netvibes

Netvibes gets labs section for experimental features

Taking a page from Google, Netvibes has launched its own labs section that will serve double duty as a place for users to request widgets they want to see, along with a small collection of experimental features that are not yet a part of the main service. These include an organizer that will weed out feeds you don't read, a WYSIWYG theme editor, and a tag cloud generator that reads feed headlines and highlights words that frequently show up.

Of the three new tools, the theme editor is actually a refresh on an existing Netvibes feature. Previously, users could … Read more

Daily Tidbits: Netvibes gets facelift, NY Times enlists help from celebrities

Personalized home page provider, Netvibes announced Monday that users are now able to arrange widgets on their home page in a variety of new ways to improve their page's design, instead of using the current, simple arrangement options. Each widget also features a new view mode, which allows them to decide how each is displayed. Users can choose among a carousel view, ticker display, magazine layout, or a headline view.

The NYTimes.com announced Tuesday that it has started a new marketing campaign to increase the popularity of its site. According to the company, it has added a new page … Read more

Netvibes gets new layouts and OpenSocial support

At Monday's Le Web 3 conference in Paris, Netvibes announced the launch of its latest version which adds support for Google's OpenSocial and Facebook Connect, alongside several new ways to view widgetized content.

The OpenSocial element may be one of the most interesting aspects, as it's now paired with Netvibe's Universal Widget API, allowing developers to create widgets that can pull information from a user's social network. In the example demoed at the conference, Netvibes showed off a weather widget which displayed the user's weather, along with that of their friends. The user didn'… Read more

Put the information you need on your home page

Last week, my iGoogle home page suddenly got a new look via the addition of a pane on the left side containing shortcuts to my widgets. I didn't ask for the new arrangement, and I can't find a way to make the new left pane disappear.

What's worse, when I now click my Gmail in-box, I get an abbreviated version of the application, minus a search box and other useful features. To see the whole enchilada, I have to click the Launch Full Gmail link in the top-right corner of the window. Huh?

The upshot is that … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 757: Vista: it's not Stalin

Big thanks to one of our callers today who offers some much-needed perspective on Vista and...well, everything, really. Also, Netflix saves the profiles (yay!), AT&T releases details on iPhone 3G pricing (ouch if you don't get a contract), and Fiji objects to other things named "Fiji." Just like how we object to other things named "Buzz."

Listen now: Download today's podcast Episode 757

Happy Canada Day!

Netflix issues mulligan on profiles, won’t eliminate the feature http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9980993-36.html http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-going-away.html

AT&… Read more

Today's tidbits: iPhone apps, Netvibes updates, and special Spore

Here are some news tidbits from today that were too small to fill out entire posts. We've grouped together three that are worth your time.

FriendFeed puts out an iPhone app. Social aggregator FriendFeed has launched an iPhone-friendly version of its news feed (http://friendfeed.com/i). Previously users had to use a service like FFtoGo to get the stream of news reformatted to match the resolution on the popular handheld device. The new look incorporates image sharing, using a bit of a work-around with Mail2FF, a service that posts e-mailed photos and messages to your activity stream or … Read more

OneSpot feeds publishers' content

If you don't have content to populate your site, OneSpot has some for you. The Austin-based start-up joins a host of other companies in the business of delivering contextual links for publishers. OneSpot CEO Matt Cohen makes the claim that OneSpot "democratizes vertical or affinity publishing, helping anyone find, select, and deliver links to the best content on the Web."

OneSpot sifts through more than 200,000 RSS feeds to make content selections. Users provide the system with a set of sample sites, and OneSpot identifies related feeds, looking at link overlaps, Cohen told me. The selected … Read more

It's 'au revoir' for Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim

Netvibes, a company offering services for creating personalized home pages and a platform for widgets, announced on Thursday that founder and Chief Executive Tariq Krim is stepping aside.

Although Chief Operating Officer Freddy Mini will be taking his place as CEO, Krim will remain on the Paris-headquartered company's board of directors. No concrete reason for his departure was provided.

In a release Thursday, Mini called Krim "a true visionary" and touted the fact that nearly 1,000 clients are using the Netvibes widget platform, which went open-source last month. Mini, a former employee of CNET News.com … Read more

Netvibes to open-source its widget platform

Netvibes, a developer of customizable start pages, plans to make its widget platform, application programming interfaces, and iPhone version open source, according to CEO Tariq Krim.

"We want to compete with Google widgets," Krim said. "Our container supports Google widgets and every other platform. If we release our code, people will leverage it and grow the reach of our platform."

Krim hopes that supporting a broad range of platforms, including Windows Vista and Windows Live, Mac OS X, Opera, Yahoo, and Google, will inspire the developer community to adopt and innovate on the Netvibes platform.

Netvibes … Read more

Netvibes Ginger goes live, still no Web drive

The latest version of customizable start page Netvibes, nicknamed "Ginger" will be open to everyone as of Tuesday morning. We gave it a thorough look back in late January, and Rafe and I have been using it on a daily basis to keep up with various feeds and use it as a Widget engine.

If you're a current Netvibes user using the "Coriander" release, the tool has gone noticeably more social, adding options to follow your friend's reading activity and recommend news items without having to use other bookmarking or sharing services. It'll … Read more