TechCrunch recently wrote about a site called Skydeck, calling it “a very basic service that marries your address book to your cell phone bill so you can see your real social network based on who you call the most”.

Their article goes into other topics such as APIs, but I was mainly interested in the core service itself (for now - I always seem to get occupied by APIs). As it was a closed beta, I had to sign up and wait for an invite code. Thankfully they seem eager to get more people using it, as I had one the next day.

Once I was registered on their site and provided the details on how to access my cell phone’s online account (that data is stored in your browser and never given to Skydeck directly), the service began importing all of my wireless phone bills through a add-on I had to install in Firefox. Due to a glitch with the add-on, I was able to watch it go to each wireless bill and open it for reading and importing. While that was not their intention, it was interesting to see.

The add-on Skydeck installs is a toolbar. I was initially not happy about having another toolbar thrown in my face, but the data it provides could be potentially useful for the heavy cell phone users. I’ll never have a use for it since my cell phone tends to see more data useage, but here is a screenshot of my toolbar:

Skydeck's Firefox Addon Toolbar

After all my wireless data was loaded, I was presented with a screen listing nearly every phone call I’ve ever made with my cell phone provider. According to them, I’ve spent a total of 8,192 minutes talking on the phone. I’m sure that’s a small number compared to cell phone addicts (like my sister).

I was also presented with a really nice search feature — something you don’t get from your wireless provider. Using their advanced search, I am able to query my call logs in a very precise manner ranging from name, incoming/outgoing call, call/sms, number dialed, date range, what bill it was on, call duration, and call charge. Doesn’t sound like they missed a thing.

Another extremely useful feature is the Address Book. If you don’t have one already on your computer or at another website (such as Plaxo), this will take time to build up. Thankfully I have the Address Book that my iPhone syncs to the OS X Address Book, so I just had to export that data as a vCard and import it directly into Skydeck. Their system automatically linked my incoming/outgoing calls with data from the address book I provided them and gave me additional data such as call volume to a specific number, whether you or your contact calls more often, and who you call the most often. Now I am not a heavy user of my cell phone, so my records indicate that I tend to call family most often, followed by my close friends. Below is a screenshot of call statistics for one of my contacts:

Sample Skydeck Stats

With all of the features that Skydeck provides, I can’t see this not taking off. There are other aspects to it that I haven’t had a chance to use yet such as the social networking portion, but I’m honestly content with what they have provided me so far!

By the way: I am interested in finding some people to test out the social network portion of Skydeck with. I appear to have the ability to send out invites to friends and family, so e-mail me: skyinvites at bradbutner dot net

For those who are unfamilar with the website, Netvibes is a place where you can bring your RSS feeds together, add some special Netvibes widgets, and put them all on a stylish homepage. Using Netvibes, I am able to view all the headlines from my favorite technology blogs, have a section of my favorite bookmarked sites, see if there is any new e-mail in my Gmail account, watch the financial market, and see what TV show is airing tonight.

But Netvibes can be much more than that. It can allow you to search various types of content (blogs, images, video, and so on), help you keep track of your calendar, monitor your Alexa ratings, track down deals on craigslist, integrate social networks, show the latest videos from partnered websites, and so much more. I have barely touched on the amount of content available to Netvibes users.

The previous release of Netvibes, which is when I joined, was code named Coriander. When it comes to function, Coriander performed mostly the same way as Ginger does. At this stage in its life, Ginger redefines the style of Netvibes. The interface to add new content to your page has cleaned up considerably as the entire top portion of the site gets taken over by the Add Content interface when you select that menu option.

Aside from the menu interface, the main content section where all your feeds and widgets appear received a face lift with a re-designed border for each content block. Also for the RSS feeds, you can share a RSS entry with your friends as a favorite item. These items marked as a favorite will appear in the Activities menu at the top of the screen.

Then there is the new public Universe screen, where you can create a content page that can be shared by all viewers. All they have to do is enter your Universe URL and they are shown the custom page and all RSS feeds/widgets you published to that page. I haven’t had time to create a Universe page as of yet, but you can see my blank Universe here.

This weekend I plan on looking deeper into the new menu system and adding some content to my Universe page. If anything interesting comes out of it, I’ll discuss it here.

I’ve been given access to the private beta of Netvibes Ginger. From the start I can already tell you that the UI is a lot sharper. I’ll give a more detailed review of this beta after I have some time to test it out.