A little while back I mentioned that I’m trying out the browser Flock on the recommendations of some of the Twitterati I know and respect.
Evan Hamilton, the Community Ambassador at Flock, left a comment asking me to keep using it despite my reservations, because having to jump through a couple of hoops to re-install my Firefox plugins and extensions inside of Flock might actually reveal that a few of those ‘bells and whistles’ are actually useless and tying up my processor.
Wise words indeed! I regularly (about every 12-14 months) wipe my C: drives clean, reload Windows and start again as a way of clearing out the ‘crud’ that accumulates when you download and install applications that you use once or twice then forget about.
[And yes, Linux fans, I know what you are going to say, but until I can be guaranteed to be able to run, inter alia, OneNote, PowerPoint 2007, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Windows Live Writer, ActiveWords, ACDSee and EndNote on it I'm sticking with Windows!]
The latest version of Flock just updated itself on my pc and I have to say that I am becoming more and more enamoured with it.
Here’s a screen-shot of Flock showing my page in Facebook (click on it to open it up much larger in another browser window). Some things I want you to note:
- The left-hand bar showing the last few status updates of my friends. This status update bar is more comprehensive than the one I used to swear by on Firefox
- The media bar above my browser tabs. It shows the media streams available on Mitch Joel’s profile – photo streams, videos of Mitch, and so on — very handy
- The ability to update that media stream via rss subscription so that any new media that Joel uploads to Facebook I also get notified about.
Think about that last point for a moment…
Say I have a brand — brand ‘Lee’ — and I want to promote that brand tastefully but aggressively. How easy would it be to ensure that I offer enough reasons why someone might want to subscribe to my media feed and then let technology keep me in that subscriber’s forefront of mind?
The more I play with Flock, the more I am starting to really enjoy my experience.
If only they’d fix the JavaScript and embedded video issue I mentioned a few weeks ago… Over to you, Evan.
