I used to use a multi-protocol IM client with a nice history search feature. The history search was like Google Instant but actually instant.
Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
111–120 of 891 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#112RedEye IR controller.
Made by a company called ThinkFlood that unfortunately has since gone out of business, it was a rack mount box (I had/have the pro) that operates as a centralized, multi-room, IR+Serial+Relay controller. Really simple to get started with, but, amazingly powerful with a built-in Lua scripting engine and an API to remotely control things. Apps on iOS/Android and a fully-featured web interface.
It has been about 2 years and I've still not found anything that I like more than this box to automate my home theatre (I'm still using it).
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#113del.icio.us
I prefer BookmarkOS https://bookmarkos.com
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#114Turbo Vision. It was the most sophisticated text mode UI ever created, with a stunning love to the little details (at least in Turbo Pascal 7).
Today it would still make sense for server applications, but the C++ port was rather horrible and nobody is still using Pascal :(
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#115iGoogle
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#116A few things:
Everything not being 4:3 screens. I found it better for programming than everything being cinematic screens.
Back when monitor manufacturers were racing to make better / higher resolution monitors, instead of just leaving it at 1080p / 4k / whatever the current standard good enough for movies is.
The GMail interface before it started auto-converting the textarea to HTML when edited externally.
Console gaming when it Just Worked. Nowadays when I pop in a game it's update this and update that, long loading times etc.
E-Mail before we lost the "text should be text and not goddamn HTML" war.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#117Chrome, the fast, stable, and lightweight alternative to Firefox. I don't know quite where it went off the rails...
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Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#118Borland stuff.
Some websites (author died, they faded away/are not the bleeding edge any more etc.). A good example would be the old Searchlores website (http://search.lores.eu/indexo.htm)...apparently the original domain is now owned by some marketing company. Yikes.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#119Chrome, the fast, stable, and lightweight alternative to Firefox. I don't know quite where it went off the rails...
It is still quite stable for me, I can run a single chrome session for months on my desktop.
But, thank god that desktop has 32GB ram and a fast, QC i7 because damn is it bloated and slow!
I remember switching to chrome years ago because it was so much faster than Safari, and, yes, while I'm 100% sure Chrome is just a bloated slow mess now, I can't really pinpoint any time when it happened.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#120Chrome, the fast, stable, and lightweight alternative to Firefox. I don't know quite where it went off the rails...
Chrome's still fast, but other browsers caught up, and more importantly web developers took advantage of the increase in performance and started getting away with writing more bloated websites, resulting in much of the speed gains being nullified.
Just try to use Chrome or Firefox to browse relatively lightweight websites (e.g. GNU.org), they're amazingly fast compared to what browsers used to be like before Chrome came out.