By: Tom Morris

Tom Morris — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 22:52:00 +0000

I’m sorry. I wasn’t quite being clear when I wrote that (probably due to the fact I was on a packed commuter train – I should post links and not try to think!).I use NewsRiver, Dave’s RSS reader (which is very much _not_ Web 2.0). I also have a customised Google home page.What I don’t get is reading RSS on these homepages. My Google homepage has my Gmail and my search history (and a countdown to the shipping date for my new Mac), and the weather for London.All of these things are basically non-RSS content and stuff which I don’t need to be notified of the update of – if I miss yesterday’s weather, it doesn’t matter. If I miss, say, a blog post, that matters far more to me.What RSS has done is actually changed the way I use the web to make most of the need for headlines on my homepage irrelevant and actually a hindrance to the way I prefer news. What would be good is if sites like My Yahoo! – which has a lot of newbie users – built a proper news aggregator.Mathew: the reason why it’s important (and I hope clarified), is because the way news is read and the way portals are used is different. Tommorow’s weather forecast or how many days until I get my MacBook are different from the latest headlines.Thanks again, Kent, for your reading – I love reading what you have to say (I’m especially enjoying your picks from Scoble’s feeds).

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:09:00 +0000

I’m not sure why it’s important to say netvibes.com is a portal and not Web 2.0 like their mutually exclusive — except that Tom thinks portals suck and (presumably Web 2.0) newsreaders don’t. I’d have to disagree. I’ve used lots of newsreaders and I prefer netvibes. And I think the fact that it’s interactive and uses Ajax makes it Web 2.0 enough for me.

Comments on: Is There a Place for a Portal…

By: Tom Morris

By: Mathew Ingram