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I sighted an advertisement of Flock - the social web browser on one of the pages here. I couldn't capture the screenshot of it but it did made me think. I use Google Adsense to monetize my site (not getting rich but maybe keep the show running and continue developing ColorfulTabs).
I've seen ads of Firefox on Google earlier but this was the first time I saw Flock. Let me tell you what Flock is. Flock started as a fork of Firefox as did many others like Gnuzilla, GNU IceCat, Netscape 9 Portable Ed. etc… The list is long for everyones favourite browser. But what warrants a fork? Gnuzilla started because Firefox logo is licensed and cannot be modified. So these good guys put everything aside and started working on a new browser writing and modifying hundreds of lines of code to… well to be able to modify the logo of the brower. They were not happy with browsing alone. They wanted to be able to modify the logo of their browser.
Flock somewhat had a similar reason. The irony is all you need to start a fork is an excuse. Some members of the community believed that Firefox doesn't allow them to do all that they want to. Many wanted a browser that would be better prepared to handle Web 2.0 than Firefox. Thus Flock. It was released in 2005. Flock has some remarkable features and specializes on features related to social browsing like social media, social networking.
When I first downloaded and installed Firefox I was not sure whether Firefox would work. It did and opened up Google just like Internet Explorer did. And I used it the entire day without issues. It worked. And I dumped my old browser. With Flock I'm not so sure. May be its because of the standards that Firefox has raised. But I'm downloading it today to possibly review it in an upcoming column. After all a browser claiming preparedness and a featurepacked UI does arise a lot of interest.
Image Courtsey: Nikita Kashner
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
There is a promising alternative : The next release of Yoono !
Request a beta release code at :
http://test.yoono.com/privatebeta/mailing.html
Regards,
Xavier
I think I must try it out.
If you are into social browsing, you should give Me.dium a try. It's a sidebar add-on that allows you to see what websites your friends are looking at. Surf with them in real time, and chat while doing so. It now includes facebook integration as well. Me.dium makes the internet a social place, and is a great tool for online shopping, swapping sites and info, and/or just plain chatting and staying in touch with friends.
check it out at Me.dium.com
(Oh and it works with not only Flock and Firefox, but IE and Songbird as well.)