So I haven’t been exactly excited about a new browser for a long time. I was a faithful FireFox user since before 1.0, but in the last year I’ve been primarily using Safari. I feel it’s just cleaner, faster and well … more Mac-like. I’ve heard FireFox 3 is now much, much faster, but I haven’t felt overly compelled to upgrade.
That said, I’ve been hearing a lot lately about this browser called Flock. It’s been around for a while. In fact, its website says it was created in 2005. At its core, Flock is essentially just a customized FireFox. For the last couple years, that’s all I really knew about it. But with the recent release of it’s 1.0 version, Flock has become much more, and has jumped into the social networking fray with both feet.
Flock’s features are many, but the one that stands out most for me is its “People” sidebar. All you have to do is log into one of their many supported social networks, and Flock detects it and asks if you’d like to “remember” that network. If you accept, that network is added as a tabbed entry in the left sidebar (see left). Log into more networks, and more tabs are added. This gives you the ability to see your friend’s status updates, messages, file uploads and more.
Currently (as of version 1.2), Flock supports Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Pownce. It also supports media sites like Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket and Picasa.
And for you bloggers, Flock can also detect when you’ve logged into a supported blog platform like Blogger, Livejournal, Typepad or Wordpress. And it makes it easy to post new blog entries directly from Flock’s built-in editor.
Other useful features include a built-in RSS reader, the ability to post bookmarks to services like Delicious and Magnolia and integrated webmail like Gmail, Yahoo! and AOL Mail.
So far, Flock is filling a very real need for me. Seems my memberships keep growing (I finally just broke down and joined Facebook), and traveling to each site for updates was getting more and more time-consuming. Now I have the exact same browsing experience, thanks to the FireFox engine, but I have all my services at my fingertips and can see updates just by glancing at my sidebar. As an added bonus, most FireFox extensions, like the invaluable FireBug work perfectly in Flock.
So if you already use FireFox and also have a lot of social networks or blogs to keep track of, give Flock a try.
For a quick crash course, see Flock’s intro videos on YouTube, or this great segment from Mahalo Daily.
Flock To A New Browser
That said, I’ve been hearing a lot lately about this browser called Flock. It’s been around for a while. In fact, its website says it was created in 2005. At its core, Flock is essentially just a customized FireFox. For the last couple years, that’s all I really knew about it. But with the recent release of it’s 1.0 version, Flock has become much more, and has jumped into the social networking fray with both feet.
Currently (as of version 1.2), Flock supports Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Pownce. It also supports media sites like Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket and Picasa.
And for you bloggers, Flock can also detect when you’ve logged into a supported blog platform like Blogger, Livejournal, Typepad or Wordpress. And it makes it easy to post new blog entries directly from Flock’s built-in editor.
Other useful features include a built-in RSS reader, the ability to post bookmarks to services like Delicious and Magnolia and integrated webmail like Gmail, Yahoo! and AOL Mail.
So far, Flock is filling a very real need for me. Seems my memberships keep growing (I finally just broke down and joined Facebook), and traveling to each site for updates was getting more and more time-consuming. Now I have the exact same browsing experience, thanks to the FireFox engine, but I have all my services at my fingertips and can see updates just by glancing at my sidebar. As an added bonus, most FireFox extensions, like the invaluable FireBug work perfectly in Flock.
So if you already use FireFox and also have a lot of social networks or blogs to keep track of, give Flock a try.
For a quick crash course, see Flock’s intro videos on YouTube, or this great segment from Mahalo Daily.