Last week I did a short review on web portals. Granted, I did forget Pagefakes which appears to be very cool. It has a full array of widgets along with most of the functionality I wanted, however it lacks POP/IMAP email integration. But it’s coming…. soon or so they say.
However, a few days ago Netbives upgraded a few elements and my POP email passwords are now saved! That was my biggest gripe. So, for now, they are my portal of choice. They look professional, access Gmail, IMAP and POP email, works great with Flickr, has some great calendar functionality (just added) and they have tabs with icons!!
The only issues I have now is all the spam in the blog, but that doesn’t directly relate to my portal.
I’ll continue to monitor a handful of portal services as I’m easily drawn to cool new features but, for now, Netvibes is the top portal site in my mind. 😀
Hi I would like to submit Yoosi.com for a review for Home Page Portal – Thanks.
First thing I see when I go to Yoosi is lots and lots of scrollbars. Each window seems to have them. That’s not user friendly to me. It also says it doesn’t support Firefox yet which is what I have. I’ll check back in a few weeks to see if it’s improved.
You might also be interested in a brand new start page available called Funky Homepage (http://www.FunkyHomepage.com). It’s comprised mainly of Google gadgets (as well as Gadgets from other sources), live news feeds (with your choice of news provider), daily Bushisms, daily jokes, horoscopes, videos, weather (up to 5 locations), interactive calendar, Google calendar viewer (for up to 5 Google calendars), comic strips and lots more besides. It also lets you choose your own search engine, colour scheme, etc.
Unlike many of the other personalised start pages available, there’s no need to create an account and it’s all already set up for you, with the most popular gadgets organised by category and sub-category. So there’s virtually no setting-up work required by the user, making it ideal for the mainstream audience and those (like me) who can’t be bothered to do all the work of setting up their own page. More adventurous (and less lazy) users can choose to add their own Google gadgets and RSS feeds, but most people just use the gadgets and tools provided.
Unlike Netvibes, PageFlakes and all the other AJAX powered home pages, Funky Homepage does not use a drag and drop interface. Instead it allows you to select from a drop-down list of the most “popular” gadgets and feeds – “popular” according to the Google gadgets most popular list, that is. As such, it’s not really intended to compete with the flexibility of Netvibes and PageFlakes, but instead is intended to address a gap in the market for those who want something a bit more funky than Google or Yahoo, but without all the setting up required of Netvibes and Pageflakes. So only the most popular gadgets are offered. Although it still maintains a large degree of flexibility for the more adventurous users, allowing them to enter their own feeds and gadgets, should they wish. Whether you like it or hate it, at least it offers an alternative from the plethora of AJAX-powered homepages that are now available.
It’s free to use and you can check it out at http://www.funkyhomepage.com
Funky just doesn’t look good. Tons of stuff on the homepage and the design is sub-par. Netvibes kicks it’s butt.