Flock, the New Browser on the Block

^tamago^ writes to tell us BusinessWeek Online is reporting that a new browser is stepping into the arena. This new competitor, Flock, hopes to change the face of web browsing by turning their's into the swiss army knife of browsers. From the article: "Flock's browser is built specifically for a new, emerging generation of Web users, one that isn't satisfied passively browsing media online. Flock hopes to turn the browser into a dashboard for collaborating, blogging, sharing photos, reveling in a raft of other group activities that have recently caught fire online"

So how will it generate sales?

Decrem expects to make money from running Google ads, as well as getting so-called affiliate fees for referring users to commercial sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN ). Moreover, he envisions getting money from other Web services, such as blogging or photo-sharing services, that might pay Flock for sign-ups sent their way from the Flock software.

Is it Opera all over again [slashdot.org] in terms of its business model?

Or does it sound like a legalized spyware [slashdot.org]?

What would site owners feel if a browser is competing for Google Ads and referral bonuses with them?

Yuck

Well, all I can say is that if the web site [flock.com] is any indicator of the design talents of its creators, I don't hold much hope for the "swiss army knife" of browsers.

Re:Yuck

SPOILER: flock.com kills eyes!

Invalid markup, to boot.

It appears that their site fails to validate, at least according to the W3C Markup Validator.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.flock .com/home/ [w3.org]

I would have expected the web page of a web browser to at least be standards-compliant. The Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror pages all validate cleanly:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.mozil la.org [w3.org]
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.opera .com [w3.org]
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.konqu eror.org [w3.org]

Re:Invalid markup, to boot.

Uh oh...

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.apple .com/macosx/features/safari/ [w3.org]

Apparently there is no attribute "HEGIHT".

Re:Invalid markup, to boot.

I would have expected the web page of a web browser to at least be standards-compliant. The Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror pages all validate cleanly:

Ya think www.microsoft.com/ie would pass????

Results using the HTML Validator Firefox extension

HTML Validation Result
----------------------
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx [microsoft.com]

line 2 column 1 - Warning: missing declaration
line 8 column 356 - Warning: ' is not approved by W3C
line 10 column 2403 - Warning: missing before

line 10 column 2435 - Warning: inserting implicit
line 10 column 2547 - Warning: discarding unexpected
line 12 column 46 - Error: is not recognized!
line 12 column 46 - Warning: discarding unexpected
line 14 column 980 - Warning: discarding unexpected
line 24 column 6844 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 6997 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7004 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7166 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7173 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7423 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7574 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7581 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7729 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 7736 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 24 column 8210 - Warning: is not approved by W3C
line 6 column 115 - Warning: inserting "type" attribute
line 8 column 381 - Warning: inserting "type" attribute
line 8 column 449 - Warning: inserting "type" attribute
line 10 column 58 - Warning: proprietary attribute "topmargin"
line 10 column 58 - Warning: proprietary attribute "leftmargin"
line 10 column 58 - Warning: proprietary attribute "marginwidth"
line 10 column 58 - Warning: proprietary attribute "marginheight"
line 10 column 289 - Warning: proprietary attribute "height"
line 10 column 938 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 938 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 1230 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 1230 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 1423 - Warning: proprietary attribute "height"
line 10 column 1570 - Warning: attribute "bgcolor" had invalid value "FFFFFF" and has been replaced
line 10 column 1612 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 1612 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 2554 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 2554 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 3339 - Warning: proprietary attribute "height"
line 10 column 3460 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 3460 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 3761 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 3761 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 4066 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 4066 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 4363 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 4363 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 4672 - Warning:

proprietary attribute "url"
line 10 column 4818 - Warning:

proprietary attribute "menu"
line 10 column 5121 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 5121 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 5258 - Warning:

proprietary attribute "menu"
line 10 column 5561 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 5561 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 5706 - Warning:

proprietary attribute "menu"
line 10 column 6009 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 6009 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 6144 - Warning:

proprietary attribute "menu"
line 10 column 6447 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 column 6447 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkid"
line 10 column 6578 - Warning:

proprietary attribute "menu"
line 10 column 6881 - Warning: proprietary attribute "linkarea"
line 10 c

Re:Invalid markup, to boot.

The only inconvenience was having to read CyricZ's worthless post. I'll take a page (like yours) with mildly broken but very legible, maintainable markup over a perfectly valid page with hideous markup anyday. I'll give you one guess which kind has been more common in my experience... ;)

Good luck with your work, and don't let the Slashdot trolls get you down!

Re:Yuck

If my hunch is correct, then the 'designers' are going for some ill conceived sort of mystique to intrigue people into checking out what it is. Personally, I think this tactic wouldn't be so bad except here's a few problems I have with their implementation:

  - The type is too big for any sort of mysterious appeal. If they want people to become interested by being vauge, then the text HAS to be smaller and not so pretentious.

  - Even with the plot to intrigue the user, one has to give away more information than they already don't to at least let you know "wtf". For example, when rogaine first aired commercials in the US, it advertised itself as 'rogaine with monoxodil' as some product to turn your life around, but instead of people asking where to sign up, everyone called to ask 'what the fuck is it?' and ended up being more annoyed than anything else.

  - Lastly, people hate the idea of giving away their digital identity (email) just to test a browser. Hint to the creators: You're not Apple, and as such, you are not going to get everyone to sign up for an invite to feel special in your exclusive club despite secrets handshakes and a password. Give the beta out there with a disclaimer, and an open invitation to test and give feedback instead of trying to be some underground organization, and learn to use colors better ^_^

Re:Yuck

That's why I only install stuff like this at school.

Article summary

FLOCK(2)            Linux Programmer's Manual            FLOCK(2)

NAME
       flock - apply or remove an advisory lock on an open file
SYNOPSIS
       #include <sys/file.h>
       int flock(int fd, int operation)
DESCRIPTION
       Apply  or  remove  an  advisory lock on an open file.  The
       file is specified  by  fd.   Valid  operations  are  given
       below:
              LOCK_SH   Shared  lock.   More than one process may
                        hold a shared lock for a given file at  a
                        given time.

              LOCK_EX   Exclusive  lock.   Only  one  process may
                        hold an exclusive lock for a  given  file
                        at a given time.

              LOCK_UN   Unlock.

              LOCK_NB   Don't  block when locking.  May be speci&#173;
                        fied (by or'ing) along with  one  of  the
                        other operations.

       A  single file may not simultaneously have both shared and
       exclusive locks.

       A file is locked (i.e., the inode), not the file  descrip&#173;
       tor.   So,  dup(2)  and  fork(2)  do  not  create multiple
       instances of a lock.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1  is  returned,
       and errno is set appropriately.
ERRORS
       EWOULDBLOCK
              The  file  is  locked  and  the  LOCK_NB  flag  was
              selected.
CONFORMING TO
       4.4BSD (the flock(2) call first appeared in 4.2BSD).
NOTES
       flock(2) does not  lock  files  over  NFS.   Use  fcntl(2)
       instead:  that  does  work  over NFS, given a sufficiently
       recent version of Linux and a server which supports  lock&#173;
       ing.

       flock(2)  and fcntl(2) locks have different semantics with
       respect to forked processes and dup(2).
SEE ALSO
       open(2), close(2), dup(2), execve(2),  fcntl(2),  fork(2),
       lockf(3)

       There    are   also   locks.txt   and   mandatory.txt   in
       /usr/src/linux/Documentation.

Linux                       1998-12-11                   FLOCK(2)

Re:Article summary

I tried to install this newfangled Flock on Linux, but...

[root@localhost] # make install
make: *waves index finger*
i KNOW you didn't try to overwrite the REAL flock
with that browser and shit.
See >man flock< and burn in hell.
*throws root's clothes out window*
Stop.
[root@localhost] #

My Linux seems a bit protective of its territory nowadays...

Re:And I suppose everyone using it

And I suppose everyone using it... Will be sheep?

Flock ewe!

Hope they fix the font size in their browser

Because the text on that page is GIGANTIC.

more competition should be a good thing, I hope

First most obvious question to me is, will it run on Linux? No mention in the article, and their web site [flock.com] is coy (and a little annoying in its design). It does mention "cross platform tastiness", and "written in java", so I'm hoping.

That said, my biggest worry is browser extensions that start relying on non-standard implementation, i.e., they begin to have affinity for things not-html, not-javascript, things not-css. I know the browser universe is a hodge-podge of standards already, I just would hate to see yet another trailblazer that ends up to be some extension of some proprietary idea.

Anyway, to the new browser and its team, welcome to our flock. Best of luck.

Re:more competition should be a good thing, I hope

Yes, Flock is being developed on and for MSWin, MacOS, and Linux. A slight majority of the developers do their work primarily on Linux. It is not "written in java". I think you have us confused with a SourceForge project. The Flock browser is directly based on Firefox.

Playing nice with other people and technologies is very important to us!

No Invite

Lots of wild promises, requires an invite, they can't develop a web page worth a crud, and their "extentions" page screams "FireFox". Me thinks that this isn't as ground breaking as their PR department will have you believe. We'll see, though.

Re:No Invite

they can't develop a web page worth a crud...

They probably spent all of their website design budget on this slashvertisement. :)

Re:No Invite

Look on the bright side. Three years ago, investors would have been throwing money their way without a pause. Now all they get is \. ridicule and suspicious glares. Perhaps the right balance is somewhere between the two extremes. Deliver a little product, show us something, and then we'll decide. Right now it looks like "Too little, too soon."

I guess it's true, as they say in the comedy business "timing is everything."

Screams? More like burning letters 100' tall.

Go and click through on some of those extension links.

They ARE FireFox extensions. You can install them in FireFox today!

Which makes me wonder why they aren't making their "new features" as extensions to FireFox rather than claiming to be building a whole new browser.

MPL infringement?

I smell imminent, blatant MPL infringement--unless, they are writing their own code to interpret the xpis (and perhaps ActiveX too, if they want some bizarre sort of extra credit or something).

If they do use Mozilla code, certainly they should have the source code available, as per the MPL, Section 3.6 [mozilla.org], no? Unless Flock has balls of Fire-proof steel and considers such a license naïve and unconstitutional like SCO or something...

Re:Screams? More like burning letters 100' tall.

They ARE FireFox extensions.

Because Flock is FireFox forked by a Firefox developer with some sort of hidden marketing agenda.

He took FireFox, turned it into a squid, dressed it up in spangles and glued tits to it.

Careful boys, you just might get your fingers burned if you try to fondle these puppies.

KFG

I beta tested Flock.

Not only did I beta test it, I wrote a review [ioerror.us] of it about two months ago.

In short, it's:

• Based on Firefox.
• A blogging and social networking tool.
• Not going to steal your personal data.

Read the review for more.

A little thin on details.

Looks more like a phishing exercise:

Home About Download Extensions Flock has landed.We're introducing the world's most innovative social browsing experience. We call it the two-way web.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be seeding invites to a few lucky folks. Sign up to find out when invites are available:
Thanks for your interest!
Email: And no, we won't spam you, sell your address or do anything else but use this info to let you know when invites are available. We hate spam just as much as you!
Oh and hey, wanna join the flock? We're hiring! So guess what? Send us your resume!

Re:A little thin on details.

Oh and hey, wanna join the flock? We're hiring! So guess what? Send us your resume! ...Meet the Flockers?

This is great!

Instead of telling someone to visit a website, I can tell them to "Flock This!"

And I ran...

I ran so far away.

Re:Based off of Konqueror?

Wired says it is based on firefox;http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,128 2,68823,00.html?tw=rss.TOP [wired.com]

Great!

A link to a story about a press release for a private beta. Stuff that matters? Not really. Wake me up when the browser is publically available.

Finally!

A browser that embraces bloat!

I wonder what MBA thought this one up.

I what proactive MBA envisioned the synergies that would allow flock to become a knowledge portal center of excellence for podcasting core competencies of leveraging mindshare and paradigm shifts to achieve superlinear ROI.

Covering the bases

Expect Flock to crash and, from time to time, lose all your data.

OK, so apparently it's at least as stable as IE.

umm, entirely new idea of thinking

Flock also keeps a history of every Web page a user visits, so they can be found easily later.

I've seen this feature before, but I can't recall where...

You keep changin' when you oughta be a samin'

The most innovative thing about Flock is that it's trying to do away with the notion of "browsing." ... Essentially, Flock's software is intended to serve less as a window into static Web content than as a customizable conduit for participatory Web services, from Flickr to del.icio.us to the collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Are they trying to turn browsing into browsing here? I think they may have overdone the alliteration, but I don't really understand what they're getting at. 'Browsing' the Internet is probably the best term here, even if it's not static content that is being browsed.

Besides, products that try to change or turn away the norm tend to not get very far - see Opera vs. Firefox and IE, or (more recently) disposable DVDs vs. normal ones.

I don't think this is going to get very far at all, even with the big limelight given to it by Slashdot here.

Going for broke on presentation? Literally?

It looks like it won't be doing anything in terms of functionality that a dedicated FireFox user couldn't get via extensions. That said, it doesn't look like it intends to compete on functionality. The name, page layout, and co-opting of GMail's invite viral marketing all make clear that they're going to go for broke on the presentation and marketing. Hey, it worked for the iPod--there are plenty of mp3 players out there with greater functionality, but people like how the iPod looks and will seek it out.

That said, people will pay through the nose for an mp3 player. Between M$'s bundling and the open-source movement, how exactly does a start-up web browser plan to make money? Honestly, if there's a niche in the market I would think it would be for ultra-secure browsers, not for flashy hip browsers.

I won't flock to it...

Mozilaa doesn't want to sell me anything and it's a great browser and has a huge head start on these guys... I'll pass thank you. This sounds to me like an idea that the clueless were buying into about 8 years ago.

Indiana Jones and the Portal of Doom

To me it seems like a browser with a built in portal. What happens if your blog violates the terms of service? No more surfing for you?

Personally, I'd rather have seperate tools than one big web-a-majig anyway.

Flock will be Open Source

... also... did you know that Flock will be Open Source [feedblog.org] ?

Kevin

Slashdot: The newest shill on the block!

That's right... News for Nerds, and Stuff that matters, and now the coolest place to get corporate press releases and sponsered product reviews!

The Web Browser of the Future is not a Web Browser

I am actually sympathetic [communitywiki.org] to the basic idea here: New platform.

I'm newly skeptical of the approach of endlessly creating side-systems [communitywiki.org] on the web browser.

There are amazing things that are possible [communitywiki.org] when you make a new platform for integrating ideas.

For example, we can envision a world where you can watch people writing blog posts as they write them. We can imagine working on documents together with others in real-time. [0x539.de] We can imagine social networks, [foaf-project.org] we can imagine shared web browsing. We can imagine going to a web page, and seeing other people who happen to be browsing the web page at the same time as well. We can imagine looking at them, seeing what their affiliations are; There are all these things. We have seen voice communication. [skype.com] Within 10 years, good voice synthesis will be coupled, and we'll be able to look [secondlife.com] and sound like anybody.

Now, what we haven't seen, even in our imaginations, is all this stuff working together. Integrated into one platform.

Doing this stuff piece-meal, a little bit at a time, on the edge of the network, isn't going to work. It's just not. It'd take forever. Building new standards into the existing network just takes forever. There is no design team. Nadah. Nothing.

Where we see the cool stuff happening, really, is in these large behemeouth new platform.

Now, sure, we can get some milage out of AJAX. [wikipedia.org] We can do sophisticated things with that.

But are we really going to make a 3D world with live document editing, voice & synthesis, presence, infinite versioning on everything, avatars, the whole thing, yadda yadda yadda, using just AJAX? Within 10-15 years? Hell no! It takes at least at least 5 years to make a new specification pretty much standard amongst users. Even RSS aggregators have only 10% penetration amongst blog readers.

What does this mean? It means that a new platform is in the works. Whether you know it or not, a new platform is in the works. Which of the new upstarts is going to be it, remains to be seen.

Sure, sure, sure-- there will be gateways between the world of Vanilla HTML + AJAX into these new worlds.

At some point, you can make a computer render pictures of the new world, and ship them off in AJAX. You can even play Lemmings in the browser now. (Well, you could have... [xs4all.nl]) But the new world is going to be built in the new world. It's not going to be built piecemeal out here in weblandia. When we use browsers to access it, it will be a window into that world, but it will not be that world.

Oh, god, please, no...

For example, we can envision a world where you can watch people writing blog posts as they write them.

And for real thrills, you can watch paint dry. ... "he's started a new paragraph..." ... "woot, is he talking about Microsoft yet?" ... "nah, it's something about his kid." ... "screw this, I'm gonna see what Dvorak's up to."

"their's"

Impressive, that one's quite rare.

Plain English for Aunt Gert

From the site blog:

People I know seem not really to know what I do for a living. They know it has to do with computers, and most of them know I'm working on software, and many know that I'm doing something with browser software. In a nutshell, here's what my company does: Flock hopes to turn the browser into a dashboard for collaborating

Sigh. Yep. Tell them that. It's "a dashboard for collaborating". That'll convince those non-computer-savvy neighbors! Let's see what Aunt Gert thinks:

A dashboard is that place in the car where I keep my plastic Virgin Mary. There's also some dial thingies I occasionally look at, although half of them I'm not sure what they do. And "collaborating", I don't even know what that means, although it sounds a little illegal.

Why do geeks simply never say "It's a way to work together with your friends over the Web!" Why do we have to use nonsense words like "dashboard" and "collaboration" when there are perfectly lovely plain English substitutes?

The two way web

Well thank God we can finally text; and even talk to each other over the Internet. It's about bloody time. Why didn't someone think of this sooner?

KFG

They lost me at...

..."We started Flock to build tools that empower people."

I don't want my browser to "empower" me, I want it to quickly and efficiently let me waste time between classes while reading about computers and things that explode. The thought of an "empowered" browser (and my experiences at a local women's college) brings up some very disturbing mental images.

Flock: You seem to be searching for pornography, which subjugates women and furthers the phallusocracy that keeps undeserving white men in power. Instead, I've directed your search towards some Andrea Dworkin you might want to peruse.

Flock: Your search for 'Black Norwegian Metal' returned 217,000 hits. But might I suggest some Natalie Merchant, Bikini Kill, Ani DiFranco, or other womyn-friendly artists?

Flock: I notice that your Slashdot history shows a disturbing number of posts that suggest discrimination towards homosexuals, people of African descent, and extraplanetary immigrants. Until you show a pattern of clicking and browsing of sites that further the cause of disenfranchised peoples of color or alternate sexuality, I will encrypt your "special" folder that you think I don't know about.

And I bet it smells like patchouli, too.

Not written in Visual BASIC.

Wired states (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68823 ,00.html [wired.com]) that it's based off of Firefox. It is even developed by a member of the Mozilla Foundation. So perhaps a better question to ask would be, Is this browser meant to compete directly with Firefox and Seamonkey?