NetVibes: A Great Personalized Homepage And An Amazing Feed Reader

What Are Personalized Homepages?

In addition to offering literally hundreds (if not thousands!) of ways that you can customize the start-up page in your Internet browser (IE, Firefox, etc.), sites like the ones mentioned above also serve as web-based personal news aggregators -- which means they can be used as your very own personal RSS feed reader.

So, if RSS subscriptions, feeds, and feed readers sound confusing to you... have no fear. Personalized homepages practically eliminate the "subscription process" that's typically required when you register to a website's feed. Now it's a cinch to stay abreast of updates on your favorite websites!

Now... you'll always have the latest headlines from your favorite sites right at your fingertipsl.

What Can You Do With Personalized Homepages?

In short: Personalized homepages are highly customized start-up pages that let you pick & choose the colors, number of columns, types of "modules" (or cool shortcuts) you want on your page... in addition to displaying all of the RSS feeds and/or recently updated websites of your own choosing.

A personalized homepage is a great time-saver. And a good way to stay organized, too!

There are tons of add-ons and modules that you can pretty much drag & drop onto your personalized space to create your very own "look" for the start-up page on your computer.

Most of the modules are highly "niche" (such as "track your one favorite TV show by listing all future air dates & times" or "track your ebay watch items all on this one page"). This makes it possible to store exactly the type of information you want on your personalized homepage.

You can also create your very own module, if you so desire, and make it available for others to enjoy as well. I hear it's a very simple process in NetVibes and others.

There are tons of options. You can choose your own colors. Pick how many columns you want to display. Change fonts. Download "themes" (or skins). And much, much more.

Why I Like Netvibes Best

It's the most customizable one that I've found.

There's no limit to the number of feeds you can track, and you can see them all at a glance. Plus, the "tabs" in Netvibes let you organize feeds by the category of your choosing, or organize other Internet widgets (like calendars, clocks, weather, sticky notes, to-do lists, movie showtimes, stocks, etc.)

You can also store web pages and pictures on your Netvibes page.

It's very, very simple to use -- practically no learning curve at all.

They seem pretty cutting edge to me... they're always on top of new features, I haven't encountered any "bugs" and when they find one they seem to take care of it right away. They have a very active community of users.

Their 30 pages of blog entries is loaded with fun and helpful tips. Plus, their loyal community of users usually post a kajillion comments to each post -- for even more great ideas!

They've been around since 2005. Not only is NetVibes very popular, it also seems likely to be around for a long, long time.

Good News: If you've already got a start-up page that you happen to like, you do not have to change it to be able to take advantage of all that a personalized homepage has to offer! Instead, you would simply bookmark your personalized homepage and access whenever you want.

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