Startpages

I had always referred to these as 'dashboards', but now I know the alternative term 'startpages' it will make it easier to explain to other people what I am talking about!  I am already familiar with Netvibes, as, with my Current Awareness hat on, I have been looking at ways in which other libraries are providing a Current Awareness service to their users.  Netvibes seemed to be the answer, and I have recently begun to put together a Netvibes dashboard to cover as many as possible of the specialties of our Trust staff, both clinical and managerial. 

I have had a look at all the portals listed on the 19 Things blog.  The majority of them are Netvibes dashboards, but there are also quite a few blogs, and at least one Trust library using Protopages.  I still think that Netvibes gives the clearest and most user-friendly interface.  Some of the blogs are rather wordy, and not so easy to navigate around.  However, a major drawback of Netvibes is that it doesn't operate particularly well with Internet Explorer (although it may do so with the more recent updates of IE, which sadly are not available to us here). 

You really need to be using Firefox or Google Chrome to have  Netvibes operating quickly and efficiently, and this would of course apply not only to the Library staff setting it up, but also to all the users who would want to view it.  We are still trying to find a way around this problem.

It may be that Protopages will provide a suitable alternative.  I am looking forward to trying it out.