I have so many Good friends on Netvibes... It is stupid to follow them on ... FriendFeed, no ?

After a few monthes with Netvibes' Ginger , I have now a good community of good Netvibes' Friends.
They are not my "real friends" that I meet in "real life". But they are good friends there on Netvibes. They have good suggestions, good readings. They open my vision with their own. They read things I was not aware and that I start to appreciate.
With time I had to drop some of the first friends I had add : their interests were too far from mine. But now my 160 friends are a good mix.

The most active of my Friends are just 20 or so but the "My Community" widget is now too small for me. I am not able to check all their interesting messages and favorites directly in the widget. And I can not be on Netvibes all day ;)

I can, of course go to the my Activity, in the upper menu but the reading is less pleasant.

Another solution is to go to FriendFeed.
There I can check again for my good Netvibes friends, add them to my profile and then check from there without any limitation. I will also be able to check all their activities not just their Netvibes' post.

I do not know why, but I found that stupid... And you ?

Anyway, here is my FriendFeed profile: http://friendfeed.com/netex
If you are following me on Netvibes and want to follow me there...

Netvibes is back with some changes

Here are my first impressions on the new Netvibes after the "Spring update":

1. Netvibes seems to charge faster but not extra fast ;) that is also because I have too many tabs and feeds.
   
2. The Drive icon in the upper menu has been taken away :( Is that meaning that the 2 free Giga Drive will not be offered anymore ?
3. In Add Content a new Start Wizard option is offered for the new users. By clicking it you are asked for your Localisation ant your main interest. I have tryed it yesterday and I was not really impressed as when I was looking for "design" I was offered only all the searches on "design" but not a single Feed... At the moment, nothing equals human elaborated content. You can try it even if you have already Ginger, as it will just add more Tabs to your page.
   

Some Bugs:

1. The native Feed Reader does not allow the "read all" in one click on the number of unreaded items as before .
   
2. The "My community" widget and the Update Profile are not working but probably because Netvibes will wait for all servers being upgraded. (?)
   
3. some of My Followers are marked with the green icon even if have not added them as Friends so there is no use for the green icon !

As always some users complained that the site was off for more time than scheduled and that there was no way to have a backup server even with a limited access. That should be improved.

But, I would like to thank publicly the All Netvibes team for their work day and night !

NetEx Tip: Drag your friends icon on your Netvibes page

NetEx Tip:

Did you know that by dragging the icon of any of your Friends (from Contacts) on to your page, you are installing your Friends' My Community public widget ?

This Public version of the widget shows: the friends and followers of your Friend and his public activities.

Many users, create a Friends Tab on their Netvibes universe to check all their best friends activity one by one.

PS: I just discovered it ...

How to improve the (social) Activities of Netvibes

The Activities tab in he Ginger release of Netvibes offers 3 choices :

1. Your own personal activity that you want to keep for yourself . You will have a list of all the links you starred (shared as favorite), the Widgtes and RSS feeds you have installed, the Friends you are following or that you added, ... but also the Widgets and feeds you decided to archive.
2. Your Public Activity: your "shared as favorite" feeds or links and your Status Updated
3. Friends' Activity: is "your Friends' Public Activity "
   

For Your Private and Public Activity you have 2 options: comment and delete.
For your Friends you only have "Share as favorite" option if it was a Public Activity of the Friend but you can not do anything with their Update Status.

You have a search activities that helps you find "old" activities but you have to remember the exact title or the good friend.

The use of the My Community Widget (4****/5) simplifies a lot the Update Status of my profile and is the easiest way to check your Activities and your Contacts. (Get it from : in your private page/add content/essential widgets/My community)

But some improvement would increase the usability and then the interest in what is the Social Side of Netvibes:

Among practical Improvements it would be nice to be able to:

• star, write a short text and/or save a links/feed just for the Private Activity
• change an activity from Public to Private and viceversa (this option was existing)
• send a Direct Message to one single friend directly (perhaps on his MyWall widget?)
  
• view in My Activities the posts of other Social services like Twitter
• post and view images like in Twixtr.com
• have the option to view My own Public Activities mixed with My Friends Activities (like in Twitter ) because is it easier to follow a discussion
• increase the number of activities in the Widget (20 is very small you work and write a lot or if you have a lot of friends ;) )
• give the possibility to filter and backup your Best activities for future use

Among other futuristic features I dream of there is :

• a Web Browser plug-in that would allow me to Star (share as favorite) any content I would see on the web directly in my Netvibes page with a comment to be shared with friends or just archived for myself.