Netvibes for being up-to-the-minute with news and blogs

I discovered a fantastic application recently called NetVibes.

It’s helped me keep on top of all the game dev news sites and blogs I like to keep track of, as well as collecting other various pieces of information that are important to me.

Basically it’s a My Yahoo! custom home page portal, but it’s INCREDIBLY customizable and allows you to embed miniature applications as well as RSS feeds. There’s a MASSIVE user community behind it that’s constantly developing new embeddable mini apps for anything and everything you could need. Normally I hate apps like this, but there’s some really useful, really smart stuff out there that I’ve made use of.

In addition to that, it’s tabbed like Firefox, so you can have different tabs for different subjects. It’s also super easy to use and set up and modify. Click drag to move stuff around instantly, drag and drop anything anywhere, ‘X’ to close, ‘_’ to minimize… it has a fantastic interface, even though it’s entirely web-based.

I have one page set up with my Google Calendar, a miniature To Do List application (for personal life To-Dos, not work-related ones), and a small persistent notepad I scribble things on. I have Google Calendar’s settings set up to email me my daily agenda and TXT message my phone at a user-defined time before an appointment.

Anytime a news site is updated, Netvibes knows within five minutes and it shows up in one of my little tabs.

Netvibes also lets you share tabs. Here are the ones I use for my game dev news… click the link, then click ‘OK, Preview it’ to see. It’s all web-based and fast and simple. My other pages are for game dev news and news sites I like to read.

These are my game dev news tabs that I share:

Game Industry News

Game-Specific News

Game Industry Articles and Blogs

Netvibes is free, no strings attached, no software to install, no browser plugins required. You go to the website, and it just works, from any location. It’s crazy!

Do any of you use NetVibes, or something like it? How? :)

Comment Pages

There are 9 Comments to "Netvibes for being up-to-the-minute with news and blogs"

  • David Marsh says:

    I don’t see http://devbump.com on any of your feeds! :p

  • Jon Jones says:

    That is because I really suck and put the blog list together in a huge hurry to show someone how Netvibes worked. :) Doh!

  • Vidar Rapp says:

    Yeah, Netvibes is great! I’ve been using it for about a month by now and I keep finding more uses for it every day.

    It’s simply great for keeping on top of things.

    Also, thanks for the tabs! Always a pleasure to read your blog.

  • Jon Jones says:

    Woohoo! Another Netvibes user. :)

    Its flexibility really astounds me, and the ingenuity of their users to create new and interesting ways to use it.

    Thanks for the kind words!! :)

  • Vidar Rapp says:

    Well, what can I say?

    Many of the articles you have here I feel like I could have written myself, you have put a lot of my thoughts in writing. :)

    Keep up the good work!

  • I’ve been pretty happy with Google’s reader, but integration with some solid list functionality (todo, milestones, SonicLiving, …) is something I’d definitely find useful. I’ll have to check out their plugins and see what they’ve got.

  • I’m a lover of Google Reader, a convert from Bloglines. I like being able to read the same feeds and home and work on Mac and PC, and have everything synced up, whihc is why I prefer a web based solution.

  • Jon Jones says:

    Vidar, thanks man, I really appreciate that!

    Matt, yeah, I also use Google Reader with a Greasemonkey script to seamlessly integrate it with Gmail for a few of my very favorite blogs I always want to keep on top of. It’s a nice little app.

    Let me know what you think of Netvibes!

    Rick, wasn’t Bloglines web-based too?

  • Yeah bloglines was net based, but Google reader hammers it.

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