Evening Reading

I'm done with Digsby.

Ever since the beta was first posted here, I have been using Digsby. I fell in love with it instantly and have been a big evangelical about it to my friends and people here whenever IM threads come up.

In the beginning it was the easiest to recommend. It wasn't quite complete and it was missing only a couple major features (like group chat and in-line formatting in AIM) but they released updates almost weekly to improve the thing. It felt like it was being actively supported.

Then they changed their installer to be some fucking bullshit installer that tries to install like 6 different pieces of software unless you are careful to click "decline" for each individual one before it'll actually install. It made it pretty rough for me to recommend. I had to clean that shit off of the very computers belonging to those I recommended the program to. People shouldn't be getting that bloat because of a program I suggested.

It's now 2 (?) years later and guess what? No group chat and no in-line formatting. They still push out updates about once every two months but you know what kind of bullshit it adds? A search feature. It's a feature that allows you to search the web (Google, Amazon, iTunes, NewEgg, etc.) by using a little search box built in to Digsby. This is a pretty obvious attempt to just slip their affiliate code in to your searches. Who the fuck would even ask for that feature? It's stupid and only makes me more frustrated that standard features like group chat are STILL not there.

I posted a comment on their blog announcing the update bemoaning this fact. I asked why features like search were being put before features that every other chat client out there already supports. My comment was deleted from their blog. I posted again asking why my comment was deleted. They deleted that one and then emailed me saying that it was probably auto-detected as spam. Great, so they're liars too. I mean sure okay they don't want negative feedback on their blog. Kind of an ass-like move but if they had at least just said that instead of making up a lie about the spam blocker I would have been happy.

The final straw was today. Digsby can push "Announcements" which come to you looking kind of like an IM from Digsby. They do this when an update is released to let people know they can restart their client to update. Or when there is a huge protocol issue where everyone is unable to login to a particular service. But this time it was just an ad. Here it is:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/26620/digsby_ad.png

So fucking stupid. Why the fuck do I care? Send an email to your members if you want to announce a new service (I am not sure if this is made by the Digsby people or just something they're advertising for) - at least that way it can be easily ignored. Putting it as a popup on my computer, in the same place that I am used to reading important network status alerts? That's fucking stupid.