A Chip off the Old Flock

Flock, which I wrote about a few months back, is now in public beta (meaning ordinary folks can use it without too much weeping). TechCrunch carries an interview with the folks behind it.

What's so good about it? Well, it's all about trying to build Web 2.0 into the browser, so the browser isn't so much a browser as a tool to upload photos, blog, read RSS, that kind of thing. You can drag a photo and publish it, view photos across the top of the browser, search faster (the search box includes results that update as you type the word.)

I'm most interested in the blogging tool. And while it's better, it sure ain't perfect. I'd like to see a proper editor with all the features of an editor, including shortcuts (Control + k for inserting link seems to be a pretty well-defined standard, for example.) That said, it seems a tad more stable than BlogJet, for which one would have to pay money.

How does these guys make money? Mainly through selling the spots in the search box at the top right corner, I believe. Yahoo! seems to rule the roost at the moment, and it doesn't seem possible to change that as the default without opening a separate preferences window, unless I'm missing something. I assume that extra step is deliberate, something most folks wouldn't bother to do.

Anyway, another browser can't be bad news. I'm not going to dump Firefox for now, but I think I'll keep Flock a-flickering too for now.

technorati tags:browsers, blogtools, rss

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