I have used My Yahoo as my primary news and information page for many years, and overall I am still very happy with it. With the increasing presence of blogs and other RSS content on the web, however, I have found that many of the pages I read regularly have RSS feeds that can be read via feed readers or other RSS aggregators. In fact, My Yahoo now allows you to add RSS content, and I have done so. But My Yahoo stuffs the RSS content into the existing My Yahoo layout and configuration. That’s not a bad thing, but sometimes I think it would be nice to have more control over the layout and the way content is displayed.
Now comes Netvibes. This free web service lets you create a personalized page, similar to My Yahoo, with any RSS content you like. It’s still in beta, so it’s a little rough around the edges and the true potential lies in what the developers may add in the coming weeks and months. So far, so good, however. It has a very flexible and configurable interface. If you sign up and get login information (which is not required to begin using the service), you can access your page anytime and from any computer (again, much like My Yahoo).
You can easily add content and move it around the page until you get the perfect display. Better yet you can import OPML files as well. You can even import, download and listen to podcasts without any additional software (though I have not tried this yet).
If you use Gmail for email, you can integrate your email account into your page and access your email instantly.
The developers have a blog where you can read about the current and planned features. It’s a work in progress for sure, but keep your eye on Netvibes.
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