This is the first of a multi-part series on how and why I’m creating a system I’m referring to as my “Portable Office”. These will be posted on Saturdays for the next few weeks outlining software and services I’ve used to accomplish this.

Back in the fall, I lost my laptop. Not physically, mind you, but the power connector on the back burned out. When this happened, I lost easy access to all of my data, my bookmarks, and, of course, my applications and all of the setting stat go along with them. Being that my work requires me to be online, losing access to my computer, and all of my data, was a devastating blow to my efficiency, productivity and communications.

At the time, I was relying on desktop applications and settings. All of my email, appointments, contacts and bookmarks were stored locally. All of my hacks and tools such as keyboard shortcuts and text replacement applications were set up in a way that worked best for me. My music collection, as well, was all managed via iTunes and ratings and playcounts helped me form dynamic playlists which synced to my iPod. On the subject of iTunes, nearly 100 (at the time) podcasts, and a dozen or so video podcasts were managed there as well. RSS feeds from blogs and the like all came into Thunderbird.

Understandably, when I lost my laptop and the above, I was quite shaken.

Sharing Machines

In the weeks that followed, I began sharing machines with other people floating from one keyboard to another. Eventually, I did settle down on a desktop machine (which ws my fiancee’s desktop) and began to establish myself once again… Though a little less permanently as plans of re-building my desktop, or replacing my laptop were in the works.

Life, unfortunately happened, and plans fell through. To this day I’m still using her desktop as my primary machine, but the hardware I’m matters less and less over time.

During my time floating from machine to machine I began to make more use of web-based services. Doing the work that I do, I was well aware of the services that existed, including on my own server (Squirrel Mail, for example) but I hadn’t made a lot of use of them. It was during this time that I began to experiment with different start pages and settled on Netvibes, and also when I, rather unintentionally, stopped using devices that needed a specific machine to sync to. Yes, this means my iPod.

Making The Decision To Switch

As the start of this year rolled in, I began researching what it would take to run my life off of the web exclusively. The thought behind this was that I could be anywhere on any machine and access anything I needed. This plan very quickly fell through when I realized the wealth of applications I would loose access to.

I then decided to move everything I could to the web. This meant that anything I could find a reasonably decent web service to migrate to, I would. Bookmarks, photos, email, contacts, appointments all had great web services out there and I began researching them all. While doing this, I began keeping a closer eye on what I do on the computer and the applications I used. Some things, I found, I could already do online more efficiently and effectively by moving them online. Others required modification on my part, or a lot of conversion. Others still were not possible.

I added the option to run applications from a portable hard drive. This now gave me a much more broad set of items to research, but it meant that the things I couldn’t bring online, I could now take with me. I wanted to travel with this drive and have my ENTIRE office – everything I need to do business, and do it well – at my side at all times from any machine I landed on. It was a big dream, and a lot of work to research. But it was the ultimate portable office – and it was now my goal.

Check back next Saturday, June 23rd, to find out where I turned to for help and how I selected the services and applications I’d use.

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netvibes,
originally uploaded by Tommy Vallier.

So it was suggested recently that I talk about my Netvibes page and how I use it.

The screenshot posted along with this is a sample of my front page. I’ve tweaked settings a little so as to not look too far behind, and have hidden my Remember The Milk calendar.

Getting Started

The page you’re looking at in the screenshot is my “Start” page. Along the left I have my twitter feed. Because I do try to stay in the loop. Down the middle you can see my Gmail inbox. ALL of my email is managed through gmail (Not even the for-your-domain version) and I see it from this panel. Below that is my Google and Wikipedia search box and the latest dig posts. On the right: Local date and time, weather and my calendar.

From this page I can quickly and easily see all of the things that are most important to me. Specifically the time, my email, calendar and the twitter feed. You can also see a large amount of tabs at the top. I’ll get to those. Note that I’ve set all of the modules on the page to be the same red-ish colour. It’s tab also has a unique icon. This is to visually identify the home page from others. I make a point of not using this red-like colour only on pages of personal interest – Home and bookmarks.

Branching Out

Along the top I have a wide variety of tabs. Each one is home to a large number of feeds and modules pulling in content from around the web. I do a few things to keep this organized too.

First, I identify tabs by the icons associated with them. All “real world” news feeds, such as newspaper feeds and feeds from TV stations, both local and not, share an icon. Same with blog feeds, podcasts and TalkShoe-related tabs. If I’m looking for a tab, I can then visually hunt out the icon then the tab name. You’ll notice they’re also grouped by icon. And personal tabs (Start, bookmarks and Meebo for communication) come before feeds. That’s because I use them more.

Module are all colour coded on a per-page basis too. If I’m looking at a page full of orange modules, I’m reading blogs (Regardless of topic). If it’s green – it’s a podcast. This works exceptionally well when you look at the TalkCasts tab. These are all shows created on TalkShoe (They earned a tab based on number of shows I track) and they share the TalkShoe icon, but within that page, all modules are green to match podcasts. The icon identifies the subject, the colour then identifies the medium.

The separate tabs/colour combination is part of the reason that, despite trying others, I don’t think I’ll be leaving Netvibes any time soon.

Mark All as Read

As tempting as this can sometimes be, I have never hit this button in Netvibes. Well, safe for adding a new feed I’m currently caught up on. One thing I do, admittedly, do though is NOT completely check out the content. I sometimes just don’t have time. I like knowing that there’s new posts, or a new episode, and will sometimes mark them as read if I look at a subject or topic and am not interested. I know that’s expected (How many of you read every post on every blog… or every article in the paper)… But I still feel guilty.

What About You?

I’m, clearly, a Netvibes Junkie. What about you? What reader do you use and why? Maybe you use Netvibes and can recommend a new module for me to check out? Maybe you’ve got a question? Looking forward to the feedback.