DLS Review: BinarySwitch Eclipse tries to block distracting websites, fails

My interest in procrastination-busting applications is almost as intense and old as my interest in procrastination itself. One of my favorite ways to procrastinate is by fighting against procrastination in all sorts of new and creative ways I haven't found yet.

I actually have a very good system set up, mainly based on the incredible Leechblock Firefox add-on. After tweaking some settings, it now lets me browse my time-wasting sites for exactly as much time as I think is appropriate, and not a minute longer (I'm not telling you how much that is! That's personal, people). The only problem with my system is that Firefox isn't the only browser in the world. I have Chrome, Opera, Safari, and even (god forbid) IE.

This is why I'm always interested in proxy-based applications which provide blocking across all browser with one simple tool. And when I stumbled upon Eclipse over at Lifehacker, I was quite excited. My excitement, however, did not last past the first two minutes of using the application. To read why, continue after the fold.

The good:

• Provides cross-browser website blocking.
• Free!
• Seems to be under active development.
• Compatible with Windows 7.

The bad:

• The reason you see "google.com" in that screenshot is because I entered "google.com/reader", but Eclipse won't recognize anything past the slash. Yup -- either you block the whole domain, or you don't. So it basically doesn't work for any Google service (and Reader is my primary time-waster).
• To unblock your list of sites, you only need to type in a 12-character random string. 12 characters! Non case-sensitive! That takes me exactly five seconds. Not very effective -- does not give me enough time to ponder my intention to procrastinate and decide not to.
• Absolutely no configuration, whatsoever. Nada. Like, nothing. I would expect at least the ability to configure the number of characters I need to enter, a-la Leechblock (which offers 32- or 64-char, case sensitive) or the sadly-defunct Temptation Blocker which was also somewhat configurable (or at least more challenging).
• No option for "time windows", i.e, "5 minuter per hour in which I can procrastinate, and then it kicks me out again". I know this can be challenging with proxy-based filtering, but I'm pretty sure it can be done.
• Buggy. Even after I disabled it and quit it, my websites were still blocked.
• The name. Uh, Eclipse? Not exactly a tiny product. It's like calling a fitness-tracking program "Excel".

The ugly:

• Well, a screenshot is worth a thousand words, I guess. I mean, either you skin it, or you don't. Standard window borders do not work with that background image (which does not work with anything really, IMHO).

Bottom line:

• The reason I sound so frustrated about this application is because I actually want it to work. I really, really want a program like this, and if only it had some minimal configuration, I wouldn't even say anything about the looks. But it simply fails to deliver, at this point. Dear developer, if you're reading this, please know that I think your application has great potential, but it's just not ready. If you ever add those features, I would be happy to review it again.

Tags: procrastination, productivty, timewaster