Tuesday, May 19, 2009

More Things on a Stick: Thing 28-Customized Home Pages

Which of the services did you use? Why did you choose that one?
I had already done an iGoogle one for a class I took last year, but I don't use it because I don't like it. So, I thought I'd check out NetVibes. And I did. And I don't like it either.

It came down to either NetVibes or PageFlakes. I am familiar with both of them because of yet another class I took last year. I chose NetVibes because it looked like it would be the better choice for what I'd want it to do for me, and the layout looks easy enough.

What was your experience in setting it up? Easy? Or not?
I didn't have a problem setting the NetVibes page up. Well, for the most part, anyhow. I thought I'd set it up via the wizard just to see what would get put on the page for me. Yeah, I deleted almost everything. The hardest part was the clock widget I wanted. All I wanted was a simple, no-frills analog clock. Um, apparently I was looking for the Holy Grail. o_O So, no go on the clock.

Which gadgets/widgets/flakes did you add?
Not the *@%& clock, that's for sure. I added a calendar, a to-do list, and enabled the Twitter feed widget. I had a couple of BBC news feeds under a different tab (titled 'News'. No, really, it was), as well as a couple of other feeds under a different tab...buuuut after I'd been working on something else and came back to the NetVibes page and saw that I had 400+ new items, I deleted them all. That's right. Gone. It was then that I remembered what it was that I didn't like about iGoogle either. I have a hard enough time keeping up with what I need to, let alone want to keep up with without having that kind of "AAAAAAAUUUGGGGHHHH" moment everytime I go to that page. I tried putting on a LibraryThing widget, but it took too long to load. I'm not very patient, I'll admit. But if I click on something, as fast as my home system is, then it'd better show up pronto.

And don't EVEN get me started on how everytime I moved the mouse over a box when choosing widgets a flipping TEXT box would pop up, explaining the widget. That is one thing I canNOT stand (yes, one of many, I know).

Do you have any recommendations for gadgets/widgets/flakes you find fun or useful? I'd like a clock that worked and loaded quickly. Barring that...I really don't know. Let me think on it for a bit. I may come up with something.

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