AJAX-based personalized desktop startpage Pageflakes has officially launched into 2.0, following Netvibes which had its relaunch later last month and Protopage which is expected to come out in 3.0 sometime soon. The 2.0 launch includes a major design upgrade and some minor new things, notably the publish and sharing features which add social networking capabilities to the service and differentiate it from the competitors.
First off, let me start by saying that I’ve been a fan of Pageflakes from the start (see my detailed review of the service). I think when it comes to nailing a few things, they’ve succeeded — and in this launch even more so.
A good interface can affect the user experience dramatically, and their new one is no short of good. Something I love is the ability to modify and customize the colors, layout, and the community-powered templates. The new gradients they’ve put to use is fairly eyecandy, and unlike their previous version I didn’t come across a single bug or glitch — everything flows fairly well.
The new sharing and publishing features Pageflakes is now equipped with are no short of impressive as well. By simply clicking on the drop-down icon beside my page, I was quickly able to make my default page public (view it here) and share my private one with a few friends.
Pageflakes to me is no doubt one of the leaders in this desktop startpage space. They’ve continually shown great progress and carry on impressing each and every one of their users. Since this space is largely consumer-oriented, I’d like to see them work on making it a bit more ‘mum-friendly’ – as these services will have to be if we want our desktops on the web — but on the large part, this is some excellent work that has come out.
Disclosure: Pageflakes is a sponsor of rev2. I’ve tried to remain as unbiased as I can and not let this influence my opinion in any way.
[tags]Pageflakes, Web-Based Startpages, Upgrades & Relaunches[/tags]
