Tag Archives: instant messaging

A List of 25 Lists

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Posted by Alisha on Monday, April 28th, 2008 – 1:10 pm
Filed under General

Lists seem to be very popular and attracts readers. (Not why I am writing this list.) I thought I would check out some lists with at least 50 or more to see what people have come up with. This was actually harder than I thought it would be. Here are 25 that I found:

  1. Top 50 ‘Sesame Street’ Moments
  2. Top 50 iPhone Applications
  3. Top 50 Eco Blogs
  4. 155 WordPress Resources, Tutorials, Plugins, Themes, AJAX, Podcasting…WP Monster List
  5. Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy - and Their Open Source Alternatives
  6. Top 50 Free WordPress Themes
  7. Top 50 Resources for Getting a Cheap Flight
  8. Wide Open VoIP: Top 50 Open Source VoIP Apps
  9. Top Best 50 Blogger & WordPress Customization Tips (Hacks)
  10. Top 50 Worldwide Most Influential Blogs of April
  11. Top 50 Classical Blogs, Using 4 Different Methods
  12. Top 50 Pictures Taken at Just the Right Time
  13. Top 50 Graphic Design Blogs
  14. Top 50 Apps That Fit on a USB Drive
  15. 50 Most Popular Web Design Blog Posts, Resources & Cheat Sheets of 2007
  16. The Freeloader’s Toolbelt: 50 Tools to Help You Get Anything Free Online
  17. Top 50 Logo Design Tutorials
  18. Top 50 Productivity Blogs (most of which you haven’t heard about)
  19. 50 Tips, Tweaks and Hacks to Make the Most of Google Calendar
  20. The World’s 50 Most Powerful Blogs
  21. 50 Reasons to Switch from Microsoft Windows to Apple’s Mac OS X
  22. Web Design Toolbox: 50+ Tools for Web Design
  23. The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need
  24. 50 Great Widgets For Your Blog
  25. INSTANT MESSAGING TOOLBOX: 90+ IM Tools

If you want to create a top 10, 20, 50, 100, etc. list, you need to be able to do your research and have plenty of time available. Here are five tips for creating captivating lists. Top 50 ‘Sesame Street’ Moments is one example of tip five for creating captivating lists:

Ever try Video? Lists are not only meant to be done in text so I suggest you add some flavor into your routine by putting out a list using video. Video is different, fun and allows you to share the inner actor in you.

I know there are a lot more lists than what I listed, but I wasn’t trying to include them all. If there’s one you like that I didn’t include, please leave a comment.

8hands for Social Networking; Better Than Digsby?

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Posted by Alisha on Monday, February 11th, 2008 – 5:49 pm
Filed under Software

8hands

From my previous post about Digsby, one person left a comment mentioning 8hands. Personally, I think it was probably a way to get the word out about it. Why do I say this? Keep reading to find out.

First, before I start with telling you the things I like and dislike about 8hands, I want to let you know that I do like Digsby a lot. But, only because it allows me to use just one application for instant messaging, social networking and e-mail if I choose! It also isn’t ugly.

The person who left the comment about 8hands said:

Nothing seems to work, and as written, the memory leak is impossible to deal with.

I have yet to see a memory leak. Digsby did use more memory than it should, but that was before the recent update. Try Digsby again. But, I have not seen a memory leak, so that must have been a really early beta version. 8hands even uses much more memory than Digsby does. Currently, 8hands is using 75MB and Digsby is only using 32MB.

I’m sticking with my 8hands which offers some of its features. The IM in 8hands is limited to social networks friends, but the notifications are way better and it supports all social networks, not only Myspace and Facebook.

Some features? How about one feature? It only offers social networking and instant messaging to social network friends. Digsby offers social networking, instant messaging for Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, Google Talk, etc., and e-mail. 8hands also does not support all social networks as she says. It’s limited to: Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and maybe one more. It also supports RSS feeds, but I’ll stick to Google Reader for that.

Regarding the notifications being better, I found this to be untrue. Digsby allows me to reply to instant messages right from the notification popup. What can be better than that? What does 8hands do? It shows me what someone has said and lets me click on it to open it in a browser. I’m sorry to whoever likes that, but I’d prefer not opening a browser just to reply. If I wanted to use a browser, I wouldn’t use a desktop application. The reason I have a desktop application is to bring everything to my desktop.

8hands Notification

Speaking of the notification popup, give me time to read long messages. It starts hiding just a couple seconds after it appeared, making it impossible to finish reading the end of the message because it’s already hidden.

Also, whenever there is a new notification, I can’t scroll in the current window I’m in. It’s like the notification popup becomes the active window.

Something else I don’t like, although I like the color purple, I do not want to see purple on the application! It just doesn’t go well with my desktop. It’s ugly, let me customize this. Yahoo! Messenger even let me change from the purple to another color.

One thing I do like about 8hands is the history window. But, it doesn’t seem to show full messages. In order to view full messages, you have to click on the one you want to view and it opens a browser window. Digsby allows me to read full Facebook history. I don’t use MySpace, so I don’t know about that one. It would be great if Digsby had a history window to view all IM and social network history. Currently, it only lets you view IM history.

8hands History

To DownloadSquad.com, no, 8hands is not “almost perfect”. I think it has a long ways to go still. I’m not saying Digsby is perfect either, but it offers more.

I’m not trying to give a harsh review of 8hands, but I expected more when I tried it out and it wasn’t really all that. If I want updates for Facebook, Twitter or Pownce, I’ll use one of the Facebook applications, Snitter and Pownce’s client if I want to use a desktop application, which keep me on the desktop and doesn’t force me to open a browser. And, yes, 8hands brings those together instead of using multiple applications, but, I shouldn’t have to use a browser. Digsby needs improvements with this as well.

Comparing to Digsby, it doesn’t have much more. Both are still very new and need some work. Hopefully soon Digsby will have more social networks to choose from, such as Twitter. For now, using Google Talk and receiving Twitter updates via IM works just fine. The one advantage 8hands has over Digsby is a few more social network choices. But that will eventually change as they add more.

Please note, that I spent about half an hour playing with 8hands which is the same amount of time I used for Digsby. Digsby was easier to setup and faster. 8hands seems to have a longer response time when doing things (causing the busy cursor to appear a lot).

I would like to hear about your experiences with either 8hands or Digsby in the comments.