Official Netvibes' Ginger features and performance Improvements

Ginger features and performance Improvements

A lots of Improvements have been done :

• General
  • General startpage loading time improvements
  • Prefetch feeds features
  • Flash audio player improvements
  • OPML import/export improvements (now available in adcontent/add a feed section)
  • Mobile and iPhone versions improvements
  • Feedreader content is not updated if marking all items of a tab as read
  • New Ginger thumbnails
  • "Send to my universe/Send to my private page" feature improvements
  • New Premium Widget : Stechworld, L'express, Usa Today, FranceTelecom, Computer World UK
  • Widgets Improvements: myspace, digg, FeedReader, Weather, multiple feeds widgets, preconfig widgets

End of beta test for Ginger release as Netvibes starts upgrades

Its the end of the Beta testing.
Some users are already migrating to Ginger.
All will follow.

You need a valid email !

At Microsoft they are using ... Google to check for Netvibes

I was just checking my stats and I found this referring url:

using http://blogsearch.google.com/to search for Pageonce and Netvibes.

The Fun thing is not the result (well, 1st result is my blog ;) ) but the following:

Domain Name : microsoft.com (commercial)
IP Address : 131.###.# (Microsoft Corp)
ISP : Microsoft Corp
Location: Continent: North America
Country : Unitated States
State : Washington
City : Redmond

At Microsoft they are using ... Google to check for Netvibes ;)

Core reason for Netvibes users is :"What are you reading right now ?"

An interesting post on ReadWriteWeb blog make me think at the big difference between the so called Social Services (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace,...) and Netvibes.

One of the core reasons why people use Social Networks is the: "What are you doing right now ?" While the core reason for Netvibes users is something like: "What are you reading right now ?"

Even the new Ginger coming update will not change that, on the contrary.

Tomorrow: Super Tuesday for Netvibes as all users will be upgraded to Ginger

Tariq Krim, Netvibes' Ceo, has just announced that tomorrow, Tuesday 5th will be the day for the general upgrade to Ginger release.

A few weeks later than first planned. But let's hope there will not be any interruption in the service.

So what will be your reaction?

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.
  

WEB PAGE PLUS: a 5star widget to get just the piece of page you need in your Netvibes

If you want to have on your Netvibes page just a part of a Web Page and you are not able to get it with the Automatic Parser, you still have a chance to get it with the new WEB PAGE PLUS.

This Widget has also been created by Twisterss in just 2 hours !! as I was reviewing his excellent Automatic Parser Widget,

It is inspired by the WEB PAGE widget, one of the Essential Widgets of Netvibes that offers you the possibility to "import" an all specified Web page by just getting its web http address (url).
But where is the adventage to have an all page in your own Netvibes page ? And what if you just need, as all of us, just a small part of the page, not the ads, nor the index or the pictures but just one piece of "preciuos data"?

"The Web Page Plus widget is an UWA widget that makes exactly the same things as the Web Page widget in essential widgets of netvibes, except that it can save your position in the displayed web page to go back to this position when it is reloaded."

It allows you to create really easily widgets that display the part of the web page you want.

Let's say you are interested in Space and you like the NASA web site .

But you like the Nasa's VIDEOS and you want it in your Netvibes without the Top header and the left header (see first image). The Automatic Parser is not working (javascript code or else) so you take your Web Page Plus widget and you put the Url. then you scroll right and down untill the part of page is ok , you choose the size of the widget and, before leaving, YOU SAVE.

Then every time you come back your widget will just positionned where you left it, ready to work for you. (here on the right)


Rating: 5*****/5 for an effective Widget that can be used everywhere !

Defintively to be added to my collection of REALLY ESSENTIAL WIDGETS that you can check in my Netvibes' Universe.

Only BUG but not coming from the Widget but from Netvibes' Ginger is the impossibility, at the moment, to transfer the Widget with my settings (Url, size, scrolls) to other people.

For future uses, a width size will be perhaps needed.

You can get this well done widget here:



or on Twisterss Universe or in the Netvibes Ecosystem.