Deep Jive Interests

In an important piece of news, GigaOM reports that Netvibes has hit 5 million users, which is pretty amazing. I’ve already confessed my love for that crazy piece of web software — it is the one thing I use consistently every day. Now that I’ve found the “real” reason for collapsing feeds, its become that more usable.

For everyone who is still looking for a RSS feeder, but is open to the possibility of getting so much more, consider Netvibes. Yes, it is that good. It looks cool. It is always introducing new features. And with its open API, its modules make Netvibes approach WordPress in terms of if its “infinite” extensibility.

For example, at a glance, through the power of RSS feeds + netvibes + modules I can see:

• My last 5 pieces of unread email (through gmail widget)
• The weather for the next 3 days
• Upcoming events in my calendar (through a 30boxes widget)
• My feedburner stats (a feedburner widget)
• A list (a couple pages) of to-do items (todo widgets natch)

Here’s the other great thing: it recognizes and plays podcasts. Once you insert your RSS for a podcasting feed, it recognizes it instantly, and ta-da! There’s a “listen” to every podcast on that RSS. Sure enough, when you press that button, a flash-coded script boots up at the top of your screen, and it plays the podcast without having to rely on extra (non-browser software).

My favourite module is the box.net one; once its set up, you can browse your box.net account directly from netvibes. Best part? If you have any music that you’ve uploaded to your box.net account, you can use the built-in ability to play podcasts to play your own music! Translation? If you’re at work, or wherever, and you just HAVE to listen to “my humps” — well, as long as you’ve got it uploaded to your box.net account, its just a matter of browsing to that particular folder, and presto! You don’t have to carry your MP3 player for that!

In the latter parts of his article, Mr. Malik mentions that there’s something new in store for Netvibes – well, it remains to be seen if they’re branching off into desktop widgets or not. But if they’ve been as cool as some of the features in the past, I can’t wait.