Anyway, here are all the new webapps and firefox extensions i picked up (and “stuck” with me) over the course of the year:

Web-based Tools:

• Twitter – Just started using it (less than 3 months ago), but obviously it’s a keeper.
• Brizzly – Best web-based Twitter app i could find.
• ReadItLater – One click bookmarks, online sync between browsers, delicious integration.
• Su.pr – URL shortener of choice with Twitter and StumbleUpon intergration
• Feedly – Next generation feed reader with Google Reader and Twitter inegration
• Shareaholic – Social networking tool that integrates with tons of popular services including Su.pr, Del.icio.us, and Twitter.

Here’s some stuff i’ve been using for a while now and will continue to use – although technically all of these were restored from my older backup and i won’t be linking to or describing each of them at this time.

Web Apps:

• Del.icio.us – Still my online bookmarking tool of choice.
• Google Products – Gmail / Docs / Reader (and more but i don’t feel like going into detail here).

FireFox Extensions:

• All-in-One Sidebar
• Download Sort
• Download Statusbar
• Firebug
• Link Evaluator
• Live HTTP Headers
• BookmarkDD
• SEO for Firefox
• Tab Kit
• text/plain
• Web Developer Toolbar
• YSlow

Also, I was impressed by the decreasing number of desktop softwares i needed to reinstall.

Desktop Apps:

• VMware player (win/linux)
• Firefox (win)
• 7zip (win)
• unrar (linux)
• Inkscape (linux)
• gftp (linux)

That’s all i could think of at the moment. If i missed any important ones, i’ll probably just add them to the list. I’m sure there are many other great web-based tools out there. These are just the few i’ve been using. I wonder what new and cool webapps will be added to my arsenal in the coming year? In the meantime, feel free to use the comments below to let me know if you’re using a great webapp not mentioned here.

Well, they noticed my review, and i’m not sure if it was just a coincidence, but the next time i logged into their system – there were even more new features available to me.

For one thing, it looks like the number of protocols that Mon.itor.us can test has almost doubled.

You can now monitor the following 11 internet protocols:

http, ping, https, ftp, pop, smtp, dns, tcp, udp, imap, and sip (for VoIP).

I just wish they would add a way to monitor mysql servers. Not exactly sure how that would be done, but for now i suppose i can just try monitoring the URL (http) of the phpMyAdmin page for my database server. If that page doesn’t respond – but the URL for the webserver does – it’s like my database server is down.

The other thing i noticed was the addition of 3 new icons on the “Test” module that make it easier to switch between real-time table, bar chart, and line chart views. [ more screenshots ]

Now, if only Mon.itor.us would remember the view i was on the last time i logged in – i’d be set. See, the problem is, once i actually went ahead and setup a bunch of servers to monitor, i also decided to take the time to manually switch each “Test” module from table view to line view. i prefer the line view but then if i leave the Mon.itor.us site, the next time i come back and log in, all my views have been reset to table view again. Very frustrating. I wish it would just stay on line view.

Fortunately, the “Snapshot” module is always a quick way to see the status of all your servers – so that can definitely save you some time. But, in my opinion, the best way to see how your servers have been performing throughout the day, is to use the line view. i’m not exactly sure how hard it would be to impliment this kind of memory feature, but i think it might be worth considering. At the very least, offer a global “default” view in my settings, where i can choose between table, bar, or line view as my preference.

Another fix they seemed to have implimented solves the problem of “constant page refreshes” – something else that i had mentioned in my earlier review of Mon.itor.us – which was a real problem for me if you’re using Firefox and have a billion tabs open with one tab that just won stop refreshing. Now i can leave the tab open all day with no apparent performance issues.

The last thing i’d like to see from Mon.itor.us would be a way to make the google gadget (or rather the javascript used to put this gadget on any webpage) publicly viewable. That is, once i put the code on my website, i noticed that i had to be logged in to see the “Snapshot”. Meaning, nobody else could see the little green “online” lights but me. It would be a lot more useful to me to be able to show my clients (or anyone) that all my servers are online. It’s not exactly sensitive information (anyone could just ping the server to see if it’s online) and making this widget “publicly viewable” would likely make it more attractive to other webmasters, since it becomes a useful tool to share with all viewers, not just 1 person (yourself).

Anyway, i really like this service and i’m sure they’ll find a ton of ways to refine and expand it’s capabilities. I did happen to notice that there is a “Click to Start” button on the top-righthand side of the homepage, that if you click on it, remembers you from the last time you were logged in. This was something that i must have missed when i wrote my original review because i kept having to log in over and over again (every time i came back to the site). i’m going to go back and update that section on my ealier post as soon as i get a chance. i’ll definitely be using this service regularly from now on.

Both of these services still have their quirks, but such is the case with most things in life (and on the web) that are free. Still, i have been using them both for a few days now and together they have already proved to be quite useful. Here’s why..

I’ll start with Montastic, since it’s key feature is simplicity and ease of use.

1. after signup, you just need to click on the link that says: “Add a Web Server to Monitor”
2. then enter a URL to begin monitoring that web server (it takes a few seconds to start working)
3. a green “computer icon” means your server is online (red means offline)
4. optionally, set a “name” for this URL to make it easier for you to identify

that’s it. everything has a nice, clean ajaxy feel. the site is fast and relatively easy to navigate.
you can also get some extra details, like “last monitored” and “status change” by clicking on the “info” link next to the icon for the server you’re monitoring.

both of these services have an email notification system. but, so far, my experience has been that only this one (montastic) actually works. a recent server outage (not this site) proved that for me today. Both of these services also offer alerts in the form of feeds that seemed to work fine.

3 features that make this service unique:

1. they offer a yahoo widget that reports the status of your servers in real-time, right on your desktop
2. the offer a netvibes module which is slick as a brick (it’s not too pretty by it works great)
3. they offer: “the green page” (you’re totally going to have to see this page for yourself to understand)

On to Mon.itor.us – which is a slightly more complex service, allowing for a flood of potential awesomeness and quite a few annoyances as well. Basically, my biggest problem with this service so far is: “It’s Flaky”. By that, i mean, it’s plagued with all the same bugs and buggers that PageFlakes has, even burdoned by the same ajax desktop interface – it seems. Without going into too much detail (ie: constant page refreshes and a login that will never remember you), this would be another example of one of the reasons that i have been a strong supporter of Netvibes for so long.

That being said, Mon.itor.us has a lot of already working features that come packed in with it’s service.

From their site (and because i’m sometimes lazy), here are the ones that stood out the most for me:

• Site performance archive
• Inline site previews
• Personalized pages and tabbed views
• Drag and drop interactive interface
• Todo tasks with notification and ability to add notes
• Support these protocols for testing: http, https, ftp, smtp, pop3, and ping.
• Daily/weekly/monthly uptime reports and statistics

And in case that wasn’t enough for you.. here’s a few more things that i noticed mon.itor.us can do that wasn’t already mentioned in the previous list. These are the real clinchers for me.

6 more features that make this service unique:

1. there’s a cool Google Gadget for this service out there somewhere
2. you can tag each URL / server you are monitoring and then organize / view them by groups
3. you can switch between real-time table, bar chart, and line chart views.
4. view stats for each protocol, snapshots of all your servers
5. view from three seperate geographical locations (US, DE, AT)
6. there’s some javascript code that goes along with the google gadget that will let you put your “snapshot” on virtually any web page

All in all, i would say that it’s a little harder to setup each URL with mon.itor.us, when compared to montastic. But once you get all your servers setup for monitoring, there’s a lot more you can do with them too.

Still, as i mentioned earlier, i was quite pleased with both of these services and will continue to test each one more thoroughly in the coming months.

This time around i’ll be reviewing 3 relatively new web services. Each of these sites is unique in some way, and offers its own twist on what is quickly becoming the new mantra for web2.0: “create, upload, and share”.

The 3 services are:

• Grouper
• muveeMix
• VideoEgg

I’ll be looking at:

1. Ease of Use (obstacles, barriers, any software to install, limits on number of videos i can upload)
2. Accessability (what if you don’t have Flash installed, or you’re not running Windowz)
3. Distinguishing Features (something different, revenue sharing, partner programs)

Grouper:

1.
- Max file size for uploaded videos is 110 MB

- This has the best upload indicator (progress bar) i have seen so far. You can see the amount in MB that remains to be uploaded, this figure is also represented as a percentage remaining, you can see your current upload speed, and the time remaining. awesome.

2.
- I was able to upload my video using FireFox without Flash installed or having to download any extra software

3.
- Intergrated partnership program, no need to sign up a second time (although some additional info is required for this)

- Generate income from video ad impressions

- Ability (as a partner) to include an upload feature directly on your website (so visitors can add videos )

- Make Your Own Video With Groovie Editor software (download but extra email verification process required)

- Get the main Grouper 2.0 software which is a complete video sharing solution (download but extra email verification process required)

- Publish Any Grouper Video or Filmstrip to MySpace, Friendster and other Blogs

muveeMix:

1.
- Free account is limited to only 10 video uploads. But if you refer 5 friends to muveeMix you get upgraded to a “bumper” account which offers unlimited video uploads. It is unclear to me whether this upgrade would be for a single year or indefinitely

- Either way, there is also a 100 MB limit on all uploads

- The upload process seemed a little overly complex and certain features (like the ability to add sound) actually stumped me because my video already had sound and so i didn’t know what to do at this point. Furthermore, you cannot move forward from this point until you choose a sound file (ie: this is not an “optional” feature). Oddly enough, leaving out the title and credits is an option.

2.
- This service is entirely Flash based. i can’t even see the site without it. too bad. at least let me edit my profile and add a photo in the meantime. oh wait, there is no profile or place to add a photo.

3.
- Mix video, images, and sound into a movie all from within your web browser (unlike Grouper, no software to download and install)

- Ability to add styles to movies (i should probably be saying muvee)

- Publish you muvees to sites like: Multiply, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, Typepad, Tagworld and many others.

VideoEgg:

1.
- The maximum video length has been set to 5 minutes

- You must install the VideoEgg Publisher which seems to be downloaded as a browser component through InternetExplorer but once this is done everything becomes as easy as drag-and-drop. Also, FireFox “just worked” after i installed through IE

- Unforetunately, under FireFox, every video i tried to upload appear upside-down in the preview window, and under IE6, every video was noticeably crappier quality in the preview window, not sure what is up with that..

2.
- Despite some minor bugs, this service offers a relatively Flash-free interface. I was able to upload my video, name it, and give it a description. You do however still need Flash 7 to view the actual videos.

3.
- Partnership program similar to Grouper except there’s some added confusion here due to the fact that i have to sign up seperately for this program (despite having already set up a normal account with username/password) – oh, and the form you need to fill out is 10 times as long, it’s like 5 forms in 1.

- Publish your videos directly to Blogger, TypePad, or eBay (auctions) – no community component or browsing of user’s videos on the actual VideoEgg site though

- Upload from your camcorder, webcam, or mobile device

- Edit the start/stop times of your videos before uploading them (potentially very useful)

Some of you may already be thinking to yourselves: “YouTube, YouTube, when is he going to say YouTube already?”. This is because they are so damn popular now that you couldn’t even help but make that association. So, yes, one of the three services i tried out was in fact the one and only YouTube. Although, if you’ve read my previous post, you probably know that i already wrote an article on Jumpcut and it was actually the first of these services that i tried out. i was impressed by their web-based video editing software and so it is the second service i will be looking at. The third service is called Guba, and when i read about their unique marketing strategy on Techcrunch i became intrigued and signed up almost immediately.

The low down..

All of the submissions we received from our 24hr Music Video Making Contest (MVMC) on Indyish were in DVD quality (.vob format). My task was to compress these .vob files into .avi files for easy uploading and sharing via any of these services.

i chose to compare and contrast my experiences with these 3 services in the following ways:

1. Ease of Use (always one of my favorites – obstacles, barriers, like how hard was it to upload, or what is my upload limit)
2. Content Management (what can i do with my uploaded content, what tools do i get, etc.)
3. Social Component (can i edit my profile, are there groups, contacts, tags, etc.)

YouTube -

The signup process was pretty simply aside from them asking for your zip/postal code which seems a little strange to me. Once i got inside the system, i must say that it did feel intimidating at first. There are a ton of choices you can make as well as new lingo to absorb. For example, on YouTube, your “profile” page is actually called your “channel”. The upload limit is 100Mb and seemed slower to upload than i would have expected from the top video sharing site. Also, you can’t upload until you go through a second email confirmation process to prove you are not a spambot. The uploader crashed on me the first time i used it, granted i tried to upload to 2 of these sites at the same time (it seemed to be working fine until i did this). Lastly, any changes you make to the title or description of your recently uploaded video files are not immediately visible (in real-time) which can be frustrating and confusing to the user (it was for me) because they would be unaware of the delay and wondering why they can’t see their changes take effect.

Once i did get used to the interface and found my way around the site i realized that there was a lot of info and features available to me. i could easily organize my video files, save them to my favorites, create playlists, organize by category, add a description, tags and all kinds of other details. There is also a tool that will let you configure your account for sending videos directly to your blog (if you own one) although i haven’t tested it. They currently support Blogger, BlogSpot, and LiveJournal “with more blog platforms on the way”.

But i think it’s definitely the social networking aspect of the site that sets it apart from the others. Once you get used to the idea of a channel instead of a profile (like a TV channel only of You) – you can start making it you own through a variety of customization options. You can edit your channel info, channel theme, even customize your own channel URL (although there are additional requirements to get this feature working). You can also setup or join Groups where content and conversations are centered on common topics and interests. Lastly, you can add friends, family members, send and receive messages from within the system, subscribe to your favorite channels, vote, add comments and more. i think i get why it’s so popular now.

Jumpcut -

This service is great. Jumpcut lets you try their web-based video editing software even before you’ve actually signed up. i think this is the best way for a new web service to help potential users “get” what it is they are doing that makes them special. The signup process was very simple and straightforward. i like the fact that you get asked both an email address and a username write from the start because i waste time wondering whether i’ll be logging in with my username or email (but maybe that’s just me). Once inside, again, i was a little bit confused by all the new terminology surrounding the distinctions between clips, movies, group sets, grabbing, sharing, etc. I particularly liked the multi-file uploader feature, something neither of the other two services offered as far as i could tell. Uploading one file at a time can get pretty tiresome – this helps to make up for the fact that Jumpcut has a maximum file upload size of only 50Mb (way too low in my opinion). Also, the uploader hangs at 53% on the progress bar every time i used it (although uploads seem to have been completed successfully) so definitely some confusion and time wasted there. On the upside, you can update the title and descriptions of your videos in real-time (a la AJAX) – no delays, not even a page load – so that’s good.

The tools are really what this service is all about. i already mentioned the multi-file uploader, but the Jumpcut Editor is really the crown jewel of the site. You can edit, add transitions and effects, as well as mix in sound and clips shared by other users on the site. No software needs to be installed although the newest version of Flash is definitely required (all these services require Flash 9 for viewing video files but you can still do stuff like browse the community, upload clips and a few other things). Creating a movie from multiple clips is both really easy and convenient in that it lets you overcome the file-size limitations that plagues everyone one of these video based services by editing together a series of smaller clips to form a much larger movie. You can also do some more advanced things like organize your clips into group sets, tag them, and then quickly share or make a movie out of all of them. Another great bonus is the ability to add photos (you can even import your entire Flickr photostream). Pictures, a feature that is almost entirely overlooked by these types of services, is not something to be taken for granted. For instance, i couldn’t figure out how to upload an image to my profile (i mean channel) on YouTube. The only thing you seem to be able to do is use the first frame of one of your uploaded videos. Well, half of the clips i uploaded started out with a few frames of blackness severely limiting what i could use as my profile pic. why?

Jumpcut is probably the second most social site of the three i’ve tested. They have clear, easy to use features like friends and fans, i already mentioned groups but there are events too. We posted the 24hr. MVMC as an event on Jumpcut, even created an Indyish group for future projects. They also have a feature that lets you or your friends email video clips directly to your account or group. Users can add comments and vote for their favorite movies. Finally, they have a great set of export features that not only make it easy for you to email, link to, or embed your video into a website, but there’s also specific code for popular blogging systems like WordPress, TypePad and Blogger, as well as social networking services likes MySpace, and even bookmarking services like Digg and Del.icio.us.

Guba -

This service is an interesting one. The signup process is similar to that of Jumpcut with the extra choice to become a Guba Affiliate. There is definitely a more commercial feel to this service but i was impressed by their system and found the user interface intuitive with content clearly divided between Premuim and Free videos. The user exists somewhere in between these two worlds which at first i found both disappointing and comforting. i wanted there to be more back-end stuff to explore but it’s more straightforward than that. After about 15 minutes i was done looking around and (feeling caught up on everything) all that was left to do was either upload my content, or watch either a free or premium video. i could check my Guba affiliate stats, but they were probably still at zero. i was definitely not overwhelmed like with the other 2 services and i guess that’s what the folks at Guba were aiming for. The upload process was the fastest and smoothest of the 3 services from my experience. They have an upload limit of 100Mb but i found the video quality (after whatever magic compressions they all apply) to be the best of the bunch. So i’d say that, overall, i had a good user experience with this one.

Still, every service seems to have its quirks. For Guba, they do this thing where they ask you to fill in a title and description for your video clip (before you upload it) but the description doesn’t seem to show up anywhere – and believe me, i looked everywhere for it. So why ask for it in the first place? Really frustrating when they do that. Still, i like the way your video files are organized and there are a lot of little things like how it keeps track of your favorite searches and categories. A subtle feature that really stood out for me was the frame-by-frame preview you get when you hover your mouse over any given video clip. You don’t have to actually watch the video to get a quick idea if you’ve seen it before, if it’s shot well or seems low quality, etc. There are a lot of account settings (not as many as YouTube) – like your credit card details and purchase history – which might (at first) seem out of place, but then i remembered that you can buy and rent movies from Guba too. They have movie rentals from as low as $0.99 and you can buy movies starting at $4.99 – not too shabby – and so obviously they’re going to need your credit card info if you wanted to take advantage of that.

Incidentally, you can check out my favorite of the 12 MVMC submissions (the winner for the Telefauna song) right here as i’ve embeded the video directly into this page.

If you want to watch some more of the music videos that contestants submitted (including 1 of the other 2 winning videos) you can go here, and here. Also, if you like the service Guba offers, go ahead and signup for a free account and help me get those affiliate stats rolling.

That brings me to my last point. Guba is like a cool online video store with some added social networking components and i like it. A lot of big players are going to be headed into this market really soon (it has already begun), and i think Guba’s got a head start on them all. I have no idea if they’ll be able to keep this lead, but if they continue with their aggressive affiliate marketing and more and more people signup and add content.. well, only time will tell and i guess the people will decide. But if you were looking for a sort of “MySpace with Video” type thing you might be a little disappointed here. First off, you can’t really configure you profile page on Guba, or maybe i should say you don’t actually have a public profile, not even a small area of text to describe a little bit about yourself. You can upload a photo but that’s about it. There are no groups. You can however add favorites, post comments and vote on other people’s videos. you can also do some other cool stuff like email a video to a friend or download special versions for viewing on your iPod or PSP.

These are just some of the details i decided to focus on. There is so much more i want to say about these 3 services i could have probably written a separate article for each one. i really need to post more often. this post is probably too long. hope it helps you get an idea of what you can expect when you signup for one of them. if anyone has tried any of these services, i’d like to know what your experiences were. And if anyone does decide to try them out after reading this post, by all means, come back and share your thought in the comments section too.

I came across Jumpcut a few days ago and although i am not a video artist myself, i keep thinking of great ways that people could use this service. Jumpcut is a site that will let you edit and share video clips, even create full movies – all from your web browser without ever having to install any extra software. First off, let me say that i really liked the simple, clean design – the color scheme – just a great overall first impression. Then, on closer inspection, i realized that most of the main features, the video editing tools, absolutely required Flash 8. So, basically, they just cut-off most Linux users, who are still waiting for the newest version of Flash player for popular browsers like Firefox. Nevertheless, this is not really Jumpcut’s fault, and the uniqueness of this service warrants a second look.

So, i dusted off and fired up good old (and i mean old) Internet Explorer 6, and headed back to Jumpcut.com – to log in (again) – this time with my trusty Flash 8 enabled browser. Once inside, everything seemed very straight forward. I recommend reading the FAQ and the Quick Guide at the bottom of the page if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed at first.

The Jumpcut Editor – this is the central tool by which all other Jumpcut jazz is built around. It has a familiar interface (similar to most video editing suites). There is a timeline, some effects for transitions, a library of clips to work with, and various other neat stuff.

The main features (aside from The Jumpcut Editor) are:

1. Upload – video clips, photos and music

You can do this in several ways:

• clicking on the “Upload” tab on the main page
• importing your images directly from Flickr
• uploading from inside the editor
• uploading via email

From the FAQ page, the maximum upload size is 50Mb, but you can always upload multiple clips and edit them together to form a clip that is much larger.

2. Explore – find other people’s public content and Grab / Remix it / Publish.

• Grabbing lets you use other people’s video and images in your own movies.
• Remixing someone else’s movie (or your own), and do what you want with it.
• Publish your content for all to see.

You can also keep content private, if you’d like.

3. Share – this feature is what will likely make this service really stand out.
You can share anything you can find on Jumpcut.

• Email a Link: lets you send a message with a link to a friend.
• Post to a Website: just copy / paste the embed code into any website that accepts html
• Automated Posting Links: lets you post directly to many popular websites, including Blogger, MySpace, TypePad, WordPress, Digg and del.icio.us.

There’s a lot of other cool things going on over at Jumpcut. There are Groups, Events, even Contests (ie: Audition to be a movie star in Fox Atomic’s new version of the classic comedy, Revenge of the Nerds. Read More..) – and this site is still very young. Can’t wait to see what they comes out of this new community.

These days, my view of desktop-based software has changed quite dramatically. I seem to have gone from: “complaining about how long it would take bloated applications to load”, to something along the lines of me going out of my way to: “avoid using them at every opportunity”.

Working as much as possible with web-based software has been my goal for the last 2 years now, and i can tell you that doing so has saved me many a headache. Gone are the days of wiping out my Windowz machine because of some virus i picked up, then having to remember every software configuration, find serial numbers i hopefully kept, go through software activation processes, updates, blah blah blah. You get the picture, right? The last time my PC got slow and crappy, i simply formatted the harddrive, reinstalled the OS, fired up a new version of Firefox and logged into all of my favorite web-based services. Gmail for email. Flickr for photos. Del.icio.us for bookmarks.. the list goes on. But everything is how i left it (not to mention they are always available from any computer with an internet connection).

I used to use a great web-based antivirus service offered by TrendMicro called Housecall. Unfortunately, they went and messed with what i thought was a perfectly good thing. Housecall used to be a fast, simple way for people who don’t want to keep desktop-based antivirus software installed on their computers to scan their local machines, it even offered to remove any viruses that it may have found. This was the best service of its kind that i had seen and i recommended it to dozens of people. But a couple of month ago they made the whole thing Java, nothing worked right for me, it was slow, complicated, basically the complete opposite of what i once like about and so i stopped both using and recommending it.

I looked for other, comparable services. Norton has a service, i think they call it “Security Center” but they don’t offer to go that extra mile and delete the infected files that were found making the process of actually cleaning out your machine unnecessarily tedious and extremely manual. Not to mention, too difficult and therefore out of reach for the average PC user.

On the other hand, i could see a service like McAfee’s SiteAdvisor as being quite useful to the everyday web surfer. What they do in a nutshell (i’m not going to get into it all here) is “Patrol the Web” for you, testing for viruses, phishing scams, annoying pop-ups and more. So essentially, all the user has to do is enter a URL of a questionable site they are considering visiting (before actually going there with their web browser) and they can get a nice, clean report about any potential hazards they may encounter along the way. The site in question gets a “safety rating” of either a green checkmark, grey questionmark (no data), or a big, fat, red “X”. The entire process is balanced out with a large number of voluntary user reviews, comments, and summaries.

Aside from entering each URL (one at a time) into the form on their front page to get a report, the user can also download a convenient Firefox extension that automatically shows you SiteAdvisor results by just browsing the given site. But i have to say that this second method, while being way more practical (you just go to the site), seems to defeat the point of getting a report in the first place. I mean, isn’t it too late to find out whether a site is sketchy once you’re already there? Granted the extension does add safety ratings to your google search results, which is pretty cool. Still, this just seems to me to be more of a research tool than a browser accessory.

While i can see many uses for this service, what i actually found most interesting about SiteAdvisor was how “other” services have begun to leverage / integrate SiteAdvisor reports and safety ratings into their own web-based services. A perfect example of this (i already mentioned the google integration) would be a service called StumbleUpon. They offer a type of advertising service for content publishers that promises to send targeted visitors to your site. I was thinking of testing out their ad services for a site i am working on, and wanted to learn more before actually giving it a try. On the StumbleUpon FAQ page there’s a section that reads: “make certain that the content you are submitting isn’t flagged by McAfee SiteAdvisor” or your content may not be shown at all. I thought, hey, this would probably be a good time to make sure none of my sites are flagged. Big, fat, red X’s are bad, and fortunately for me, all of my sites were either green checkmarks or grey questionmarks (for newer or smaller sites). So, all of a sudden, McAfee’s SiteAdvisor mattered to me. Hmm, very interesting. But all in all, i think SiteAdvisor is a great services and i will continue to use it whenever i am in doubt.

i’ve browsed the library of modules (94 modules at last count).
i’ve added some modules (with one click) to my netvibes page.

one modules that i particularly like was the “Web Search” module.

at first glance, the name alone doesn’t appear very impressive. in fact, some particularly astute observers might say: “hey, that’s nothing special. doesn’t the default netvibes page already include a search google, yahoo, icerocket, wikipedia?”.

what make this modules different, and the reason i thought it might be a useful addition to my netvibes page is because it lets you add any search engine. not just the 4 search engines mentioned above. what’s more (and this was the kicker for me), if you can make sense of “search query urls“, you can create any number of refined, or specialized searches for any given search engine.

For example, let’s say i wanted to search del.icio.us from my netvibes page using the Web Search module:

The first thing i would do is go to the actual del.icio.us site and enter a search term like “technews” into their search box. Once you land on the results page, take a look at the URL in the addressbar of your browser.

In this case, i get the following url in the addressbar on the results page:

http://del.icio.us/search/?all=technews

Note that the term i used “technews” appears in the URL (at the very end).

Congratulations, you’ve just figured out the logic behind a basic del.icio.us search and can now make sense of “search query urls”.

The only thing left to do now is replace the search term “technews” with the symbol %s so that the newly modified URL reads as follows:

http://del.icio.us/search/?all=%s

Paste this new URL into the Web Search module to complete the configuration and hit save. You can now search del.icio.us from your netvibes page.

i also added technorati search in a similar way.

http://www.technorati.com/tags/%s

(in case anyone was wondering).

obviously, the very first thing you need to do is add the actual “Web Search” module to your netvibes page before you can configure it to use new search engines, but the entire process went relatively smoothly for me.

also, you could probably add more specific custom searches, as i mentioned earlier in this post.
for instance, searching tags for specific users of del.icio.us or the “blog search” feature in technorati could be configured (just apply the same steps taken above).

to end my experience, i added my entire “technews” tab to the ecosystem to be shared with all netvibes users but there was a message about it needing to be validated before it becomes available to all users. [ Update: It didn't actually take very long to validate and my "TechNews" tab can be seen on the "Tabs" page of the netvibes ecosystem, with all the other shared tabs. ]

so until then (it might already be validated – i haven’t checked in a few hours) and to end this post i’ll add the code i got to let visitors add my “technews” tab to their Netvibes page.

here goes..

if you click on the button, it will add a bunch of tech related sites to your netvibes page as a new tab. your existing tabs will remain undisturbed. so enjoy!

This is just another small round up of Web 2.0 softwares that i can think of off the top of my head. Hopefully, i haven’t forgotten too many, but it’s only getting harder and harder to keep up with all these new sites and services. So i am going to try and keep this list updated as new web based services spring up to fill this relatively new market. Any suggestions for web-based softwares i may have overlooked are welcome.

The 3 main areas of the traditional Office Desktop Suite are: Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Calendar. Some would argue that Presentation software (like PowerPoint) should be included in there somewhere, i’m just not one of them.

The modern Web-based Desktop equivalents are:

Word Processors -

• Writely
• Zohowriter
• Writeboard
• RallyPoint
• AjaxWrite

Spreadsheets -

• Num Sum
• ZohoSheet
• Ajaxxls
• Numbler
• iRows
• Tracker
• EditGrid
• Google Spreadsheets

Calendars -

• Google Calendar
• Kiko
• 30boxes
• Calendarhub

Here’s a breakdown of all the new features added or upgraded since my previous post:

1. Compatibility with Opera web browser [ December 12, 2005 ]
2. To Do list module – i love this one – [ December 30, 2005 ]
3. Yahoo mail module – similar to the Gmail module – [ January 2, 2006 ]
4. Gmail module upgrade – set a title and no. of items to display – [ January 2, 2006 ]
5. To Do list upgraded – set a title and color, and more – [ January 2, 2006 ]
6. POP IMAP module – secure connections, webmail URL, more – [ January 2, 2006 ]
7. RSS module upgraded – set a color for each feed – [ January 2, 2006 ]

You’ll notice that all but the first 2 features/upgrades were actually added on the same day. i am consistently impressed with the rate at which Netvibes puts out new modules. it seems they’re really on to something here. i’m sure that there’s definitely room for many more interesting modules in the near future.

On a side note, i remember when the Gmail module was first added to Netvibes. At the time, i didn’t even have a Gmail account yet. Back then i was thinking to myself, i wish Netvibes had that feature for Yahoo Mail. It’s funny, because now that they do offer the Yahoo Mail module, i realized that yahoo.com domains don’t get free POP access (although apparently many international yahoo domains do. – ie: yahoo.fr) – so i wouldn’t have been able to use the module even if it was available, and i still can’t use it. Here’s to hoping that Yahoo catches on to this problem, because this is not the first time i’ve had the opportunity to access my POP account from a different web based service/software and haven’t been able to. As i have mentioned before, i am slowly moving over to from Yahoo Mail to Gmail – and no POP access is one of my main reasons for doing this. i know that Yahoo Mail is in the process of getting a complete overhaul, but this is all happening behind the scenes and i’m just not sure how much longer i can wait.

Anyway, i’ll probably set up the POP IMAP module and test it out next. i’ve already been using the To Do list module for a little while and find that this is a great addition to the Netvibes content set. I’ve always felt that a full-blown desktop app for something as trivial as a To Do list was overkill. Here’s the perfect solution. Overall, there are probably a lot more situations like this involving bloated softwares, etc. And i think that if the folks at Netvibes can keep this in mind, they’ll likely find inspiration for many more modules. Nevertheless, from the looks of things, i get the impression they aren’t having too many problems in the inspiration department.

For more info and all the latest news you can visit the Netvibes blog.