Flock is an open source browser and would be more useful to bloggers and people involved in social networks. Here is the Flock analysis.
AskOxford defines Flock as a noun meaning “a large number or crowd”. And this is the most appropriate name for a new social browser “Flock”.
Flock is an open source browser and would be more useful to bloggers and people involved in social networks or people who are web 2.0 savvy. Flock is based upon open source code from Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
Flock is equipped with lots of social networking tools such as integrated blogging, flicker and YouTube support, bookmark syncing with del.icio.us, inbuilt feed reader, can add social accounts like Facebook, Twitter etc.
Flock Features
- It has built-in tabs whereby you can add, see, contact, and interact with your social networking friends in Facebook, Digg, YouTube, Pownce, Twitter, Flickr
- You can have search through Google, Yahoo. MSN, Ask, Wikipedia, ebay, Technorati, Digg, Facebook, wink,people
- It has a in-built Photo uploader, Blog editor, web mail & Web clipboard
- It has a in-built feed reader, and a media bar, which instantly finds pictures, videos from Digg, Photobucket, Flickr, Facebook, Youtube, Picasa and more.
Look n Feel
Flock gives a great user experience and it looks like a beautified Firefox. The buttons, menus are neatly placed, with a good color combination and useful icons.
Other than the usual buttons,some new ones are:
Favorite : Single click to add in browser, Double click to add to Del.icio.us
RSS : To show the feeds available in the entered URL
Mail : To mail the entered URL
Digg : To dig the entered URL
Search: Search through Google, Yahoo, Ask, Amazon, MSN, Digg etc
My World
My world button takes care of your favorite feeds, favorite websites, friend’s activity (friends from your social network) & favorite media. You can have a look at once on all the four.
People Sidebar
People sidebar is a bar giving you option to login to your social networks such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Plurk, Digg etc. Your friend are displayed as a list, with their recent activity and you can message them by just dragging dropping any image video to their names. and it gets posted to their profile.
Media Mini Bar
Using Flock’s Media Bar, quickly preview online videos and photos, subscribe to video feeds, keep up to date on your friends’ picture postings, search media files, send videos to friends with one click etc.
You can share media through the following sites: Youtube, Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Photobucket etc. With each sharing site again divided in to groups such as technology, Business, News, Lifestyle etc….
Blog Editor
An inbuilt blog editor is provided where you can copy text, pictures and videos from anywhere on the web and instantly post them into the Flock’s Blog Editor or directly into the blog. You can also monitor, manage and post to different blogs.
When mouse is hovered over any image/video in any website, a small button appears, by clicking which u can submit the image/video to Blog or email it.
Webmail
Flock also has an integrated web mail feature in which Flock plugs into several Web mail services to make your web browsing experience as integrated as possible. Presently supported mail services are Gmail, Yahoo and AOL mail.
Summing it up…
“I have been using Flock for almost two months and i liked it. It gives me ease to check mails, blog posting, image/video searching, searching though a whole lot of websites, maintaining RSS feeds, my social networks etc. But as i mentioned earlier, its not for those who just browse internet for mails and general things.If you are deep into Social web and a core web 2.0 savvy guy then this is a ‘must-have’ for you…… Try it !“