Don Reisinger over at CNET got a pretty cool list of 10 Financial Google Gadgets for iGoogle that is worth checking out. Not a more “on topic” thing to post when the world is in a ongoing economic recession….

10 iGoogle gadgets for tracking financial data

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Sure, there is Netvibes, iGoogle, My.Yahoo, My/AOL, Live Home, but what about Opera Portal?.

If you are surprised by its existence, don’t feel bad about it. I doubt most Opera Browser users know of it either.  So maybe you want to try a new Startpage (yes, the two words as one) or maybe you are a Opera Browser user and want to consolidate your time more with Opera offerings. Whatever the reason it may be. You should know that such a option exists for you.

Opera Portal is like a Mix of Netvibes with a bit of My.Yahoo. That is the best way i could describe it. You can customize its color, the position of the widgets and it counts with all the basic widget offerings any Startpage should have. That about it. It comes down to taste and brand if you want to use it.  That said given that Opera is actually good with widgets.  It would be a good opportunity to let users have Opera Widgets of the quality they can enjoy in the browser also in a Startpage. But that is something Opera must be still thinking through.

Opera Portal

via Ghacks

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Netvibes looks to be finally adding small new features once a month again. Or at least that is what i hope for so we can keep them in the loop longer. The new small feature they introduced is a feature called “Drag & Follow” to the Twitter, Facebook and Myspace Widget Modules. This feature allows you to follow the update from a specific user from those specific stream by dragging the username out of the widget. This creates another widget instantly focused on the updates of that user.

But if you want to read it from Netvibes own words, this is how they explain it:

With the rapid growth of real-time content and activity feeds from sources like Facebook and Twitter, many people are struggling to keep track of multiple friends and interests that change day-to-day. Today, we launched a novel solution and industry first: drag-and-follow widgets. New Facebook, MySpace and Twitter widgets now enable users to instantly create new widgets to follow new interests simply by dragging and dropping any feed item to their personalized page.

Netvibes

via Netvibes  Blog

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USA Today, The last truly big mainstream Newspaper still standing thinks it is a good idea that if you like them. You should be able to get as much of them as you can in a single page and as fast as possible. The result is Newsdeck. A Widgetized USA Today News  Headline Aggregator Start Page (Phew!). This way when you launch your browser, you instantly get as much news you want and you can then skim and open tabs from the news headlines that get to catch your attention.

Simple concept. it is like Alltop but only for USA Today. I like the idea and it is well executed. Hope it does well.

Newsdeck,

via TC

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ZooLoo not only got a name that makes you think of a bunch of animals put together in a room. It is also very new and full with ambition. Too much ambition i think.

They are a Widget Startpage like iGoogle or Netvibes. but they also want to be like MySpace and give you a blog module, photo hosting service, music, videos, etc. All within a social network that also happens to be your personalized portal and site like Ning. And they  even want you to have your own domain and also provide you entertainment content, management tools and even shopping!.

All of this in a single place that happens to be very new. That is being bold to the extreme, no doubt about it. But if the idea of having a personal hub is your thing, then ZooLoo may be what you are looking for.

Personally, i find the whole idea of having a personal silo on the web in the way they are providing it to be something you would not want from a new site. it is too much, too soon. Even MySpace and Facebook started small and with only a few things. The other problem is scale and adoption. If there is no one of your friends or people to meet in ZooLoo. Why would you want to be in it?. If ZooLoo suddenly had a burst of grow with only free accounts. could they scale and maintain the service online even with the costs and pressure?. not likely.

But i must give it to them. They got a lot of brass to launch with such a wide array of services based on pure face value. But if Wallop failed because it only appealed to a not profitable sector of the world for a western company that happened to had big support (it didn’t even launched-launched). Then the chances to succeed of ZooLoo are not really good either. As neat the service may look.

ZooLoo

via TC 

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