My Netvibes Addiction

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netvibes,
originally uploaded by Tommy Vallier.

So it was suggested recently that I talk about my Netvibes page and how I use it.
The screenshot posted along with this is a sample of my front [...]

netvibes,
originally uploaded by Tommy Vallier.

So it was suggested recently that I talk about my Netvibes page and how I use it.

The screenshot posted along with this is a sample of my front page. I’ve tweaked settings a little so as to not look too far behind, and have hidden my Remember The Milk calendar.

Getting Started

The page you’re looking at in the screenshot is my “Start” page. Along the left I have my twitter feed. Because I do try to stay in the loop. Down the middle you can see my Gmail inbox. ALL of my email is managed through gmail (Not even the for-your-domain version) and I see it from this panel. Below that is my Google and Wikipedia search box and the latest dig posts. On the right: Local date and time, weather and my calendar.

From this page I can quickly and easily see all of the things that are most important to me. Specifically the time, my email, calendar and the twitter feed. You can also see a large amount of tabs at the top. I’ll get to those. Note that I’ve set all of the modules on the page to be the same red-ish colour. It’s tab also has a unique icon. This is to visually identify the home page from others. I make a point of not using this red-like colour only on pages of personal interest - Home and bookmarks.

Branching Out

Along the top I have a wide variety of tabs. Each one is home to a large number of feeds and modules pulling in content from around the web. I do a few things to keep this organized too.

First, I identify tabs by the icons associated with them. All “real world” news feeds, such as newspaper feeds and feeds from TV stations, both local and not, share an icon. Same with blog feeds, podcasts and TalkShoe-related tabs. If I’m looking for a tab, I can then visually hunt out the icon then the tab name. You’ll notice they’re also grouped by icon. And personal tabs (Start, bookmarks and Meebo for communication) come before feeds. That’s because I use them more.

Module are all colour coded on a per-page basis too. If I’m looking at a page full of orange modules, I’m reading blogs (Regardless of topic). If it’s green - it’s a podcast. This works exceptionally well when you look at the TalkCasts tab. These are all shows created on TalkShoe (They earned a tab based on number of shows I track) and they share the TalkShoe icon, but within that page, all modules are green to match podcasts. The icon identifies the subject, the colour then identifies the medium.

The separate tabs/colour combination is part of the reason that, despite trying others, I don’t think I’ll be leaving Netvibes any time soon.

Mark All as Read

As tempting as this can sometimes be, I have never hit this button in Netvibes. Well, safe for adding a new feed I’m currently caught up on. One thing I do, admittedly, do though is NOT completely check out the content. I sometimes just don’t have time. I like knowing that there’s new posts, or a new episode, and will sometimes mark them as read if I look at a subject or topic and am not interested. I know that’s expected (How many of you read every post on every blog… or every article in the paper)… But I still feel guilty.

What About You?

I’m, clearly, a Netvibes Junkie. What about you? What reader do you use and why? Maybe you use Netvibes and can recommend a new module for me to check out? Maybe you’ve got a question? Looking forward to the feedback.

Safari on Windows?

[Note: This post was written on June 11th, 2007 but I was playing with settings on it and apparently set it to not appear until June 2008. Here it is now for your reading.]
So today Apple, Inc. announced that it’s browser, Safari, would be making itself available on the Windows platform.In addition, Steve Jobs announced [...]

[Note: This post was written on June 11th, 2007 but I was playing with settings on it and apparently set it to not appear until June 2008. Here it is now for your reading.]

So today Apple, Inc. announced that it’s browser, Safari, would be making itself available on the Windows platform.In addition, Steve Jobs announced that Safari (And more specifically HTML/AJAX technologies) would be the primary development platform for the iPhone.

While I’m not a mac user [yet], both of these announcement excite me from the web development point of view.

Single System Testing

Right now, web developers on Windows have a lot of trouble testing web sites across platforms. Sure, I have various versions of IE at my disposal and multiple versions Firefox (Which spans cross-platform) and I have a handful of Linux lice CDs at my disposal for testing with as well. I also frequently use BrowserCam to do testing on remote machines (Mostly screen captures) but as nice as screenshots are, it’s nothing compared to my Windows and Linux testing which allows me to click around and play with the site as I intended it.

While I don’t see myself using Safari on a day-to-day basis, I’m glad to have it installed as part of my regular routine for testing code I release.

iPhone’s Killer App?

It’s only been about 3 hours since the end of the keynote, but already people are saying that by not making an SDK available for the iPhone, and relying solely on web technologies, Apple has shot themselves in the foot and killed any chance for a Killer app to be established on the iPhone. Perhaps I’m alone here… But it’s my feeling that Safari is iPhone’s killer app.

If all of the development needs to stay within Safari, and more developers (Both Mac and PC now) have access to safari for testing their sites and services on, this means that more Safari/web-based applications will be ready for the launch of the iPhone. As a web developer, I couldn’t be more excited about this. Sure, we all knew Safari would be on the phone and would be rendering pages the same as it does on it’s non-mobile brother, but now we have confirmed that all of the JS effects, features, functions and code will be there awaiting us too. Steve said we could develop today and be ready for final testing on the 29th. Why couldn’t we be ready for the 29th alongside launch.

I don’t think people will need to wait long to discover that a full-blown Safari, with all of the JS and AJAX tools we need is going to sit front and centre on the iPhone, and with Safari on OSX and Windows to speed things along, development will be more seamless across all three platforms. And that will be sweet

Late to the party?

So I have a blog. Well how about that.
Working in the new media space that I do, a lot of people found it very surprising that I wasn’t actively maintaining a blog. Keeping that in mind, it might actually surprise you that I’ve actually been the holder of a permanent account over at LiveJournal for [...]

So I have a blog. Well how about that.

Working in the new media space that I do, a lot of people found it very surprising that I wasn’t actively maintaining a blog. Keeping that in mind, it might actually surprise you that I’ve actually been the holder of a permanent account over at LiveJournal for quite some time now and while it has been dormant for a while, I once was quite the active LJer, helping with groups and organizing local meetups.

So after a long hiatus from the blogging world, and a few tries at starting this back up, it’s finally gone live, and I’ve already been asked “Why, If you were operating so well without one, would you start one? And why now?”

My answer? To add to the conversation, of course! Over the last 8 months or so, I’ve been active by making phone calls, twitters and comments but I never had the chance to expand on these thought and feeling. I’d reply to a post from someone, then continue thinking about it, and have nowhere to post those continued thoughts.

So why now? WHY NOT!? I’m in this space with both feet now and have started running with now plans on stopping. It actually feels really good to have a spot to voice my side of the story and not have to wait for someone else to touch on a subject I want before I can comment.

The site as a whole will grow slowly over time, along with the blog, to include services I offer in my freelancing work to clients. You can expect more to appear on that sidebar as I get it done.

The current goal is to post daily on topics ranging from personal web projects (Such as code I’m playing with or my ever-expanding goal to create a portable office) to comments on new and social media topics. I’ll also be responding to other blogs frequently and commenting on media I listen to and watch.

I don’t want to simply talk though and am looking for people to join in! Please don’t hesitate to comment on any post I make or get in touch with me in any other sense. My info can be found on the contact page.