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.
  

What could be improved for next Ginger Update release of Netvibes (part1)

Hi,

As the Netvibes Galactic Team, also the Netvibers are never complitely satisfied ...

After the first Positive impression here are some improvements I would like to see for the next Update to have an even better Netviber experience ;) :

1. the possibility to arrange freely the widgets in the Tab alternatively with the "rigid" 1-2-3-4 columns that is the actual option. That is required if you are not using only Widgets for Feed reading but if you want to show Images, or Web sites, or even Webnotes that could cover more than 1 column...


2. the possibility to choose Content, Widgets and Friends not only in the way the order established by Netvibes but also with an alphabetic order and a more recent order.


3. the PREVIOUS-NEXT navigation button should be replaced by a LAST-FIRST button, allowing to search in the 2 directions. Because at the moment you can only start looking for the content from the first. But if you used the LAST anf FIRST directions you would cut searches lenghts by 2. (When you have 40-60 widgets or friends to look at it can save time...

4. Universes should have also the option to be restricted "only to selected friends" with a specific password but no login . This option would increase dramatically the viral capabilities of Netvibes as you could send this Universe to friends and family with no need for them to register to view your Universe and knowing that nobody "not fromthe group" can see it or use it.
5. The SEARCH for the content is not working as I would like. If I search for my Blog feed: "netviber experience" I have 6 results but not my blog :( But the SEARCH has received anyway a big improvement over last version as now on the right side of the results you have 4 search boxes (Web, Blog, Images and Video) that are already presetted with your search string !!! Perfect. So if I use the Web search I can Add the Search box in my Tab then look for the Link I want than look for the rss and add it to my site. Not easy but working...

(to continued)

First impressions of Netvibes' Ginger private beta upgrade (part 1)

Hi,

I'm playing with the new Netvibes Ginger Private beta upgrade and I must say that it is a real improvement over Ginger.

At this stage I will not comment on the My Universe side as I'am trsting it.

But on the General Netvibes Use here are the first differences I spotted, all positive:

• add content: is much faster , with thumbnails for the choice prsented by 12-18 at the time !. you clickor you drop and that'isit!
• rss feeds: you can star them (it will show in your "activity" with its direct link and you can even a public or private note for it. Very usefull for Blogging...
• rss feeds: as said yesterday, you can now show the Post Date.

updated:

• Search: when looking for content, widgets and feeds you do not need to go in the ecosystem anymore. You have a search box there. I am not fully satisfied with it (see my post on improvements) but there is a big improvement over the last version: as now on the right side of the results you have 4 search boxes (Web, Blog, Images and Video) that are already presetted with your search string !!! Perfect.

to be continued...

Some Netvibes improvements

Hi,

Tariq Krim has just announced some new improvements to Netvibes waiting for the new Coriander version as I had announced previously.

The improvements according to Krim:

1) Improving the RSS and introducing the Media RSS support with introduction of small images in the feeds.

2) More choice in the search modules with more sites: metacafe.com, sevenload.com (videosearch), pixsy.com (pictures) and blogsearch.google.com (blogs).

3) a new Craigslist module

4)Introduced possibility of making a Backup copy of all your feed subscriptions

Now let's wait for the Coriander version improuvements.