DiPot: Ice Tea tech » WishList

PeopleBrowsr: The Multi-Social-Networks Client Pros, Cons & Wishlist

ageor — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:42:43 +0000

PeopleBrowsr is an excellent multi social networks client. Although still in Beta RC 1.5, it is very rich in features and often leads the way for dedicated clients. On the flip side, it has a number of issues that prevent it from being the hands down client of choice, nor a one stop shop for the networks it supports. All comments are about the Air version of PeopleBrowsr, running under Windows XP SP3, although most are valid for the PeopleBrowsr web version as well.

Pros

The PeopleBrowsr people listen and respond
Multiple Stacks
Very Strong Search
Multiple networks support (alphabetically): Bitly, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Identica, LinkedIn, MySpace, Photobucket, PingFM, Plaxo, Seesmic, Trim, Twitter, Webpage, YouTube etc.
Multiple accounts on each supported network
Both a Web and an Adobe Air version
An impressive list of Options in Settings, including but not limited to:
- Auto refresh rate in seconds
- Auto sync Following/Followers
- Auto Refresh
- Show real names
- Show Location
- Persistent Stacks compression for more information in the same space (Stacks can be individually set to be compressed or not, but the setting is not saved when the session ends)
- Show absolute times instead of how long ago posts were posted
- Added value among PB users
Combination Stacks like DM+Replies+Stacks for Twitter
PB Groups can contain accounts from different networks, thus not becoming obsolete after Twitter introduced Lists
Color-coding and custom names for Stacks
Twitter threads (when available)
Posts can be delayed, repeated and post on multiple networks at once

Wishlist & Shortcomings

Trim down the top

PeopleBrowsr top part

The top “Post”, “Search”, PBIDboxes, PBExpet and Logout boxes/buttons/choices are too wide and actually takes a 1030pixels wide window for it to display properly! When narrower than that, the Search box goes down and sits on top of these stacks’ titles. Very annoying.

Improve non-latin text support: Sometimes Greek, Cyrillic etc. text decoding fails to display properly
Keep Twitter Lists up to date: My lists seem to have been read once and have not been updated since
Keep FriendFeed Lists and Groups up to date: They seem to have been read once and have not been updated since
Friendfeed Lists and Groups cannot be managed at all
Improve the Twitter Lists and PB Groups manager: As it is, it leaves a lot to be desired; see the “Twitter Lists Support: Management Status & Optimization Wishlist” post
Fix the “Font Size” setting to work in both the Stacks and, while it used to work properly, now (v1.5) only sets the Quickstrip’s font size and is not persistent between sessions
Improve the memory management: PB keeps allocating more memory while running, eventually bringing any system down on its knees
Fix program exit: When I close PB Air, it remains resident withholding large amounts of RAM & virtual memory and can’t start again until its previous process is killed
Prefill #hashtags and all @twitterers in replies
Add a “delete post” feature
Update the database when posts are deleted from other clients, so deleted entries do not keep showing
Support OpenID

I like PeopleBrowsr; a lot! And I’m impressed with the work done so far. Which is why I expect even more from the development team

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FriendFeed Optimization Feature Requests

ageor — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:55:05 +0000

As I mention from time to time, I never have enough of a good thing. FriendFeed is more than good, it’s great. Greatness has a tencency to increase expectations. These are a few optimization suggestions to raise the experience from “great” to “near perfect” (as new requests will probably always exist):

Discussions is a great strength of FriendFeed. Threading keeps all comments together. However, when following an interesting discussion, one needs to scroll all the way up to comment. Please also give us a “Comment” option after the last comment.
Lots of people, including myself, have asked for a Twitter-like direct message (the only thing it does FriendFeed does not). An opt-in email-based scheme has been suggested as well. The only reason against direct messaging I can think of is desire to keep all conversations public. If this is the reason, please, go ahead and say so.
RealTime is great. However, it does lack some options otherwise available, like “hide”. Please unify the experience across all views. This would include a Realtime option for every view as well.
A person’s badge available everywhere is indeed very handy. It would be nice to also appear on mouse over the person’s picture and name in the title of a thread and on top of his/her feed. Even more important, subscribing to the author of a comment from his badge in the middle of the thread should not return us to the top of the page, especially with comments appearing collapsed, driving productivity way down, not to mention frustration.
Rooms are indispensable. However, when posting, we are asked to choose our feed or one single room. This results in the posts not reaching all their potential audience, unless effort is duplicated. Please support multiple destinations for posts.
Many posts are actually links. The same links are often posted from different people at different times. They also result in interesting and informative conversations which end up being held in different parts of FriendFeed. Please merge all posts referring to the same link to the same thread. More posts of the same link can become “like”s and comments can all contribute to the same conversation.
FriendFeed Feedback serves, among other things, for feature requests. Chaotic as it is, it is impossible to marshal all these ideas. Please officially use a rating system for feature requests, so people can vote the most important ones in an orderly manner and FriendFeed can respond onte time for each of them.
When I read posts I often catch myself subconsciously filtering by author, instead of by content.Please give us an option for a view that hides or moves the author at the end of posts (maybe in small print).

Finally, on a personal issue: I tried for a while to rely on RSS to read my FriendFeed feeds. To my surprise, Google Reader does a very poor job on catching these feeds. Consequently, I end up with 40 entries every 3 hours, instead of what should be around that many per minute during peak hours! Is this a Google Reader flaw, a FriendFeed flaw, or a matter of communication between the two systems? Can something be done about it?

My only real complaint with FriendFeed is in requests feedback. And I’m hopeful they will respond and optimize it and their response. They constantly improve things, so it’s only a matter of time.

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Firefox 3 Add-ons Updates Wishlist

ageor — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:22:04 +0000

Now that Mozilla Firefox 3 RC2 is out, it’s about time all add-ins are updated.

My personal favorites (therefore wishlist) that are not working yet (in alphabetical order): Firebug, FireFTP, Google Browser Sync, Google Toolbar for Firefox, PlainOldFavorites, SEOpen, AddThis.

In all fairness, I am also thankfully mentioning the ones that are already working: BlockSite, DownThemAll, Facebook Toolbar, Forecastfox, IE Tab, IE View, iMacros for Firefox, MySocial 24×7 Bar, PDF Download, Shareholic, Web Developer.