Aggregators: Worth the Time? or A comparison of Symbaloo and Netvibes, Part 1

What are aggregators? They are not domesticated alligators used in “back to nature” agricultural programs. They are applications and tools that allow a user to collect information from disparate sources and present it in one place. My colleges Alison Dodd and Michele Ramos have a very good definition of Aggregation on the HLWiki Social Media Glossary:

Aggregation refers to collecting content from multiple social media sites (such as Facebook or Twitter) with the goal to organize and simplify users’ social networking experiences. While individual sites may offer unique features specific to that site, social networking aggregation collects the content that is produced on several sites and delivers it in a less overwhelming way. Aggregating content is performed by using tools to draw information from different sites into a single space. Aggregation services provide tools and widgets — either downloadable or web-based — that function to consolidate friends, bookmarks, messages and profiles in easy, digestible formats. Aggregation is done by an application programming interface (API). Some examples of aggregation include FriendFeed, Flock, TweetDeck, SocialNetwork.In, SocialURL, Digsby, Trillian/Adium, YooNo, and OrSiSo.

As someone who, prior to this unit, didn’t even use an RSS feed (such as Google Reader) I found the introduction to all these different aggregators extremely interesting. But how useful would I find these applications personally and as an LIS student? So I took two of the aggregation applications presented in the module Symbaloo and Netvibes, set up accounts and tried them out.

This post will focus on Symbaloo:

Symbaloo is an aggregator that colourfully and graphically presents your personalized bookmarks, RSS feeds, and some commonly used web applications like Google search and Wikipedia search. It is presented as a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) portal or a launch pad. There is a nice demonstration of the platform here.

The application is very simple and easy to use, but it does take time to customize the webmix for your personal use. I spent over two hours working on my “desk” webmix for all the bookmarks and feeds that I use regularly. I didn’t spend much time trying to make it pretty, but  a user has some options (tile arrangement, colour, icon) to customize the look of the interface to make it graphically appealing. This is what my personal webmix currently looks like:

I enjoyed making the webmix, but I don’t find it particularly useful for myself. I have my frequently used bookmarks well organized within my Safari browser and my less used bookmarks I currently collect on delicious. Sites that I check everyday are shown in my top sites display every time I open up a new tab in my browser.

For RSS Symbaloo works moderately well. If you click on the feed tile, the five latest posts will (usually) show up in the centre of the webmix, but it only displays the title of the post and the date it was posted. You have to click on the post to read it and there is nothing indicating if there is a new unread post.

The widgets that allow you to interact with different applications (like Google) from the centre box are few and most of them are already integrated into many browsers. Many of the widgets don’t work well and some not at all. I was excited to see a CBC Radio widget, but unfortunately I couldn’t get it to play.

For these reasons I don’t think I will continue with Symbaloo for my own personal use but there are a few ways I could envision using this professionally:

• Webmixes are hosted in the cloud so if I was switching workstations frequently I could quickly and easily access all my bookmarks.
• Webmixes can be made public, searchable and tagable. Webmixes would be a great way to share a collection of resources with your network in a friendly and appealing way. For example I found this great webmix for online children’s books:
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• Webmixes are very simple and visually appealing so they would be great portals for younger users. Here is an example of a webmix created by Melissa Techman, school librarian and tech lead, for students in kindergarten to grade two for curriculum related webpages.

Next up: Netvibes.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to…

Aggregators: Worth the time?