Anyone tried Flyswat?

October 20, 2000 9:41 AM

Anyone tried Flyswat? Reads web pages with you and makes hyperlinks for words it recognizes. Very cool hypertext tool...
posted by owillis (13 comments total)

I just installed it and played around with it for a while. Not too shabby.
posted by Optamystic at 10:11 AM on October 20, 2000

I think it would become a little overwhelming very quickly.
posted by terrapin at 10:22 AM on October 20, 2000

It's a great idea; Now they should port it to a system other than Wintel
posted by rschram at 10:46 AM on October 20, 2000

It gets old really fast. I tried it when it came out.
posted by mathowie at 10:56 AM on October 20, 2000

True. It's best on a page by page basis...
posted by owillis at 11:19 AM on October 20, 2000

agreed, I tried it, but didn't like it and uninstalled it after a couple of days.
posted by SentientAI at 12:23 PM on October 20, 2000

Re: my earlier endorsement of flyswatter:

Three and a half hours later, I hate it. Yellow lines ugly. Commencing with uninstall. That is all.
posted by Optamystic at 1:42 PM on October 20, 2000

Agreed. Has anyone found any web/browser tools that they've *kept* on their system? I like Altavista Power Tools, but any major add-ons just seem to bug me after awhile... the webpage chatting tools, webpage posting tools...

Anything good out there?
posted by gramcracker at 1:57 PM on October 20, 2000

I've still got eQuill installed. Actually, just upgraded it this morning.

It's highly unobtrusive, and I usually completely forget it's there until I think "Gee, I want to let someone know about something on this page" and poompf, it's all ready to be slid out. I also haven't noticed any extra load time when opening a window.

I also liked DeepLeap, but that wasn't so much a browser add-on as it was a popup window that actually DID something other than irritate the piss out of me.

Anything that changes the actual layout of my browser, or adds an extra toolbar all the time (I like Bloggers faux-toolbar, that's extremely cool) or anything annoying like that is guaranteed to annoy me after a couple of hours.
posted by cCranium at 2:17 PM on October 20, 2000

I wish I could turn e-quill off and on actually. I get annoyed with the small arrow thing on *every* window, including small popups.
posted by mathowie at 2:57 PM on October 20, 2000

I think rather highly of iMarkup which I use quite a lot. I've had it for several months now.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 3:58 PM on October 20, 2000

I honestly don't even notice it (the little arrow) anymore. It helps that it's running at home and at work, and the majority of popups I encounter, small or large, tend to be ads, so I close 'em with extreme prejudice anyway.
posted by cCranium at 4:20 PM on October 20, 2000

I don't like the arrow thingy either. For that single reason I uninstalled it. Otherwise, e-quill is a fine thing indeed.

Third Voice, a completely horrible program, started off with the same slide out mechanism that e-quill now uses, same color, same placement, etc. Unfortunately (for thirdvoice) it proved to be a RAM hog and also, and most importantly, totally useless, user-unfriendly, badly-designed.......etc, etc.

e-quill really has created a useful app, would just like to see them implement it slightly differently, perhaps make it easier to turn on/off, or take up some empty real-estate on the tool bar.

Flyswat I heard a lot about when it launched. Haven't tried it. Gave Guru net a shot.......useful but slow.





posted by lucien at 9:20 AM on October 24, 2000