e-wot?

Ok, I’ve checked out the tools I mentioned in my previous post. And here are my initial thoughts…

Both iGoogle and myYahoo require login and an account. This isn’t a big deal if you’ve already got an account with one of these, but it’s a bit of a bore if you haven’t. Google has a lot of great applications that integrate nicely, like their calendar (which links to my MS Outlook calendar from behind my workplace firewall nicely).. Yahoo, probably has the same kind of cross-over. But…

Even tho’ I’ve got accounts with both Google and Yahoo, I’d still go for either Netvibes or Pageflakes. Here’s why…

• they’re easy to get to grips with
• they’re fun to use and intuitive
• they ‘feel’ friendly
• they’ve got loads of really great things you can add

Er… so what are the differences I can see so far?

Pageflakes feels a little more intuitive. The text feeds have an option which allows thumbnails to show up with links and leads which makes your page look nicer. Adding new feeds is easy and there are plenty of new flakes to choose from.

Netvibes allows you to add feeds from password protected sites (good for me, ‘cos I wanted to get feeds from our password protected wiki at work). You can also customise your page with themes more (but Pageflakes are introducing more customisable themes soon). You can also add modules that allow you to search videos, podcasts and images from multiple sources.

Both offer a repository of ’stuff’ for you to customise your page. If you’re techy enough, you can make your own modules or pageflakes for either. So far, as far as I can figure out, Pageflakes is the one that most obviously allows you to share and export stuff (modules and pages).

From what I’ve discovered (link), Netvibes started a while ago and started strong. But Pageflakes has really caught up over the past months. It’s a close race. I reckon Netvibes has the lead, but Pageflakes looks like overtaking. They’re both contenders in the Webware100 competition. Let’s wait and see.