Humanized’s Enso Launcher

Enso Launcher is designed to give you instant access to your applications and windows. With a few easily remembered keystrokes, you can launch an application, switch to a window by name, and control the state of your windows.

If you’ve ever used OS X then chances are you’ve heard of or used Quicksilver. There hasn’t really been a very good Windows equivalent until now. Humanized has released Enso Launcher the other day, and it seems to be a very interesting (and perhaps useful) application that fills this void. You can use the launcher to open an application, and just about anything else on your computer. In an email I received from one of the developers of Enso Launcher he provided me with a good example of how this application could be useful.

try telling someone how to open the “Internet Options” control panel in Windows, correctly handling the edge cases of: windows version, internet explorer version, user preference settings, and start menu configuration. With Enso, the answer is simple: “open internet options”.

Sounds easy right? I agree, it has its place. Here’s a screenshot of this app in action so you can get an idea:

My problem lies with the demonstration video they show. They state something similar to, “you just highlight the text, hold down caps lock [the trigger key for Enso Launcher] and then type ‘upper case’ and viola in 4 seconds you’re done…otherwise this whole process could easily take you 15 seconds.” I am not sure what program they are using, but I did a bit of an experiment in Microsoft Word 2007, and the entire process of make a sentence uppercase took me 2 mouse clicks and about 3 seconds of time. I know what they are trying to do, and to some extent it’s understandable to exaggerate, but don’t make ridiculous claims like it taking 15 seconds to do something that clearly can be done in less than 5. Anyways, I am rambling. It’s a cool app, but I doubt it is worth the $25 they want for it.

myFabrik

This is an interesting attempt at sharing music, photos, documents, and video with friends and family. I just got into this private beta test and thought I’d provide some ideas/feedback. I say attempt strictly because that is all it is at the moment. The UI is god awful, slow, and confusing to navigate. About the only thing the application manages to get right is the amount of space they provide which is 1 TB (1,000 GB) so they say at least. I would seriously doubt this amount is accurate and is likely to be another one of those Gmail “unlimited space” hoaxes where they would just cut you off if you got any where even close to that actual usage.

Update 1.21.2007

Ok, here is the story behind this. I originally posted this mini-review on July 15, 2006 and promptly received an email from a PR person who will go unnamed. He was interested in my opinion surrounding this site. We emailed a bit, and IM’d a bit back and forth. The PR person also kept reminding me that all of my complaints and criticisms were based on an application that was currently in the beta stages of testing. Ok, that is all well and good…I understand it is a work in progress. I offered to take down my rather negative review in hopes that I’d re-review this site once it went final.

A few days later he nicely mentioned that the CEO of the company behind myFabrik was interested in speaking with me regarding my ideas. Well, as you can tell by the date mentioned earlier…that was a long time ago. The phone call from the CEO never happened needless to say.

So here we are, nearly 6 months later, the application is officially launched and available to the public. The application is much improved right? Wrong. Nothing has changed.

The site is still bland, uninspired, lacking any kind of uniqueness or usefulness, and it is PAINFULLY overly complicated to use.

The UI is absolutely horrendous. I am definitely not a “normal” web user…I know how to get around most sites as long as they are even vaguely organized in a coherent way, all that being said, this site literally makes me work to do anything.

I won’t say much else right now, but the earlier review that is posted above still stands. This definitely feels like a half-assed attempt to make a web storage/web 2.0 site, but it fails miserably. I am sure plenty of people have spent long hours working on this site, but at least in my opinion…it was a HUGE waste of time for everyone involved.