Netvibes or Pageflakes?

I've been playing with Netvibes and Pageflakes ... to see how I could make them into a shareable, usable, fun interface for collaborating in a project. I'm imagining that most people in the project don't know how to use RSS feeds etc. so I want to set up a page that we can share - and as they become more confident can add their own feeds, create their own pages, flakes, tabs etc.

I started playing with the Setúbal bloggers group - fun not work, but a smiliar principle. We are bloggers in Setúbal who meet up for dinners, walks etc. and have recently started a Google group. Among other things I want to put together the feeds of people's blogs, our shared tags in flickr, del.icio.us etc., share a calendar and see the messages from Google group.

Other people should be able to edit it. Ideally, I'd like to be able to add a Pageflakes tab to a Netvibes one and vice versa.

This is my Pageflakes experiment:

I found Pageflakes easy to use and it has a tidy layout, even if it is a bit square. It has three language interfaces - English, German and Portuguese. I couldn't find a flake for Technorati tags (which I like in Netvibes). But the absolute best thing about Pageflakes is the sharing options. I can make the link public or share it with certain people, and above all I can share the editing with selected people - in this case it would be fellow bloggers.  The big downside is that some feeds just did not add to the page, including some blogs and the feed from G-groups. I can't for the life of me think why. The public site has a nice, tidy URL: http://www.pageflakes.com/btrayner.ashx

 

And this is Netvibes:

Netvibes is what I use for my desktop, so I would prefer to use Netvibes. But I would love to be able to add a Pageflake to my Netvibes tabs rather than moving between different desktops for different groups/projects (which would rather defeat the objective). I prefer the visual aspect of Netvibes and like having Technorati blog search and Google maps, among other things. BTW Netvibes has interfaces in lots of languages, even distinguishing Portuguese (PT) and Portuguese (BR). But the problem is in sharing the editing of the page. I can make the page public in a URL of 166 characters (!!!!!) but I can't share the editing. And what's more, this shared link doesn't show all the content that I have on the Netvibes tab, nor does it have the photos or the google group. A_N_D the link takes you to a general tab for Netvibes and you have to notice the tab for SetubalNow to get the right page. But that's no good because people who aren't used to tools don't click about to find things. You have to send them directly to the exact place, otherwise they give up.

So neither Pageflakes or Netvibes is going to work? I can't get all the feeds I want on Pageflake  and I can't successfully share Netvibes, nor its editing. Any suggestions?

technorati tags:netvibes, pageflakes

Comments

[Amit]

Hi,
Thanks for your comments. We also have Technorati Flake. You can add it from the following url:
http://www.pageflakes.com/Community/Content/Flakes.aspx?moduleKey=796

We recently have launched our Community Portal where you will be able find our all Flakes, RSS, PodCast, Public Pages and Page Templates etc.

Enjoy.

[ricardo]

Por vezes uso o netvibes, mas acho que pelo teu comentario deverias optar pelo Pageflakes.

[Beverly Trayner]

Thanks. I did see that Technorati flake but it wasn't what I was referring to. You have a technorati search flake, but I was thinking of the one on Netvibes which is for specific technorati tags.

[Beverly Trayner]

Sim, Ricardo. Acho que teres raizão. Estou a gostar cada vez mais o aspecto do Pageflakes.

[Shahed]

Hi,

For reading lots of feeds, you can use the bookmark option. Instead of adding each feed as a rss flake, you can add them in bookmark and read then all in newspaper view or outlook view from the RSS Reader.

[Beverly Trayner]

Thanks for the tip Shahed. I still have the problem, though, that some feeds won't go on the page OR in the bookmarks. It fetches the feed but then won't put it anywhere.

[Ole Brandenburg]

Can you please give me some example URLs of feeds that don't work or can't be added?

Thanks
Ole

[Beverly Trayner]

Thanks Ole. I can't find your email address, but the feeds are those that I put in the forum, in Bugs and Problems/Not adding feeds to the page. (I also sent them to Cristoph's email, but he must be away.)

There are also some others, but I guess if we resolve those, then it will start working for the others. I tried those same feeds on another page I started, but they didn't work there either.

Note: it successfully fetches the feed, it just doesn't do anything when I add it to the page (or to bookmarks).