jeffchin.com

Dave posted about the incredibly costumizable Netvibes.com only one week ago. I made it my homepage, and it has already changed the way that I browse the internet. Just like he said, there are many “make your own portal” sites out there including ones from AOL.com, Yahoo!, MSN, and even Google. These new portals take the tedious clicking around the blogs and websites you frequent just to check to see if they’ve updated with new content. Think of it as the “Now Playing” screen of your TiVo for the internet; you’ll no longer have to remember what channel or time the show is on, just like you won’t have to remember what sites you want to visit. And just like how you get Seasons Passes for TiVo, you have to get “subscriptions” to websites via RSS (the website has to be formatted correctly and published through a site like feedburner.com)

I’ve tried them all, but none of them compare to Netvibes, here are a few reasons why I like Netvibes and some other things you can do with your own Netvibes homepage:

1. Podcasts: Yes, you’ve heard that word before. It’s kinda like a normal blog, but audio instead. I’ve tested out suscribing to and listening to podcasts on the other services that I mentioned before, and Netvibes handles podcasts the best. When you listen to podcasts that you’ve suscribed to on Netvibes, most of them will launch a little player on the top of the page rather than launching a new page with the mp3 playing, etc.
It looks like this:
Some podcasts that I recommend: NPR Newscasts, DC101 Local Lix, and KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, or find your own favorite podcasts at PodcastAlley.com

2. Flickr Module: I use Flickr to share and store my photos, but this way you can have the pictures displayed on your netvibes homepage to brighten up what can turn into a mundane page of links. Subscribe my my pictures here.

3. Subscribe to your friends blogs: Everyone’s blogging nowadays, and it’s a little annoying to check each of your friends’ sites to see if they’ve posted something new. If you’ve got friends like me, a lot of your friends have websites with feeds you can subscribe to. This can fill up your netvibes page pretty quickly, so I use a site called RSSMix.com to aggregate all the feeds into one big feed. Subscribe to my site via XML or RSS.

4. Portable Bookmarks: If you tend to use a lot of different computers, or have 2 computers like I do at work, it’s annoying to maintain the same bookmarks on both computers. With netvibes, you have a bookmark list that is maintained online, complete with tags to help you organize them.

5. Scratchpad/To-Do List: I can’t remember all the things my boss tells me to do, or what I need to pick up at the grocery store. With netvibes, you can have multiple color coded scratchpads to keep lists or notes of things you need to do, or just a place to jot them down. And just like the bookmarks module and everything else you customize on your netvibes site, when you log into your netvibes account on another computer, it’s all there for you just how you left it.

This has been one big infomercial for netvibes.com, but I rarely see something that makes me change my habits as quickly as this. So, check it out, play around with it and let me know what you think!