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What is Flock?

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clif_notes:
Taken from my newsletter.

What is Flock?

Website - Download - Freeware
reviewed on 22 Oct 2005

I received an email out of the blue two days ago. It told me I was a "FlockStar", one of only 283 people chosen, and I could now try the developer's preview of Flock. I emailed them back and asked them. "What is Flock?". I've gotten no reply to that yet, but here's what the "About" section of their website says.

Well, we're pretty much a bunch of regular folks trying to shake things up. We started Flock to build tools that empower people and smooth out some of the more hairy parts of living and working online. As it is, we live and breathe this stuff everyday and wanted better tools to do the things that we love doing online.

I've been able to figure out that Flock is a new type of "social browsing" service that lets people share internet links, blogs, and rss feeds.

So, now I'm in the process of installing Flock and setting it up. It hasn't been trouble-free, but it looks like they've made a good attempt to make it as painless as they can.

I installed the Flock browser. The install went well and now I can see that their browser is apparently a customized version of Mozilla Firefox. I like that idea already. Not many browsers allow you to tweak and configure them like FF does. I found a mirror site that allows anyone to download Flock.

Once I launched the Flock browser, it comes up with a home page that runs you through 5 ways to get started using Flock.


* ... get ready to share your favorite sites: go grab a del.icio.us account.
* ... get yourself a blog.
* Start blogging!
* Check out history right from the search box.
* Forget old-school bookmarks. Meet Flock's Favorites.
I went out and set up a del.icio.us account. That was easy. Just add a login name and email address.
I already had a blog at blogger.com but for some reason I couldn't get it to register correctly in the Flock browser's blog setup dialog. So I set up a new WordPress account and Flock had no problem accepting it. Once I had the blog, I tried using the blogging tool built into the Flock browser. I had trouble getting the bulleted list functions to work and it was putting weird empty space in the entry, so I gave up on that. This things not even in beta yet, so I expect a few bugs. I did see something in the blogging tool that looks cool. You can grab other blog feeds or Flikr pictures and drag them from your "Topbar" into your blog post. That actually seems to work. So, now I'm off to grab a Flikr account.
I took a look at the searchable history and the new Flock favorites. I hope they work right because they look pretty cool.

Well folks, that's it for now. I still don't know what I'm going to do with this Flock browser but I'll try to keep you posted as to how I'm using it, if I use it at all. Here are Flock's 13 suggestions on how I can use it.

Late breaking news

Here's a more complete review from PaulStamatiou.com.

Screenshots
What is Flock? What is Flock?
click to expand


mouser:
excellent review!
i think this stuff, along with stumbleupon and delicious are way of the future - with so many (useless) websites, or websites just designed to attract traffic to show advertisements, its going to be more and important for people to be able to rely on each other for help identifying good sites and sharing info.

the only problem i can see is a new wave of AI bots designed to hijack these services and manipulate them for their goals.
(not world domination, but advertising).

Carol Haynes:
(not world domination, but advertising).
-mouser (October 23, 2005, 08:34 AM)
--- End quote ---

Anren't they one and the same thing in practice ...

mouser:
i think you've stumbled on the unsolved mystert about the movie "The Matrix" !!

when you see those people all hooked up in those capsules with tubes connected to them..
they are really just being forced to watch advertisements delivered directly to their brains.

and the matrix =

a giant advertising machine!!!   :o :o :o :o :o :o

m_s:
Off joke, but on topic: I've been using Flock for a few hours, and just want to say it's really good!  I like the simplified gui, and in general it's a little more sophisticated and elegant than FF.  I've been running the FF 1.5 rc for a few weeks, and like that (except that it doesn't play with RoboForm yet), but Flock appears to have all the good points of FF, along with being a nicer design.  I'm new to del.icio.us, but I've really needed something like that in order to be able to access my favorites from all the various machines I find myself using.  Flock =  :Thmbsup:

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