Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

news.ycombinator.com

881–890 of 891 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#881
post #177

The Psion Series 3 handhelds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3 A (tiny, but) usable, physical keyboard on a device that lasted _ages_, fit into a suit pocket and was eminently practical. The age of the PDA is long gone (heck, I'm typing this on an iPad mini), but we still haven't caught up with some of its best bits.

Just tried the "EPOC emulator" which simulates a Psion 5mx. It must have been such a nice device. Many people still speak about the 5mx keyboard. The form factor looked awesome.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#882
post #125

Nokia N9. The "more linuxy" Nokia Android competitor that was released late and dead on arrival (in terms of ecosystem), but was still years ahead of Android in many ways and fundamentally better in others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3rgAV1a2kg http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review

I still use my Nokia E6 despite its huge software flaws. Small form factor, hardware keyboard, nice specs : it was bound to be good. Alas, Nokia fucked up the software part and the Nokia Belle update made things even worse. And I can see no alternative on the market today. Phones OS's should be free as well :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#883
post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt it. They'd be cutting off massive markets where internet connectivity isn't consistently good (most of the world). Sure, Nintendo are struggling to find their place in the home console market right now but they're more conservative when it comes to changing the distribution/sales model.

> "They'd be cutting off massive markets where internet connectivity isn't consistently good (most of the world)." With all due respect, countries without decent Internet infrastructure are unlikely to be places where there are plenty of people with the spare cash to blow on a console. Furthermore, Nintendo has said that the NX is not designed to be a replacement for the Wii U, meaning that Nintendo may still plan to…

    > Nintendo has said that the NX is not designed
    > to be a replacement for the Wii U, meaning that
    > Nintendo may still plan to sell the Wii U
Generally these sort of comments can also just mean "please don't stop buying our current stuff just because a replacement is around the corner".

We'll see when it's released, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a complete replacement for their existing consoles.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#884
post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ways? (I haven't tried Digg Reader.) I feel like Feedly is okay. Free native apps and sync is nice. I wish it didn't auto mark read after 30 days though. I tend to do my rss processing in huge batches and miss stuff because of that.

I haven't used it in a while, but my recollection is that it would regularly "forget" that I'd already read items, and days of stuff would show as new again. And other times it would show feeds as unread even though it didn't have any items shown unread. I also recall not liking the interface but cannot recall now exactly what it was. Feedly is the one that provides a chrome extension instead of just a website, right…

The weird thing is their web version / chrome app never has the state problems for me. But the mobile version on iOS screw s up regularly. I'll reach the end of my feed with the "all done" screen and upon refresh all the stuff I just read pops back as unread. Really annoying.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#885
Aardvark, you could send it a query on messenger and it would find random internet strangers to answer. Got bought by Google and killed.

Trunkly, it was indexing all my social media links and made them searchable. Bought by delicious and killed.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#886

Aardvark, you could send it a query on messenger and it would find random internet strangers to answer. Got bought by Google and killed. Trunkly, it was indexing all my social media links and made them searchable. Bought by delicious and killed.

re: "indexing all my social media links" Try ascilos (http://www.acilos.com/) sounds like it might be similar to Trunkly

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#888

Macromedia Freehand, in particular deleting bezier points but keeping the shape intact (ie simplifying). Illustrator still hasn't quite caught up. For any illustration, it's useful to have as few control points as possible. This is particularly useful when making SVGs for the web; it renders faster, and an ability to hand edit the SVG is useful for animation etc. Every font design package has this feature; Illustrato…

Yeah, I loved Freehand. Damn you Adobe!
Post reply on HN