).

I definitely recommend checking out this service!

Updated 09.26.06 @ 9:15am:

Played around some more on this. One really nice module is that of Meebo. Basically using DHTML/AJAX and other magic, you can have your Instant Messaging embedded in a tab. This is really nice for people “on the go” who might access a public computer. It saves logs of your conversations as well as supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ and Jabber/Gtalk. While I’m not entirely sure of the privacy layers of Netvibes, I’m sure that it has been thought out. For example, the email accounts will pull the subjects of Gmail or POP/IMAP, you can’t actually go into the accounts unless you enter your password in the pre-configured webmail URLs.