Flock, the Web 2.0 Browser? 263
escay writes "Cardinal, the Beta 1 version of Firefox-based browser Flock, was released Tuesday with many polished features. Some of the features include drag-and-drop photo uploading for Flickr and Photobucket, an in-built RSS aggregator, direct blogging tool, and shared favorites/bookmarks. In step with Web 2.0 philosophy, Flock provides a rich user-centric experience, making it easier to bring information to the user and vice versa. It is available for Linux/Mac/Windows, and you can download it here. (And for those of you trying to get Flash working in Firefox on an AMD64 Linux machine, try this and be pleasantly surprised!)"
Hmm, Sounds Like a Browsers... (Score:1, Insightful)
Used since first Alpha (Score:5, Insightful)
For the target market I think this is just an excellent example of what can be done with Open Source, they basically found/created their own nitch, and filled it. Seems like a good company thus far, but now comes the hard part... 4) Profit???
File alongside: Songbird (with almost all the same comments from above)
Re:Hmm, Sounds Like a Browsers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, folks, *most* of the functions I've read about so far on their site exist in some form as FF plugins. I think what they're doing is nifty...except that I have no use for it. The overhyped buzzword Web 2.0 is all about social networking, and frankly I just don't do much of that online any more. I'm too busy networking away from the internet to care about flickr and myspace.
Hype, hype, hype and even more hype (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone looking for blog features in Firefox should take a look at the Performancing extension instead.
http://performancing.com/firefox [performancing.com]
Re:flash??? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Flash on AMD64 (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks to me like they just give you the 32-bit Firefox with 32-bit Flash. That has always worked on 64-bit machines.
this is terrible (Score:1, Insightful)
Am I alone, or does this whole Net 2.0 thing make others cringe too?
Re:Hmm, Sounds Like a Browsers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm, Sounds Like a Browsers... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's pretty much it, except it's not really based on Firefox itself but on Gecko.
I gave Flock a try a week or so ago though. I hated it, the look is bizarre and I don't care about photobucket or Flickr or all that crap, so the "strong points" of Flock were kind-of wasted on me.
Web 2.0... (Score:4, Insightful)
People keep spouting off about all this innovation that makes up Web 2.0, but it looks like the same old stuff to me with the exception that the companies haven't run out of venture capital yet. That and what we used to call an AOL user, we now call a 'blogger'.
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if you want a truly minimalist graphical browser, may I suggest Dillo [dillo.org]; while it isn't stated outright as one of the design goals, Dillo is definitely a very simple, compact program which does what it needs to, and does it well – but doesn't implement additional bloat. I suggest checking for one of the patched versions, because they add in nice features like tabs and anti-aliasing, but whichever Dillo version you choose, it's guaranteed a tiny little program for the real minimalist!
Different (key)strokes (Score:5, Insightful)
Judging by the general tone of this discussion, yes.
There are an awful lot of people on the web, and on Slashdot, who don't seem to make a distinction between "X is aimed at a different target audience" and "X is pointless." (There's also a large segment of the population for which demonstrating disdain for something is a way of demonstrating superiority, but that's another issue.)
Maybe someone needs to write a "people have different needs and tastes" tutorial. It would have to be in the form of a HOWTO or maybe a man page.
Re:i thought this was hype too (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:2, Insightful)
Web 2.0 Browser??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reed
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, Flock is aimed at that 1%. And they're betting on that 1% growing.
Most of their target audience will be interested in the built-in feed reader, the drag-n-drop blogging, etc. Whether that's enough people to sustain a company (and whether Flock can collect enough revenue from partnership deals) remains to be seen. Certainly Opera's comparatively small marketshare, usually cited as less than 1% worldwide, has been plenty to sustain them for years,* so it's at least possible.
*Admittedly Opera's got more revenue streams than just partnerships, since they've got cell phone makers licensing their mobile browser, and they'll be selling the Nintendo DS and Wii versions, etc.
This brings up privacy issues with related service (Score:3, Insightful)
Grow up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you even TRIED the damn thing??
I probably will be modded down, but anyway, I just want to say this.
I really don't understand why a lot of the Slashdotters are reacting very VERY negative about anything that has to do with Web 2.0. I too hate the way marketing people are using this term, but we are definately experiencing a transition from the single sites based web to a web environment that is based on social interaction and sharing. Internet is just not the same as it was a couple of years ago. Or am I talking bullshit here?? Doesn't everything starts to become connected to everything?
Why does it irritate you when people start to see that big changes and name it Web 2.0? People are really over reacting here. Why??
Re:Grow up... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's a reaction to the fact that web 2.0 is a meaningless term. Is it the (non-existent) symantec web? AJAX? Blogs? Uploading photos? Web services? RSS? Wikis?
It just seems to be a new buzzword for a bunch of technologies that actually aren't even that new themselves, and have already been or are being over-hyped.
Yes, there is a trend to sites that are more interactive, but sites don't interact with each other much so its really just people sharing info on the single sites.
I would bet though, the vast majority of users aren't using the internet any differently. I coded an RSS feed aggregator for out corporate internet homepage recently and almost nobody knew what RSS was. People using these new sharing technologies are ironically becoming very insular, blogs aren't changing the world, most people don't know what one is. They just seem important to the people involved.
I think these things will become important eventually, but the whole Web 2.0 thing, and all the technologies that make it up, are neither new nor dramatically changing the Internet for most people. And many of the people advocating them are just annoying.