I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I heard that igoogle was being discontinued.  I have actually used it for a few years and really liked the way it worked.  Once I came to terms with the fact that I was going to have to try a different web product to use as a personal dashboard I decided to try two and see what I liked best.

Netvibes

 Netvibes was the first site I tried.  I have to admit that it reminded me a lot of igoogle.  With netvibes, content can be added by using the categories which involves multi-feeds or individual websites.  Widgets can be add which can range from twitter feeds to the current weather to a calculator to help with your tasks.  There is also a way to add feeds from any site that has RSS.

One thing that is unique to netvibes is the ability to search topics multiple ways.  If you type technology into the search box you can see results in different boxes.  One box is a twitter box, one box is a BoardReader box, one box is a bing search box, and one box is a google search box.  It give users the ability to search a subject and se a large amounts at one time.

Some of the things I really did not like were that the interface was very cluttered.  It was also a lot of information at once.  I have to admit that I wasn’t fond of that aspect of igoogle.  Also, I found setting up the interface to be time consuming.

Positive:

  • Great search tool
  • Easy to add content

Negative:

  • Cluttered interface
  • Time consuming setup

Symbaloo

Symbaloo was totally different from anything I have worked with before.  It took me a little while to figure out what you can and cannot do.  At first the interface seemed too simple to me and might not be able to do everything I wanted.  After a while I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

I have found out in a short amount of time that symbaloo is made up of a bunch of tiles.  Each tile can be turned into anything from a link to a website to a widget which tells you the weather or the time and date.  Users can also create different tabs so each page can be set up differently.  This allows users to create sections for sports, work, school, and anything else they are interested in.

There are some drawbacks, any time you click on a website link you are taken to the site and are then away from symbaloo.  This means that when you are done you have to go back to your symbaloo page.  While this is not a big deal, it does become a little annoying after a while.  Also, not all the sites I went to were in the system, so I had to make my own tiles.

Positive:

  • Easy to set up
  • Very organized

Negative:

  • Clicking on links take you to other pages
  • Many sites were not in system and ad to be custom made

Decision

After trying both netvibes and symbaloo, I decided to go with symbaloo.  I feel like it gives me the ability to keep everything I work on organized in one place.  I hope that over the next few weeks I will be fine-tuning my page to make using it easer and more efficient.