Netvibes today announced a new service they’re dubbing “Netvibes Universes“. It’s a cool idea: essentially users can flip around the personalized feed pages that Netvibes is known for, pointing them out to the internet populace. It’s a great way for Netvibes to create a whole new market for their existing product, though it does touch a nerve here at the Crashaus.

Expanding and opening Crashpod to the point where users could create their own personalized ‘pods was once a point of discussion between Justin and I, as it seemed like a natural progression of what the pod embodies. Unfortunately though, we don’t have an army of developers at hand, nor mountains of that sweet sweet venture capital. Also, I’m lazy. So, regretfully it never happened. However if you’ve always wanted your own website to share with friends, but never had enough content to justify it, Netvibes Universes could be your solution!

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Apple dropped what was sadly an expected bombshell today: Mac OS 10.5 Leopard has been pushed back to an October release date. What wasn’t expected was an explanation for the delay that’s more forthright than we’re used to from the computermaker, and by extension most technology companies:

“we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.”

So they’re basically announcing that the iPhone launch was a higher priority to the company than their flagship operating system, right? I’m sitting here trying to formulate an opinion of what I think about this news. Am I happy they’re focusing on getting the iPhone out, a product I’m really looking forward to and that marks another diversification of the Apple product portfolio? Or am I disappointed that they’re delaying the next step in OS X, the desktop software that I use on average 12 hours a day?

Who am I kidding: give us the iphone!

THANK-YOU FOR YOUR VERY HELPFUL JAVASCRIPT ALERT BOX.

Microsoft made 2 big debuts this week, the first of course being the black Xbox 360 Elite, hewn from the darkest of dark matter and fueled by shadowy cosmic energies. It’s a cool release no doubt, but after the cheers died down, current 360 owners began to wonder why they were so excited about suddenly having their shiny new next-gen console become obsolete.

The revised Xbox 360 in its formal black attire has been rumored for weeks, so that introduction came as no surprise whatsoever, but the second announcement, while not as exciting as a new strike at Sony on the gaming front is none the less worthy of note.

Known as “Deepfish”, Microsoft let loose a new compact web browser for Windows Mobile devices. Still in a pre-beta state, the most exciting part of this application is the ability to render mini versions of webpages that preserve the layout and structure of the page, rather than the stripped down, 1-column scrolling messes a traditional limited-feature mobile browser provides. I’ve got mixed feelings about treating webpages on small screens in this manner. At first glance this definitely seems more usable, though it requires an additional layer of UI to find what part of the site the user wants to examine in detail, and then zooming in. It reminds me of the browsing capabilities of the coming iPhone, though I wonder how nice it will be on the decidedly smaller screens of the traditional Microsoft based PDA.

I say I have mixed feelings because while this zoom-in-and-out navigation looks cool, it does feel like it will be an excuse for websites not to offer an alternative layout customized to the small screen. After all, that’s one of the big promises of HTML content: the ability to tailor its presentation for whatever environment it’s currently being viewed in. Still, in a choice between a zoom-navigation (zoomigation?) based browser and the pitiful offerings on most current phones, the application that actually makes mobile browsing worthwhile will no doubt be the winner.

As always, we can head to YouTube to see Deepfish in action.