Netvibes will be off-line this Sunday: maintenance

The Netvibes Blog has announced a 2 hours break in service for Maintenance for this Sunday:

"In order for us to prepare some upcoming features we have a maintenance job to do this week-end. We'll have to bring the site offline for around 2 hours Sunday 22nd of June at 6am UTC (which makes it Saturday 21st at 11pm PST for our users on the West Coast).

During that time we'll also update part of the backend to improve performances.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this might cause you and would like to thank you for your support."

I suggest you take the usual precautions and also add a few hours to the expected break ;)

Hope that in case of longer wait, Netvibes will use its blog and/or its Twitter/netvibes_help to keep us informed... Not everybody will be out this Sunday :)

I want to tag, search and store my Share/Star It activities in Netvibes

It is a few monthes that the Ginger release of Netvibes is out and one of the features that I prefer is the Share/Star of My Activities.

I use it to bookmark pages, ideas, blogs, urls that I want to keep for a later use and/or reading. I use it a lot: at least 4-5 times a day.

I like it because I can also choose to publish it with a comment to all "my friends" or just to keep it for me (private).
I like it also because with FireFox I can use the Star button in my browser or the bookmarklets if the add-on is not installed and also the Star it button if placed by websites.
I like it because I can see and read what my friends shared and starred.

But, I have a big problem: as I have now a lot of them and all this Shared/Starred activities are just visible in my Activities by clicking on Activities in the upper menu.

They are presented in a the "most recent first" order and there is a search button.
The search is based on all Activities (mines + friends) and on words. Then the results are presented just with this little black window.

The My Comunity widget is ok but presents only the last 25 activities... and there is no search

I want more !

With my Share/Star it Activities I would like to be able to:

• separate Shared Url from other activities (as shared widget)
• separate my activities from others
  
• have the possibility to store the share urls with folders or tags or...
• be able to rate (1 to 5) the activity
  
• to move and rename and delete some of the urls shared
• search by date and tag
• to save , backup and export/import

I hope I am not the only one in this situation and to not send me to http://del.icio.us/ ;)

So, if you are a developer you should start reading this (Netvibes Developers Forum)

Netvibes loves FireFox 3 but recommends also IE7 and Safari 3+

In the day of World Record for most daily downloads software by FireFox 3, Freddy Mini, the new CEO of Netvibes, declares in his first post on Netvibes blog that:

Netvibes loves FireFox 3 for speed, memory usage, addon ... well I had already wrote it yesterday ;)
Another big advantage is in the Javascript management (" tests using the SunSpider framework have shown Javascript, which Netvibes is intensively using, to be running up to 3 times faster" )

Mini concludes: "the Netvibes team is recommending to its Firefox users to migrate to this new release"

In general, Netvibes recommends:

• Firefox 3: http://www.mozilla.com
• Internet Explorer 7: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
• Safari 3+: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

and supports the following Browser versions:

• Mozilla Firefox 1+: http://www.mozilla.com
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 & 7: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
• Opera 9.02: http://www.opera.com
• Safari 2+: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

Download today FireFox 3 and help your Netvibes and set new world record !

If you like your free Netvibes homepage and RSS reader, you will love FireFox 3, the new free web browser to be launched today.

FireFox 2, the previous version, was the best browser to use with my Netvibes: with the add2netvibes extensions, the bookmarklets, the print option in all your widgets, the download speed, the memory usage ...

So Help your Netvibes page: download the new FireFox 3 !

At the same time you can help FireFox 3 break the world record for most software downloads in 24 hours : today, Tuesday 17th of June, is Download Day 2008.

Follow this link : http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord
and add yourself to the over 1.6 million users that will partecipate in this event.

FireFox 3 with more than 15,000 improvements, is faster, safer and smarter than previous versions and competitors.

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...

Follow the Euro 2008 with Netvibes (4*/5) and other Footbal widgets

Now that Euro 2008 has started you will realize that you need to know that match result or to check the standings or want to read the last updated news or to follow the live result of a match playing.

For that Netvibes has prepeared a nice and cool Euro 2008 public Universe Tab : one in English and one in Français.
The tab in the Universe in English presents only US widgets for a sport called "Soccer" :)

If you prefer more European Football widgets (it's Euro 2008 , no ?) like the one's by: UEFA, BBC, SKY and other languages as Gazzetta, L'Equipe, ... you should check also my own public universe Football Tab:

http://www.netvibes.com/sport#FOOTBALL

and my new Euro 2008 Tab:

http://www.netvibes.com/sport#Euro2008


I invite you nto go there and check for yourself the widgets you prefer... The Netvibes Widget Euro2008 is a must.(4*/5)

To get any of them, yust click on the envelope on the right side of the title of the widget.

Good move by Netvibes, that now presents its human collected content with the Universes and not just a blog post!


Enjoy !! and I hope that my team will win :-)

Try PicLens (full-screen, 3D experience for viewing photos and videos across the web) and you will never search images again as before 5*/5

WE's time and I was reading the Economist. Yes, the paper edition ;)
An I just wanted to check a tip from them: " New techniques to navigate and gather information online promise to revolution web browsing".

And it is true ! I tried this PicLens from Cooliris: it can be installed as an add-on on Firefox (mine is FF2) and it is possible to use it also with :
Firefox (Windows)
Firefox (Mac)
Internet Explorer
Safari (Mac)

"PicLens transforms your browser into a PicLens transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing photos and videos across the web. With one click, PicLens makes online media come to life via an immersive presentation that goes beyond the confines of the traditional browser. for viewing photos and videos across the web. With one click, PicLens makes online media come to life via an immersive presentation that goes beyond the confines of the traditional browser."

It is fast, smooth, elegant and effective. With you mouse, you move the wall of images as they appear from right to left or the left to right. You want to see one you click on it. Zoom in it ? click again.

Up there you can see the capture for a Google Image Search for : Galaxy Milky Way
and down here is the same search in "normal" Browser view...

NO WAY , I WILL NEVER GO BACK TO NORMAL SEARCH !
Forget clicking page after page in search of the right image!They are all displayed in an endless wall... For me is Science-fiction coming true !



A search is integrated in PicLens but just a simple one (no image size)

Check here the Demo, is really working like that and I have an "2 years old" laptop :)




Here are theother services that are supported:

	Photo	Social	Image Search	Webhosts/Galleries
	Flickr Photobucket Picasa Web Albums Fotki FotoTime deviantART Smugmug	Facebook MySpace Bebo Hi5 Friendster	Google Images Yahoo Images Ask Images Live Images AOL Images	Freewebs TTG Galleries (Lightroom) Phoca Gallery (Joomla)

And it works also with YouTube videos ...

I hope Netvibes, will be included soon ...


NetEx RATING: 5*/5
PicLens: is fast, smooth, elegant and effective.