What if you didn’t need to open 10 different tabs in Firefox just to stay on top of your social network updates? What if you could customize what information you want to see and have it appear directly on your desktop? Well, Sobees aggregates Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg, Flickr and YouTube and brings them directly to your desktop.
One of the startups coming in at the Demo ‘09 Conference, Sobees is of value to any social network addict – and everyone is these days. Using the intuitive interface you can create your own desktop widgets, each customized to your own preferences – from Twitter Search on a topic to pictures uploaded by your friends on Flickr – you can mix and mash to create your own personal news room. The customization potential of this app is literally unlimited and it’s dead simple to use:
- Pick a template
- Pick a service, a search term or a RSS feed.
Other functionalities worth mentioning:
- Your status is published on all the social networks you’re logged into.
- There are integrated weather notifications.
- Also Flickr photo uploading.
But not all is good about Sobees – because unfortunately there is no Mac or Linux version, and the Windows version is based on .NET Framework 3.5 which not even Microsoft used to create their most recent operating system, Windows 7. In fact, there supposedly was a rule against any code written in .NET.
- On my up-to-date, fully-patched and cleaned Windows XP system, Sobees was sluggish, froze 2-3 seconds when adding new widgets and there’s clearly something wrong with the Anti-aliasing of the titles.
- The Search function only works with Yahoo! and Windows Live! Search, a big disappointment for an app that is all about customizability.
- Uses too much memory, 125MB with only one widget open. Too much transparency, translucency and other flashy effects; a black stylish interface would have achieved a better effect without using so much resources.
Like David Chartier from Ars stated, it’s really hard to stay excited about Sobees after the initial jump; while the ‘taskbar for the web’ concept is original, it certainly wasn’t developed enough – but after all this is a beta.
You can get Sobees from here and help the developers by submitting feedback. As always I look forward to your comments about desktop applications for web apps.
