The internet has come a long way from its texty birth. Now, no website worth opening your browser for would dream of going online without at least a little bit of audio, video, and podcasts - regularly updated audio or video packages - are popping up all over the web. You can use your Netvibes page to keep up with them, too.

Again, the most simple way to subscribe to a podcast is to find the feed - for example, the page for the Ever Wondered About Food podcast gives you the address of the podcast feed; you can then paste this into the 'Add a feed' box as before.

A nice feature of Netvibes is that it’ll actually let you play your podcast from within the page - try clicking on the 'play' button next to one of the podcast titles, and a little media player will appear at the top of the window.

If you'd rather squirrel away the file to play later, clicking on the tiny iPod-like icon will allow you to download the file to your PC. It's a handy way of being able to preview an episode of a podcast before deciding if you want the whole thing cluttering up space on your player.

You can subscribe to video podcasts (or, as they're variously described with casual disregard for the English language, vodcasts, or vlogs) in a similar way - although these will open in a different window in your browser when you choose to watch them.

The first time you play audio and video, your computer may have to update the software it needs to play these files; remember that downloading some files might take time - especially if you have a slow connection to the internet.

If you don't have any favourite podcasts yet, you can install a podcast search box onto your page - from the ‘Search’ section of the widgets tab on the Netvibes page - which will let you search out podcasts on subjects that appeal to you.

If you'd like to see still photography from round the web, you could install a Flickr module. Flickr is a photo-sharing network which allows people around the world to upload their pictures, and to tag them.

The 'tagging' - a list of words which describe what's going on in the photos - is useful for Netvibes as it allows you to say which pictures you want to see. Click on the 'Applications' section of the widgets tab on the left of the Netvibes page, and then choose Flickr photos.

The default setting for this module is 'colourful', but if you choose to add it to one of your pages, you can then edit the module to choose what you want to see. Try typing 'cheese' or 'horses' or 'London' into the 'Feed or Tag' box, and Netvibes will then display the most-recently added pictures with those tags for you. You can then decide if you want to see thumbnails or a slideshow of those photos.

Next: other modules

Content last updated: 13/01/2007

Comments