There are a number of applications that I thought I would like, that I started to like, but in the end decided were not for me.   The deciding factors quite often were layout or workflow.  I can adapt fairly well to new applications. Sometimes, though, it’s easier to use the old application. Others never worked well for me from the start. Here are a few of my experiences:

TweetDeck: It’s a great idea. But, it is a memory hog and always seems to take too much effort to open.  When it is open, TweetDeck dominates my work space, preventing me from doing the things I need to do.  The traditional Web application seems to fit my workflow much better.

* Feedly: (*update: check comments) This was a great recommendation from the New Media Photographer community.  It’s easy to use and  has a clean interface.  So, what is the problem?  I can’t search targeted feeds like I can with Google reader.  I depend on the ability to search specific feeds with targeted key words as part of my New Media Photographer research.  Feedly buries the blogs I really want to keep up with even if I don’t read them every day.

AdWords: I’ve mentioned this one a number of times over the last few weeks.  I’m growing more negative each day about this advertising platform, especially since they implemented the new rating system last year.  I was fine with traditional auction bidding.  It’s just getting too expensive for such poor results.

Facebook Advertising: Useless.

Cuil: I had hope for this one in the beginning.  The search engine actually offers results that favor my business.  Recently, I revisited Cuil. Its search results and the layout seem better, but it’s still confusing.  My biggest complaint? The search engine does a poor job of matching images with the search results.

Cooliris: I thought this was cool at first, but soon found myself very dizzy.  I’m also starting to think most applications made with Adobe Air are just too heavy.

Adobe Air: See TweetDeck and Cooliris.

Any application that schedules my Tweets: I thought such applications might be useful, but I realized they take the social out of social media. Although I don’t use them, I can still see the benefit of an occasional scheduled announcement.

Bing: I’m put off by how hard Microsoft has been buying Bing into our lives.  Even my new phone has Bing on it.  Is it a better application than Google? No.

Firefox: Maybe it’s how I have it set up.  I find it harder to bookmark and retrieve information.  I have to keep switching back to Safari. That’s sad.

What applications have you stopped using?

Tags: adobe air, Adobe Systems, adwords, Bing, cuil, Facebook, feedly, firefox, google, Microsoft, search, Search Engines, tweetdeck, Web application

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 10th, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under Tools, Web site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.