What the Flock?

Have you tried the Flock browser yet? I’m using it on a Mac, and it’s faster than FireFox & cooler than Safari.


Here’s what I like, so far...

• Nice integration with Blogger -- I’m drafting this post in Flock and it’s very tidy.  No pesky logging in, no slow Blogger posts from within FireFox.  Incredibly easy to add images.  Maybe I’m behind the times in the way that I blog, but this is pretty darn easy.
  
• Default search engine is Yahoo ... I know I could change that in FireFox or Safari, but I like the idea of supporting Google’s competition.
  
• Very solid integration with Web 2.0 stuff:
• Photos & other media: see a “Media bar” which shows new flickr / YouTube / other media feeds right at the top / bottom of your browser).
• Blogs:  see & organize feeds in a special sidebar -- and on the “My World” page for Flock.  In “My World”, it shows me new posts to the blogs I’m following.
• Not so much integration with Facebook -- I really like how Windoze FireFox works with Facebook.  Don’t see that on Safari or Mac FireFox, either. 
  
• You can tag saved pages, write descriptions, and otherwise manage bookmarks.  This is a good idea in theory, but frankly, it’s hard enough for me to remember to save bookmarks at all, much less catalog them.  Still ... points for the thought.
  
• On many Flock pages, they show me a photo of Evan, my “Community Ambassador.”  Great idea -- could we implement this “Community Ambassador” idea in libraries?
  

Tool with potential ... not directly Flock-related, but I found it through Flock, so they’re associated in my head.

• The Me.dium plugin.  This is a social networking / browsing tool that lets you see who else is on the site you’re on and you can chat with other people right from your web site.  This could potentially be scary ... but I see some interesting applications for librarians.  I’m sometimes logged in there as cogscilibrarian if you want to test it out.  Seems kind of like the “people-powered” search engine ChaCha in that regard.

(thanks to Mac|Life for the tip about Flock)

Blogged with Flock