Netvibes unveils optimized iPhone portal

Netvibes is one of the largest players in the web2 portal game, allowing users to add all sorts of content and communication widgets to customizable pages, acting as a dashboard for your online realm. You can add widgets to watch RSS feeds, email from lots of services like Gmail and .Mac, weather, search engines, podcasts that can play in the page, calendars and a massive world of user-generated stuff that can extend Netvibes' portal in just about any direction you would want. For a while now, Netvibes has offered a mobile version of their portal at m.netvibes.com for regular phones, but now they have an iPhone-specific portal at m.nv1.netvibes.com (I know, I think they could've made it a prettier URL too). It offers complete access to all your tabs with that increasingly popular iPhone-like UI, and each tab lists the widgets it contains in a single column view, optimizing space and legibility. Even complex widgets like that Facebook widget the company recently introduced work fine, and the Twitter widget counts the characters I type in real time.

Since my NetNewsWire feed list now tops 330, I've been looking for an easier way to stay on top of a few of my favorite feeds in a simple UI when on the go with my iPhone. I still think the .Mac Reader is a good solution, but having all those feeds along with handy todo and social widgets in a slick UI is even cooler. This Netvibes iPhone page just landed near the top of my must-use mobile bookmarks.