Scrapboy has been around for quite sometime now… Well for those who have not heard of it and been scrapping friends through orkut, this is the new and supposed to be popular instant messenger for orkut.

Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Skype have been great tools to be in touch with friends. But suddenly with the advent of orkut.com ‘scrap’ has changed meaning from being useless or a refuse to something much more worthy and awaited! Though scrapping, scrapbooks and other new related terminology have got popular, the feel of real-time chatting is somehow lost. That is where the instant messenger, scrapboy makes you feel home.

Scrapboy has suddenly caught all the attention and popularity in a small time span. Certainly because of orkut, than for itself. When I reviewed this software, I found that it was more of a hype, and it still has a long way to go…

After receiving an email from a friend to download scrapboy, I logged on to their website: www.scrapboy.com.

The download file size was just below 25MB. The size didn’t bother me much as I have an unlimited 256kbps connection. But for dial-up users, am sure this fact will suck big-time. They rather did wait for it to show up on their favorite tech magazine CD/DVD. And even if they do, I am sure its not worth the wait or download.

In a few minutes I had the setup on my PC which announced itself as beta version 1.0. I installed the software, after a few installation hiccups due to security warning by Norton. But no big issues. Soon, I logged in with my orkut id, it loaded my friends list, I played around with the interface, tried to search for some tweaking options (didn’t find any)… And soon I realised that I was looking at some dumb piece of software. But mind you… I do believe it has great potential.

The following is the review of the software with all the Pros and Cons listed and justified for.

PROS:

  • Gives you a real-time chatting like feeling. Just like any other instant messenger.
  • Can easily format your scraps. You can bold, italicize or colour your text, insert smilies and yet need not remember the codes for them.
  • A scrap window immediately pops-up when u get a new scrap from some one. Actually if you have entered a yahoo id for your scrapbook notifications in orkut and your yahoo messenger online, you do get a new scrap notification anyways.
  • You can also set ‘New Scrap Notifications’ for your friend’s scrapbook. And hence keep yourself updated with the latest about them.
  • You need not visit the orkut profile of your friends to scrap. Also you save a considerable amount of time and effort by directly scrapping from your desktop. And no more browser refreshing to check for new scraps.
  • While the best feature according to me is that it has an alphabetically organised friends list that shows all your friends in the window. So searching your friend does not take more than a few seconds. If you want to make this task easier, just click anywhere on the list and start typing your friend’s name. You will soon see it highlighted.

CONS:

Jotting down all the pros, was an easy task. Their website and testimonials helped me through. But the cons were what I knew I would have to dig for, yet were so very obvious.

  • First of all it was a heavy setup to download. I would not mind if it was worth it at the end of it.
  • If you visit your friend’s scrapbook through scrapboy and would like to scrap somebody else in his scrapbook, you can’t. Also there is no link by which you can reply to your friend’s scrap. You need to go back to the friends list, choose your friend and then scrap him. What a waste of time and effort contrary to the software ideology!
  • While using scrapboy, you are not notified if a friend is online or not. By logging into your orkut account, there is a module that atleast gives you a clue which friends of yours were last online.
  • If you have grouped your friends on orkut, scrapboy does not reflect the same. It does not allow you to make new groups either.
  • There is no option to delete any scrap. If you receive any offensive scrap and would like to delete it, you need to login to orkut through your browser. If you need to delete your own scrap that u posted erroneously, again you need to login to orkut to delete that. Then why the hell do you need scrapboy!!
  • If a friend deletes your scrap, and later when you view his scrapbook through scrapboy, the deleted messages still do exist. I do not see any particular use of this dumb feature.
  • Also, if you are behind a proxy and need to enter some proxy settings to access net, the software does not allow you to do so. There is no such option.
  • When I received a new friend request on orkut and I added him there, the change did not reflect in my scrapboy application. Also the number of friends shown was incorrect.
  • The software is slow and hangs up for few seconds while downloading new scraps. In all it’s a badly written software with many bugs around too.
  • The software also gives you an option to open your friends profiles, gallery, scrapbook, etc in the browser. But sadly it works only for IE. No support for Opera, Firefox, etc.
  • If you still feel that this piece of software is worth it, google a little before you download it. You will find many posts around the net describing issues with the software.

SUGGESTIONS:

I hope that Scrapboy Digital Media do take all the drawbacks into consideration before they release the next version. I have a few suggestions for them, which if they package with their new version they can retain the popularity. For now I just see this popularity as a sudden spur out of interest and curiosity. Am sure they do not have dedicated users.

  • If orkut does not have restrictions, the software can allow one click scrap for scrapping all friends. I know this can get a little annoying at times with nasty advertising. But afterall its your friend who scraps you and you can delete him/her easily incase of spamming. I think similar scripts are already floating on the net.
  • They could integrate a timezone feature into it, that would tell you when exactly your friend scrapped you in your own local time.
  • They should include birthday notifications, as they are on your orkut homepage.
  • While scrapping your friend through scrapboy, instead of clicking on the smiley of your choice, you could just type a small code for the smiley as you do in other popular instant messengers.

This software does boast of a great popularity, with above 4000 members in its official orkut community, over 15000 downloads at download.com, it surely is one of the most talked about scrapping applications.

But this version is of no worth. If it does not soon come up with a promising version, am sure there are many more softwares in the making ready for the take. Infact the domain scrapgirl.com is also already registered… hehe. 8)

To summarise the whole review, in what the human mind is more trained to recept, its time for the figures to speak for themselves:

Rating: 1.5/5 (I would prefer orkuting anytime!)