Netvibes Releases Dashboard Engine

Netvibes faced a quandary; the service they offered five years ago could now be found in many other places. Clearly, they needed to come up with another, more compelling service for web surfers. This new service, which should be a boon to anyone doing topic-focused research (from hobbyists to scientists), went live just a few months ago. Let's take a closer look.
In 2005 Netvibes was launched to great success, as its aim to provide users with a custom home page service where they could collect their favorite online content and access it all from any Web browser was a very original idea at the time. Five years later, of course, similar services exist and though Netvibes hasn't been left behind, the Paris and San Francisco-based company was in need of something to make their product new and refreshing.
This past April, they did just that. The duo behind the company launched a Dashboard Engine to help its users track the web, enabling them to create a single place where everything available on the web about a respective topic can be viewed at once from their dashboard. The Dashboard Engine, which is more of a tool than anything else, features a search box where users can type in a topic, person, or event and before they know it, they'll be presented with the latest and greatest information about it from across the web. Some of the results come from Yahoo Search, Flickr, and YouTube, just to name a few.
Let's learn more about Netvibes' new Dashboard Engine, its features, and how it helps businesses. Let's get started:
The First of Its Kind
According to the creators of Netvibes, their number one goal with the new dashboard engine was to help users track the "real-time Web," which seems to be the major goal of many developers these days, but we'll discuss that major, emerging trend in just a little while. What's perhaps most impressive about the engine is that it's being heralded as the first of its kind in the world.
One of the most appealing aspects of the Dashboard Engine is that users can go back to it without having to repeatedly search or look up the latest updates on a specific topic since their previous visit to Netvibes. They can also add new content to the Dashboard Engine, delete items they no longer want updates on, and arrange their topics, making it easier to sift through their content.
Users will find the Dashboard Engine's ability to find any information on any topic a very welcome experience, not to mention the fact that it provides the latest and most up-to-date information as well. Early users have reported that the Dashboard Engine is a little slow to load at times, but it's not too much of a nuisance, and its built-in tool that makes it easy to share your favorite content via e-mail or through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook also make up for any slight delay users may experience.
For users who already have Netvibes, using the new Dashboard Engine couldn't be easier. Once you log on to the site, you simply enter a topic or keyword of interest, choose one of many photos that relate to your search word, and then Netvibes does the rest for you by immediately providing a stream of the most recent news for these topics.
When we say that the Dashboard Engine provides the most up-to-date information on the web, it's important to understand how comprehensive this information is. Aside from the usual tabs for news, videos, articles, and other online conversations about the topics you choose to have on your Dashboard, there are also results via Twitter mentions, Facebook mentions, and any recent updates from the blogosphere.
There is an entirely separate tab for Google results, meaning you have a lot of information thrown your way very quickly. For some, this may seem overwhelming at first, but users will get the hang of it quickly, and Netvibes makes it incredibly easy to navigate your way through everything.
Users also have the option of adding any feeds related to the subjects or topics they're interested in. Another cool feature sort of touched on earlier is the user's ability to navigate away from the site to do other online tasks, and upon their return, their dashboard will already have been updated with all of the latest information available on the chosen topics. According to Blackweb 2.0 , here are the most interesting ways you can use Netvibes to your benefit, some of which pertain to the many business benefits of the Dashboard Engine that we'll soon discuss in greater depth:

• Users who run businesses can set up different dashboards to monitor the latest news on their top competitors. This will allow them to see their successes, as well as opportunities they may have to capitalize on their most recent shortfalls.
• Users can create a dashboard to monitor their business, enabling them to learn what their current and potential customers are saying about them online. Also, one particularly useful aspect of the old Netvibes carried over into the Dashboard Engine: Twitter monitoring, which can be refined to filter only the information that is most beneficial to you and your business. You can also monitor your business' Facebook mentions, good or bad. Chances are that as social media continues to grow, Netvibes' Dashboard Engine will adapt, enabling users to have their virtual ear to the ground, monitoring everything and hopefully making the most of the information.
• If users are in school and doing research on a specific subject for an upcoming project or term paper, Netvibes' new Dashboard Engine enables them to set up a dashboard on that subject. Essentially, it allows the Dashboard to work as a research tool over time, curating the most pertinent information on the subject.
• The Dashboard also enables users to compile a list of mentors they may have, and from there, dashboards can be set up featuring their names and/or companies as the subject. Essentially, this enables users to observe those they look up to in a new and exciting way.

Quite smartly, Netvibes is quick to differentiate their Dashboard Engine from services such as Google -- and rightfully so. Just as the company points out on their website, "It's not a search engine, it's a dashboard engine." Netvibes allows its users to create unlimited dashboards, monitoring and keeping track of everything in their digital lives. According to Netvibes, "Users can dashboard everything in just a single click, save as many different instant dashboards as they like, and share them with friends. It's a whole new way to instantly monitor and track sports teams, businesses, competitors, celebrities, political issues or the latest trending topics without having to dig through search results and browse from site to site."
Since the release of the Dashboard Engine, Netvibes has released the Premium Dashboard Engine Manager, which is proving to be incredibly beneficial to a number of businesses and top interactive agencies (such as Ogilvy PR, Tribal DDB, WeissComm Group, and CRM Company Group) that have since adopted the software to better monitor the real-time Web. Essentially, it's a powerful new suite of tools for Netvibes Premium Dashboards that enables agencies, businesses, and brands to rapidly build and manage multiple dashboards for different business needs and clients.
According to the Netvibes blog , here are the Premium Dashboard Manager's features:

• Push Publishing Content Management: Sends live updates to users via a yellow notification bar; users have the option of accepting or rejecting updates.
• User Permissions and Management: Creates different access levels for different types of users. For example, an agency account manager might have full control to build, publish, and edit a brand monitoring dashboard for a specific client, but would not have access to other dashboards for agency clients. The agency director can have view-only access to all dashboards for all clients, and a specific client can have view-only access to their dashboard only.
• Rapid Publishing Tools: Easily create new dashboards by replicating dashboards, themes, or tabs and create new ones using the instant dashboarding engine , which enables users to create new smart dashboards by simply entering in a topic keyword. Then, all dashboards can be managed from a centralized content management system.
• Advanced Features and Billing: Self-manage advanced options like URLs, single sign-on (SSO), and billing features all in one place.

Also according to the Netvibes Blog , here are some examples of the different ways Premium Dashboards can be used to monitor, manage, and build engagement on the real-time Web:

• Brand Monitoring: Track clients, customers, and competitors across hundreds of media sources all in one place, analyze live results with dozens of third party reporting tools, and provide real-time media monitoring dashboards for brand clients.
• E-Reputation Management: Visualize real-time Twitter conversations and social activity feeds and track new trending topics with "drag-and-follow" smart widgets.
• Product Marketing: Create fully interactive product microsites in minutes, with Netvibes' award-winning drag-and-drop publishing interface.
• Community Portals: Engage online communities by offering each user the ability to personalize their own unique start page and send live community updates with instant push publishing tools
• Personalized Workspaces: Boost productivity by creating workplace dashboards that gather all essential company updates, industry news, and enterprise tools each team needs all in one place, personalized to support specific divisions (i.e.. sales, marketing, HR) and localizations.

It is these last few capabilities that are proving to be the most important for Netvibes' premium service. There is a new focus in the tech world on "real time" results, meaning being able to obtain information the second it's published online. According to Netvibes, "With the acceleration of the real-time Web, people are looking for a way to monitor and keep up-to-date on everything about topics that matter to them, without having to dig through an endless list of yesterday's search engine results." It appears as if Netvibes has found the answer to this. Now it's just a matter of seeing how many consumers catch on.

google waves, waves goodbye

Fans of online collaboration tools were dealt a blow on Wednesday as tech giant Google layed its new-born baby, Google Wave, to rest.
For those not in the know, the product - written in Java using OpenJDK - was a hybrid email-messaging-conversational-document that allowed collaborators to create replies in any part of a given communication, instead of shooting back and forth an endless chain of emails. In some instances these responses acted more like instant messages, whereby participants could see the changes to the central document in real-time.
Google Wave debuted in June of '09 to much skepticism and uncertainty, and in fact saw very little shelf life outside of beta. Released to the general public in March 2010, it isn't a hundred percent clear why the product never caught on or why Google is saying goodbye to it; some say the consumer never truly understood the purpose of the product, and others are speculating that the Goog is gearing up to dip a bigger toe into the waters of social media.
Either way, it is just another casualty in a long string of products the Goog has laid to rest in the past year.
For a more in-depth look at this story, feel free to visit http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20012698-56.html?tag=cnetRiver for the full scoop.

Windows 7: Great Additions

I think it is safe to conclude that the new operating system from Microsoft named Windows 7 is a total success. It manages to both look good and work well. Furthermore, it boasts multiple additions and improvements, like the super bar, the library system and more. However, as good as it is, after a clean installation you are still far from getting a system with which you can work. Today I will present a couple of programs that I find essential to have after you finish a clean OS install.
You may ask why Microsoft does not add them in as part of the standard operating system. Well, the answer to this is fairness. It would not be fair to the competition. It's not that long ago that Microsoft concluded a trial with the European Union regarding the browser they offer as standard. Now at installation, Microsoft must offer a choice to the user of which browser s/he wants.
While this is true in the case of some applications, in other areas, their product is, to put it simply, just not up to the level of the competition. I think they decided to focus on other areas instead. For example, I ask: why does the standard built-in notepad NOT offer a programming language syntax coloring system?
This article will rely heavily on my experience, so for some of the options I point out, you may find alternatives that you like better. Personal preferences are not a subject for debate. Nevertheless, I believe by the end of the series you will have a good grasp of applications that are good to have, and even try out a couple of them.
In order to give some kind of structure to all this, I will split the applications into the field to which they correspond: document manipulation, image handling, file sharing/management, music, video and other handy additions to your OS. Moreover, I will also give to each of them a brief overview of the features I like, ultimately explaining why you may want to use it.
Squeezing so much information into a single article would be overkill, so I'm going to split it into two parts. Today I will go over document and image manipulation, and finish up with file sharing and management. All of the others will remain for a forthcoming piece.
Before we start, let me tell you that I always start with the installation of the browser and one antivirus.  However, debating which of these is best would call for an entire article of its own, so I will not go into it. For the record, I use Opera (for the overall look and feel, the speed, and built in e-mail/RSS reader) as my browser.
Microsoft Security Essentials is my antivirus choice because it is free, does not use a lot of memory, and does not get in your way while you work. What messenger program you use also depends heavily on what the other people around you use; therefore, I will skip it.  If you want a freeware cross platform messenger that supports all the major chat companies, you can look into Pidgin.
As far as document manipulation goes, we have three sub-sections: text editors, document editors and PDF manipulation. Windows 7 already comes with a quick and basic text editor: Notepad. However, I often edit text files that follow some programming/script language syntax. Notepad2 extends Notepad with syntax highlighting using the Scintilla code-editing component. 
It is simple and lightweight. It has multiple versions, as listed on the website. I like the code-folding edition you can find there, just because I often edit/look into source files. It is perfect for those times you do not want to go through a slow programming IDE start-up time, like Visual Studio's.
'

Taking this further is Notepad++. The idea is the same, but it offers a lot more options and a tab-based interface. This is good if you are simultaneously editing multiple text files; otherwise, I prefer Notepad2.

As far as document files for printing goes, I stick with Microsoft Office. Sure, Open Office is coming along nicely, and it is free, but Microsoft remains the standard in this domain. With the launch of Microsoft Office 2010, they just made this point that much clearer. I have written a review of the new edition, so make sure to check it out.


Nowadays the portable document format is PDF. Regardless of the efforts of others, the XPS format is just not used by anyone (okay, maybe Microsoft). For viewing this file, the choice generally comes down to two application: Adobe Acrobat Reader and Foxit PDF Reader.

While the first has a much cleaner and elegant user interface, the latter has the advantage of being tab-based, and this is essential if you are doing research work with multiple documents. I usually end up having both of them, and choose which one to use based on whether I'm reading one large document or multiple documents at once.


Sometimes I have multiple PDF files that I want to join together or split into more pieces. For that, I use another tool. It is a simple freeware PDF manipulation tool: PDFTools. It can do much more; however, I usually use just the capabilities mentioned previously:

Here we need to look at three tasks: viewing images, taking screen shots and creating images from scratch. The basic built-in photo viewer is just too simple, and it looks bulky, if you ask me. I suggest instead the FastStone Image Viewer; however, you may want to look over XnView or Infranview, too. What I like about FastStone is that it has both library and basic image viewing functions. By default, I always start with the basic function, and fill the whole screen.
It is perfect if you want to show some pictures to some friends. It instantly hides all the other windows you may have open, and you can easily focus on the image itself. Sure, it has multiple image manipulation functions that you can bring up if you go the key areas of the screen (left, right, bottom) with your mouse. It gives you everything without making the screen crowded with functions, and it is blazing fast. It offers functionality and simplicity, well-integrated.


If you want to share your vacation pictures with your friends, then you will probably end up using the Google Picasa website. For uploading pictures there, you will use Picasa 3. It is a good image hosting application for the Picasa website; however, for image viewing I prefer FastStone.
Whenever you are debugging some computer issue over the web, the usual first request is, "Tell me what you see." Because the Print Screen button paired with Paint's paste function is not elegant (and takes too much time!), I use FastStone Image Capture. This has become shareware; however, you can just use the last freeware version.

The neat features I like in it are the quick editing tools you have at hand after taking the picture: add watermark, draw object on it, resize image (Ctrl + R) and more.
Finally, as far image creation software goes, we have two candidates: Paint.Net and Adobe Photoshop.
While Adobe has the advantage of years of experience and more polished software, it costs to a hefty $700. In my opinion, this is just too much. Paint.Net, on the other hand, looks great, is free and will serve you well as long as you are working on relatively simple things. Oh, and the other magnificent thing is that Paint.Net barely uses any resources, while Photoshop becomes more and more resource demanding with every version.

Sharing multiple files across the web with your friends, or even with yourself in case you have multiple computers, is normal these days. The easiest way that may come to your mind is to send it over an instant messenger program. Nevertheless, this will take too much time and has a high chance of failure. Therefore, you need to find new ways to do this.
If you have an FTP server at your disposal, hosting files to this can be done via the FileZilla client. It may not have the best-looking user interface but certainly does the job well, and it is stable.

If you lack the server, then you can use one of the many online file sharing sites, like MediaFire. Nevertheless, hosting and sharing multiple files can be troublesome, so you may want to pack them together. For this, we need an archiving application. I use 7-zip for its 64-bit support and great Windows shell integration with the new beta version. Moreover, it has a clean UI with many advanced features that appear only when you need them.

At the extraction end, it is just as good. Nevertheless, WinRar is a viable option, too.

You can share your files across multiple computers with Dropbox. It will create a folder in your file system where you can drop your public and/or private files. 

An icon in the tray icon will serve as a control center. You can also share some folders with other Dropbox users, and you may use this to share files with them. It is the perfect tool if you want to synchronize some content over multiple systems. In the free version, you have 2 GB of space; however, you may pay for more. 
Finally, as far as file management goes, I like to install three additional programs: CCleaner for periodic clearing out of unnecessary files; Windirstat to snip out unwanted files on my HDD; and Soluto to eliminate programs that slow down the start up of my system. I will talk about these three more extensively in a future article.


Now I will take a short break and let you explore the applications presented in these pages. If you have any other application you've discovered in these categories, make sure to point them out in the blog following the article. If you could rate my article as you think it deserves, that would be awesome. Make sure to tune in next time too, when I will present the music, video and the general usage sections. Until then, remember to Live With Passion!