from coriander to ginger: putting the spice into RSS feeds!

Netvibes has in the last week released publicly its new 'ginger' version which has a lot of added features and functionality compared to its earlier 'coriander' release. For those not au fait with netvibes, it's a great way of organising information and bringing together all your interests into one simple web-page (but allowing multiple tabs in which you can structure the info). Exploiting RSS feeds from other websites and using a range of 'widgets' to provide links to email, weather, news, maps, etc, I've certainly found it to be a really useful tool over the year or so in which it has been my browser's home page.

One of the key aspects of the new version is the ability to develop a separate page which you can make available publicly - called 'my universe'. Applications in higher education for example could include building a reference site that links to the latest feeds from relevant academic journals providing a handy resource for students and researchers. My first stab at a universe can be seen here and it probably makes more sense to look at an example than try to understand my muddled explanation thus far!

Anyway, its free and, once you get the hang of it, indispensible!