Netvibes: Best Homepage Ever

I’ve been using Netvibes for around a month now, and it’s one of the best online tools I’ve used (especially since I use it very frequently). The best way I can sum it up is that it’s a “web desktop” and definitely the most “web 2.0″ thing I’ve used aside from 30boxes. After getting a few co-workers hooked on it, I thought I’d post about it since myself and others I’ve showed it to find it so useful. I came across it quite some time ago and didn’t think all that much of it, but they recently released an enhanced design and I decided to give it a go and came away both very impressed and hooked.

What does it do? It’s an RSS reader (which supports importing and exporting OPML), it integrates other services such as Flickr, del.icio.us, eBay, Myspace, weather.com, any sort of iCal based calendar, etc. I like it a lot better than a standalone RSS reader because it does a lot more stuff, and I can customize the various widgets I have on each tab. Basically I leave it open in a Firefox tab all day and use it to keep up with my various feeds.

Another advantage is that I have one central place to login to in the event that I find myself at a computer that’s not my own. Essentially all that I need to do to get caught back up is to login to Netvibes to get a quick overview on what is in my various email accounts, what is happening on my favorite RSS feeds, etc.

Another great thing about it is how open it is. You can create modules, suggest RSS feeds, share tabs, and much more. So if for some reason it doesn’t support your favorite site already out of the box, you can make your own module to add support for it. I seem to always find some sort of new feature (ie, I just found that you can share tabs today), and I find this site to be really phenomenal.

I started using it around the time that the new Google Reader interface came-out and I still haven’t found a reason to use Google Reader again since creating a Netvibes account. I’d strongly urge you to give it a try for a couple of days and see what you think.