Gadgets, Widgets and Flakes Oh My: We're not in Kansas Anymore Toto

Spent some time further exploring the "personal page portal" sites of Netvibes, PageFlakes and iGoogle over the last few days.  All pretty interesting as far as the current state and evolution of personalized content.  At first the power of customization seems a little bewildering and had me thinking "Can (should) I really do this?"  You mean I don't just click on a site and sit back and have the content spoon fed to me?  I'm not used to this; will it be work?  I might have to express myself by selecting and interacting with content?  What's going on here?!

Chips Off The Same Block

In some ways, the three sites are very much alike, almost identical in their general function and purpose, and even in some of their basic interface elements.  In some ways..

Yet there are also clear differences in each site's style and "presentation attitude" if you will.  Yes, you customize the content on each in a very similar manner picking from hundreds of chunk-line building blocks of web information, RSS feeds, social network providers and all sorts of other personal and public content.  And while each has a different name for these content building blocks -- on iGoogle they are Gadgets, on Netvibes they're Widgets, and on Pageflakes, they're Flakes, the general idea is the same.  The understanding you develop playing around with one easily translates to the others, making learning curve very portable.

Nuts and Bolts

Each site provides the ability to select from at least hundreds if not thousands of gadgets, widgets and flakes respectively.  Once the blocks of selected content are on the page, you can move them around to your liking, change interface appearances, and hide or remove them.  Each site also provides for customization of the overall page appearance in general, allowing you to select colors, themes, adding text, and etc.  You can create what amounts to multiple pages by adding tabs to organize the content.  I particularly a new Weather Channel radar gadget on iGoogle.

You Go Your Way, I'll Go Mine

Though the three sites have much overall functionality in common, they different quite a bit in presentation and attitude.

I Think Can... iGoogle

iGoogle has Google's typical white with blueish lines appearance by default.  The content gadgets appear in generally plain boxes of fixed width on the page.  Each gadget has controls that are common to all to control appearance, share with others or access content specific settings.  The iGoogle "attitude" is one of having easy going fun in my opinion.  It's a light feel.

Good Netvibrations

Netvibes goes in a distinctly different direction as far as appearance, presenting itself in an ultra modern online style.  Colors are rich and slick by default also with squared content boxes.  It has all the same operation features as iGoogle and 'Flakes but with more adult feel.  If it were a radio station I suspect it's genre would be "Alternative".  Netvibes also makes specific mention of its mobile version for small devices which I did try on a Palm.  I did come up in a greatly slimmed down version.

No Flake Is Alike 

PageFlakes also has all the same functionality as the others presented in an up-to-date, inviting and clean package.  If it wasn't a page in a browser, I wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't a normal and very currently presented application on my system, complete with drop shadows and animated barber-pole progress thermometers.  I also explored the pages that are available from other users and content providers that present almost as mini websites known as PageCasts.  Pageflakes was the only one of the three sites where I quickly found and customized a local cable TV schedule display.  (I believe it came on the public page by default!)

If You Build It (Or Not), They Will Come

Each site provides access for anyone (OK, "developers") to build gadgets, widgets and flakes.  The system on iGoogle was pretty easy to start using with plenty of help and direction available along the way.  I even linked in a little content of my own through the API.  But if "rolling your own" isn't for you, as I've mentioned all sites had a multitude of pre-built modular content from which to select and customize your pages including every major online service and content provider.  Of course, being the tech that I am, I linked in a RSS for a favorite Oracle discussion site and ended going astray from my touring while reading the I-never-get-tired-of-it subject of database performance tuning.

But I guess that's the point of these sites, to get you just where you want to go.  All in all another worthwhile recon mission.