Goodbye Netvibes

It pains me to say this, but I no longer use Netvibes.

Netvibes is beautiful. Netvibes is functional. Netvibes has a ton of features and gadgets that you can toss onto it.

Alas. It's functionality has been losing ground to a variety of sources for a while now. I enjoy using new things (new to me not necessarily new in general) so changing methodology is fairly common but I really thought I'd be with Netvibes longer. It was my killer app. I used it for my to-do lists, I used it to keep track of plans, I used it to do a good bit of the standard recommended GTD stuff. I used it for my RSS feeds. I used it for podcasts. It was, without a doubt, my home on the internet.

But as time went by I started using stikkit for some kinds of lists. Then I started using MindMeister for more near-term lists because it allows me to display more information faster. And then the dagger to the heart: Google.

You might be wondering: "If you liked it so much, why'd you stop using it?"
Well, at this point the only functionality that I was using Netvibes for exclusively was RSS.

Google homepage, I mean iGoogle, sucks. Hard. It's RSS is clumsy. You can't read items in the cute little frame; it doesn't expand, it links. You don't have a lot of control; it's lame. It's gadgets generally don't seem to be worth the trouble, the community is less developed than the Netvibes ecosystem. Basically, not a cozy home. The coolest thing about it is the little image that changes with day and night and stuff.

And then there's Google Reader. It's not as pretty as Netvibes. But it's too damn good for me not to switch. All items view is downright sexy. Every item, expanded, in an otherwise spartan page; kkeyboard shortcuts that let me get my reading done fast. So effective. I could've replicated something like this with Yahoo pipes and all of my RSS feeds and Netvibes, but if it's not the best tool for the price it's got to go.

I love Netvibes, but not as much as I love efficiency.