Flock

Author: Funkstop
Date: October 26, 2005
Categories: Tech Reviews, Technology

Just started using Flock and I’m still trying to figure out the real need. I already have IE, Safari, Firefox, and even Opera for my mobile – i just don’t see why i need another browser. Sure Flock is trying to change the paradigm a bit by making it a bit more integrated with Web2.0 services like Flickr and Delicious, but i’m not sure if i really need Flock to help with any of this. Regardless, I’ve tried using Flock to see how it helps (or hinders..)

Blogging
works fairly well for simple functions – I was able to get it to authorize and post to my WordPress installation, although the choices I was given for the APIs, did not list WordPress which may be confusing to new users. Considering that this is still early in development, that can be forgiven. Perhaps more annoying though, is that I can’t figure out how to change the blog settings. After setting up with my WordPress installation, there seems no way to switch to another. I’m also concerned with the security of this. It seems that it is sending the user/pwd for the blog across an unsecured connection for every post. As I started out saying, it works fine for simple functions, but that’s about it at this stage. Trackbacks don’t seem to be supported yet either.

Delicious
Well this seems to be one of the most hyped up features of Flock – but it does not work! I made the mistake of saying ‘No’ the first time I saved a favorite and now it doesn’t give me the option to add my delicious account. There is some info about this on the Flock forums but it doesn’t help, although the release notes tell you ‘bad things will happen’ if you don’t enter info.
I’ll have to wait to see if the Delicious feature is useful or not. At this stage, it doesn’t seem to provide me with anything that I can’t achieve from just adding the ‘my delicious’ button to the top of one of my other browsers.

Search
I like how Flock has added quick search dropdown for Yahoo, Google, Amazon and others. Conspicuously though, MSN is missing… already laying down the guantlet? There is mention of the search and placement deals on Bart’s blog – so maybe just a deal with MSN hasn’t been made yet. But I question a business model that is based on the placement and advertising – seems very 2000 and ominous of Bubble 2.0.

Overall Flock seems like an ok browser – but it simply doesn’t fill any burning need for me. Everything that it provides, I already have tools to perform which not overly cumbersome as they are. There are some great bells on this, but if Flock isn’t around for a long time (which i’m not sure they will be), then it’s hard to justify to migrate over and start relying on it. To me, based on how the business model has been explained, it sounds like it will have trouble as soon as big boys jump in and/or the market turns south. Maybe this is an acquisition play, which also sounds like Bubble talk…

regardless, i’ll continue to play around with it – definitely some useful stuff here, and it is only in beta.

here’s a link for someone else who’s been having difficulty as well.

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