Flock
Flock is a new web browser for those of us who use social networking tools such as del.icio.us, Flickr, and blogs (such as Wordpress, MovableType, Blogspot, etc.). In fact, the browser pretty much requires you use del.icio.us. It’s pretty hard to justify using the browser without it!
Don’t go switching to Flock just yet though! It’s still in pre-release (0.5) and I’m having a hard time keeping it stable in both Windows 2000 and Mac OSX. In particular, the application freezes when it has to communicate with del.icio.us. Even one of the Flock designers, Chris Messina, said on Inside The Net Episode 2 that he still uses Firefox 1.5.
The best part of Flock? The star button. By clicking the star button right next to the address bar, one automatically adds the web page they are looking at to their del.icio.us (or local) bookmarks. Luckily, you can simulate the star button by getting the del.icio.us post Firefox extension.
The integrated blogging is also very neat too. I tried the feature out, and it worked, but the browser for some reason did not load my Wordpress categories. Therefore, my test blog entry ended up in the “Uncategorized” Wordpress category. The Flickr integration is very smooth as well. I could easily look at my (or someone else’s) Flickr photos and include them in a post.
This browser probably won’t take down Firefox, but it will certainly drive the need for browsers that are integrated with everyday web applications. And that’s absolutely a great idea.
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