Reviews Tagged “Used”
Stuff I used extensively in the past, but don’t anymore for one reason or another.
- Amazon Music ★★★☆☆ I want to use it to listen to music. Amazon wants to use it to sell me more subscriptions.
- Arc (Web Browser, discontinued) ★★★⯪☆ An interesting experiment in finding different ways to use the web, on the idea that people don’t want to use it more, they want to use the web less to accomplish what they want.
- Assistant for No Man’s Sky ★★★★★ Very useful for looking up crafting recipes and other reference while playing the game on my PC. Updated quickly when the game adds new features.
- Buran ★★★★☆ Simple, fast, intuitive Gemini Protocol client for Android with a clean interface. Supports bookmarks and client certs, but not subscriptions.
- Chromium (Web Browser) ★★★⯪☆ The basis for most web browsers these days, driven mainly by building Google Chrome. Less tracking and branding, but stable updates are only available on Linux.
- CSCPay Mobile ★★☆☆☆ Now my laundry doesn’t just depend on the washer and dryer, but on a controller box, its internet connection, my internet connection, my phone charge, and an online service.
- Elk (Mastodon App) ★★★★☆ Alternate web front-end for Mastodon and compatible servers. Slightly more user-friendly, if a bit buggy, especially on non-Mastodon servers like GoToSocial.
- Enafore ★★★★☆ Minimalist web front-end for Mastodon and compatible servers. Not as capable as Elk, but more stable.
- Feedly ★★★☆☆ Cloud-based feed reader with all the bells and whistles, focusing too much on the bells and whistles.
- Firefox ★★★★☆ I still have a soft spot for Firefox. At times it’s been the best web browser on Windows and Linux. It’s still good, has a solid extension ecosystem, and serves as an important bulwark against one company dominating browser tech.
- Gmail (Android App) ★★★☆☆ Works well with multiple accounts and display modes, but tracks you more than it should.
- Google Chrome ★★★☆☆ There was a time when Chrome was the fastest web browser available. It isn’t anymore, and over the last few years it’s felt less like a user agent and more like a Google agent.
- Google Docs, Sheets and Slides ★★★⯪☆ Fast cloud-based office suite, with good collaboration and mobile support. Too bad I don’t trust Google’s servers any more than Microsoft’s these days.
- Hex Fiend ★★★★★ Handled opening, searching, editing and saving an 8GB file without breaking a sweat.
- Image Toolbox ★★★★☆ An extremely powerful image editor for Android. And not just the usual features like crop, adjust contrast or brightness, maybe apply a filter, but you can do batch edits, format conversion, scaling the actual pixel image, editing metadata…all the things that mobile apps tend to hide behind the curtain. And it can preserve EXIF data when you want it to.
- Instagram ★★☆☆☆ Like checking out your friends’ vacation photos, but every other photo is an ad, and half of your friends’ pics are full of product placement.
- Jellyfin ★★★★★ Great for playing music across my local network, doesn’t phone home to a cloud or try to upsell subscriptions.
- Liferea ★★★★☆ A nice, lightweight feed reader for Linux that does the basics.
- Mastodon – Simplified Federation ★★★★★ A Firefox add-on that automatically opens remote Mastodon users or posts in your home server when you interact with them.
- Onyx BOOX Poke3
- OpenTasks ★★★★☆ Simple to-do list that works great with a Nextcloud server or local storage on your phone.
- Opera (Web Browser) ★★★☆☆ Opera used to be one of my favorite browsers back in the day, but its current incarnation just doesn’t appeal to me. I much prefer Vivaldi, which is a spiritual successor to the original.
- Pebble 2 Smart Watch
- PixelDroid ★★★★★ Optimized for photo sharing and viewing, works smoothly and integrates well with the system. FOSS, won’t vacuum up your personal data.
- Pocket (discontinued) ★★★⯪☆ I used Pocket for ages to better manage my time reading articles. Eventually I soured on the way it’s turned into a recommendation engine. And now Mozilla’s discontinuing it. Wallabag is a decent alternative for the read-it-later aspect.
- Privacy Badger ★★★★★ Tracking protection add-on for web browsers that also converts embedded media to placeholders and adds GPC support to browsers that don’t have it built in. (It used to detect new trackers automatically, but had to stop when someone figured out how to track that.)
- Safari (Web Browser) ★★★★☆ Dependable web browser built into macOS. Not much in the way of bells and whistles, but it does offer the usual bookmarks, autofill, reading mode, private windows, etc. And it’ll install PWAs on a desktop.
- Samsung Galaxy S4 (Phone) ★★★★★ Much as I like newer phones, there are a few things that I really miss about the S4, especially the ergonomics.
- SeaMonkey (Internet Suite) ★★★☆☆ The old Mozilla Suite lives on! Featuring web, email, news, an HTML editor, IRC client and more. Recent work has mostly been to keep it working and backport security fixes, so web app compatibility lags way behind even the ESR Firefox.
- Simplenote ★★★★☆ A simple, but solid alternative to Google Keep or Apple Notes that syncs across multiple platforms. Downsides are that it’s not end-to-end encrypted, and Automattic has stopped developing new features, so it’s not clear how long they plan to maintain the software - or the service.
- T-Life (T-Mobile Account App) ★★★☆☆ Handles most (but not all) account management actions, but it really wants to upsell new devices/services, and spams you on T-Mobile Tuesdays. Some phones that work fine on the network can’t run the app.
- Target (app) ★★★★★ Well-designed, runs smoothly, great for ordering items to pick up in-store or for shipping.
- WordPress Plugins (and ClassicPress too!) Some WordPress and ClassicPress plugins I’ve used and which ones I recommend.
- Xmarks (Discontinued) ★★★★☆ Xmarks was a cross-browser bookmark sync service that I used for a long time to keep Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari on multiple computers using the same set of bookmarks. It shut down in 2018.