Digsby Takes Bloatware to an Entirely New Level

In the world of Instant Messengers, the competition is rather small, and for the most part, it's split between the official clients, closed or open-source free clients, or paid clients, such as Trillian. In the free, but non-official space, the choice is highly limited. There's Pidgin, which is what I use, but it lacks a lot of functionality of official clients, which is why Digsby, a rather new IM client, immediately drew a legion of supporters.

Though closed-source, Digsby is completely free, and supports a wide-variety of protocols, such as Windows Live, Yahoo!, ICQ, AIM and more. It even goes as far as to integrate e-mail notification support, as well as social networking tools. Overall, it seems like the perfect IM client. Well, at least that may appear to be the case, until you install it.

Up to now, I didn't think that an IM client more bloated than Windows Live Messenger existed, or could even exist (I mean, how much worse could one possibly be?). Well, it appears that Digsby proves that free doesn't always mean free, and their installer and fine-print TOS clear it up fast. The writers at Lifehacker took a look at the latest version of the program, and were so disgusted, that they urge everyone to uninstall and move on.

Just how bad can it be? We're all familiar with quick-trick installers that try to pull a fast one on us in order to get some toolbar installed, or Google products, but believe it or not, Digsby's installer has six such screens, meaning six totally separate pieces of bloat. These are all used to Digsby's advantage, of course, in order to help them make money, and while I am hardly against the idea of making money off of your free application, this is not how to do it.

After hearing so many good things about Digsby, I couldn't wait for a Linux version, but now, I have absolutely no intention of touching it, even if it doesn't include such bloat (it will eventually). It makes you wonder... is the reason the Mac OS X and Linux versions have been in the works for well over a year, simply because this bloatware isn't executable on those OS'?

While there's no way to tell exactly how much money Digsby is making from the sneaky use of your computer and abusing the less knowledgeable with loads of crapware, there is one disturbing fact that you should consider: They are paying up to $1 for every new user that you refer to them through their affiliate program. If they can pay that much money for every new user, they aren't just paying the bills anymore.

Firefox Hits 1 Billion Downloads, Microsoft Disputes the Numbers

A few weeks ago, we reported on a story that encouraged the death of Internet Explorer 6, and since then, lots has happened. For one, many popular web companies have opted into a program called "IE6 no more", where a snippet of code is implemented into a website that will warn users of IE6 that they're using an outdated browser, with recommendations to upgrade. It'll be interesting to see where that goes.

As if that wasn't enough of a hassle to deal with for Microsoft, not too long afterwards, Mozilla launched a website entitled One Billion + You, which touts the fact that since Firefox's inception, it's received over one billion downloads... a truly incredible feat. Microsoft isn't too impressed though, as you'd imagine, and IE GM Amy Barzdukas asks people to question the validity of the number. Her reasoning is that there are roughly 1.1 to 1.5 billion Internet users, so for Firefox, which doesn't hold a majority number in market share, 1 billion seems a bit off.

I have little doubt as to the validity of the numbers though, because we're talking one billion downloads, not one billion users. Personally, I must have downloaded Firefox at least 50 times since I began using it, because of wanting it on more than one computer, or friend's computers, or simply because I needed to re-install a machine. Given that its enthusiasts who have helped with the success of Firefox, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had to download it over, and over, and over.

Firefox does have one major advantage, though... it's cross-platform. It works not only on Windows, but Linux, Mac OS X and other operating systems as well, so it's no wonder that it's proven to be such a popular choice for those looking to an alternative browser. Currently, Internet Explorer is only available with Windows, and rarely do people download a completely new version (they don't come out that often).

For those interested, in the past 30 days on our website, 51.72% of visitors were running some form of Mozilla Firefox, while 32.65% ran Internet Explorer (with 8.0 dominating the versions). Chrome has actually seen a rise, to sit at 6.38%, with both Opera and Apple's Safari just under the 4% mark, at 3.98% and 3.66%, respectively.

"The reason that a consumer would still be on IE6 at this point is a lack of awareness or the ‘good enough' problem," she said. "If you're satisfied with what you're doing and you're not particularly curious about new technology and don't really care, upgrading sounds like a hassle. Part of our communication needs to be making clear that there are significant advantages to upgrading to a modern browser."

The Moments that Cause Us to Quit a Game

Here's a situation I'm sure all gamers have been in at one point or another. You're gaming it up, getting a ton of enjoyment out of the latest title you've just picked up, immersed in the gameplay. Then, things go awry. You die, and at that point, realize that you haven't saved your game for a while, or due to the mechanics of the game, you've essentially been placed back an hour or more, left to redo what you've just completed.

When I saw an article discussing this at Ars Technica, I had a flurry of memories come back with events just like this, and not many of them I particularly wanted to remember. I tend to become overly frustrated with games easily, especially if I believe it's the design that's at the root of the problems, but I'm certainly not alone. When you realise that the only way to progress through the game is to completely redo any part of a game you didn't find that enjoyable to begin with, it's incredibly easy to just say, "screw it", and put it back on the shelf, never to touch it again.

This is an issue game developers are well aware of, and it's no doubt due to the fact that they are gamers themselves. There have been a few titles that have tried new techniques to not punish the player much on death, such as Prey, which warps you to another world to kill off some flying creatures, and once you've killed enough, you're put back exactly where you were. I didn't have too much to complain about with that feature, and I actually did find it to add a useful element to the gameplay.

As always, what makes a game fun is its gameplay, and if there's a part of mechanic that causes frustration, the game's not going to be fun, and most likely, the player will just quit and never touch it again. I personally have a few games like that on my shelf. So my question is, what game has stumped or frustrated you the point of never touching it again?

So why do we quit? What makes us walk away from a game? Developers are aware of it, and at E3 I talked to a developer from Turn 10 about why they had added a rewind feature into Forza 3, allowing you a mulligan after a bad crash. "If you're at the end of a five-lap race, and you make one mistake, that's when you decide to turn the game off and go to bed," he explained. "I don't want to lose people at that point."

Tech Roundup - August 14, 2009

Motherboards & Processors
• AMD Phenom II 965 BE - Benchmark Reviews
• AMD Phenom II 965 BE - Legit Reviews
• AMD Phenom II 965 BE - Overclockers Club
• AMD Phenom II 965 BE - The Tech Report
• AMD Phenom II 965 BE - TechSpot

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS ENGTS250 1GB GTS 250 - Bigbruin

Memory & Storage
• G.Skill Falcon 128GB SSD - PureOverclock
• OCZ Agility 120GB SSD - Phoronix

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Cooler Master SNA 95 Notebook Adapter - Bjorn3D
• Plextor PX-B310U External PX-B310U Blu-Ray - PCSTATS

Cooling
• Kingwin XT-1264 CPU Cooler - FrostyTech
• Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme CPU Cooler - Legit Reviews

Chassis & Power Supplies
• BFG LS1000 1000W Power Supply - JonnyGURU
• nMedia HTPC 2000B Chassis - The Tech Report
• Synology Disk Station DS409+ NAS - HotHardware
• Vizo Arius II ARS-250 Dual 2.5-inch SATA Drive Bay - TweakTown

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• 2009 Netbook and Notebook Buyer's Guide - HotHardware
• Contest: CoolIt Domino ALC CPU Cooler - Bigbruin