Blogged with Flock
Like most of you, I was a quick convert to Firefox a few years back. When compared to IE6, it was an absolute treat. If nothing else, the tabs and the extensions made Firefox the browser to beat. Add to that better security and a rendering engine that actually worked, and there simply was no competition.
A couple years later, I am still a huge fan of Firefox but with Firefox 3 on the horizon I wanted to point you in the direction of what for some of you might be a worthy successor to everyone’s favorite Fox.
Yea, I know. Version 0.7 was an absolute mess, but the newest version of Flock is definitely worth your time.
Flock is a “social web browser” based on the Firefox code base. That means that converts will be treated to pretty much the same experience as they have come to expect out of Firefox, except with a whole lot of other widgets thrown on top.
First let me say that the best part of Flock is that you can ignore most of the more irritating “Social Features” of the browser, but for those of us who need to integrate our digital empires into one dashboard, Flock makes this exceptionally easy.
If you are on a site with an RSS Feed, just click a button and add it to the built in feed reader.
If you want a side-bar to keep track of what your Twitter friends are doing, just open one up using their “people” panel.
If you want to whip up a blog post on the fly, you can do that too with their built in editor.
Surprisingly enough, for all the stuff they have packed into this browser — it runs light. In fact, it feels a lot less heavy than Firefox has since version 1.5. Then again, I hear rumors that Flock is based on that particular version of the Fox’s code base.
All the social “stuff” aside, the real selling point of this browser is its speed. I do most of my writing from a three year old laptop, which in computer years dates it to just about the end of the Mesozoic. Using Firefox for more than twenty minutes almost always leads to a slow and painful death, often involving me force exiting the program just to get my computer to stop churning.
So far, Flock has run without a hitch. This is with my usual 8 to 10 tabs open.
What are the downsides? Well, you don’t have access to some of your extensions but that can mostly be solved with a little hackery courtesy of Frobba.
Beyond that, seasoned Firefox users should have no problems at all getting used to the browser.
Blog search engine Feedster
has had the following notice on its frontpage for at least a few weeks now:
There is no sign of life on the site and the Feedster blog has already been killed off (the big 404 in the sky).
In terms of the blog search market in general, Feedster has been struggling for 3+ years now - this RWW post in July 2005 shows how Feedster was falling behind Technorati even then. Now Feedster seems to be, if not in the DeadPool, then at least in the PurgatoryPool. PubSub was another victim in this market.
Nowadays, the blog search market seems to be made up of 3 main players - Google Blog Search, Technorati and Bloglines/Ask.com - and a lot of smaller players such as Zuula and Blogdigger. Personally I still use Technorati a few times a week, and the search function of Google Reader. I also am a heavy user of Google's main search, which I find brings up good blog results (i.e. often I don't see the need for a specialist blog search engine). I did a quick poll of the other RWW writers. Josh said he still uses Technorati sometimes, but also Google Blog search. Marshall said that he uses Ask.com for minimizing spam, relies heavily on feeds with subscribers in Bloglines, and uses Technorati too. He finds that Google Blog Search is good for speed.
What blog search engine do you use - and why?
There you will find 100-word abstracts on the latest articles from magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Fortune, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, and Wired, with links to most of them. The site also covers video from 60 Minutes, Charlie Rose, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show. Readers vote the best stories up or down, so you can keep up on the ones most likely to come up during a dinner party. You can even get paid to write abstracts, $5 apiece if your submissions are accepted.
Brijit is designed to be a filter for the smart set. But it oddly defines smart only as what’s in print. Where are the blogs? Other than Salon and Slate, very little online-only media is represented. Perhaps that is because Brijit is focussed on long-form narrative, and there is not much of that online. But it makes you wonder whether sifting through the dead-tree titles will be enough to keep readers coming back to this site, or whether they will prefer a broader view of the world.
Brijit has raised $1 million from angel investors, including former Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine.
Blogged with Flock
Blogged with Flock
