Another Gecko browser: Flock

Another Gecko browser: Flock

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/10/a_new_sort_of_b.html

Just now debuting on the Web scene is a newfangled browser design, Flock, from Flock Inc., an 8-person startup located in--what else?--a garage across from the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto. This piece of software is based on Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, which is also the foundation for Firefox, but it takes browsing deep into the realm of social networking. The target user: bloggers.
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The initial Flock, which will go into public beta in mid-October, is designed from the ground up as a "social browser" for what its inventors call the "two-way" Web. It offers features designed to make it easier to blog, tag content, and share photographs. When a user lands on a Web page that she or he finds interesting, and wants to post about it on their blog, they simply right click on their mouse, which pulls up a blogging wizard. In the process, the software automatically adds citations and links. The browser also has an RSS feed built in. Other handy features: an open-source search engine that automatically indexes every Web site a user visits for easy rediscovery, and the ability to easily share bookmarks with friends.

I saw this yesterday and requested an invite but haven't received one yet. As noted, it is some sort of social networking browser.

http://www.flock.com/home/

I think that this is something that Opera was going to do, although they never really stated it. When they introduced the new community site, I think that I read somewhere that there the next versions of Opera will be more closely connected with it. Although, these are only my opinions, and in the world of blogging, some can be incorrect.

What exactly is a social networking browser supposed to be

From what I can tell, it's mainly integrating collaboration tools into the browser. Bookmarks are tied to del.icio.us, there are built-in blogging and Flickr tools, etc. I recall hearing something about wikis in one discussion. Wired did an article about them last month: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68823,00.html

Someone at Slashdot posted a link to one of their developers' blog posts with links to press/blog reaction: http://fredo.wordpress.com/2005/09/24/more-articles-leading-up-to-launch/

More on Flock... Flock: The Web 2.0 Browser

Here are some screenshots that I just finished taking....

Ironicly, I posted them to My Opera section.

http://my.opera.com/d3bruts1d/albums/show.dml?id=9575


What I posted are screenshots of the Windows version of Flock. I doubt I'll touch the Linux and Mac versions.

I just heard from Geoffrey Arone at Flock that they will be launching it to the general public within 3 hours (by 5 pm PST).

Source: TechCrunch

Update: I received an invitation to download Flock last evening. Haven't had the time to really look at it yet but below is a link to the release notes. One thing that I think I will like about Flock is the built-in client for posting to blogs.
Release Notes

Developer Preview version now available: http://www.flock.com

Flock Developer Preview is now available.

Our code couldn't wait any longer to be free!

But! This preview ain't for the faint of heart! If you're the bleeding-edge type and don't mind a few scrapes and busted knees from time to time, feel free to give it a whirl.

We've got interesting ideas in this thing. We want to know what we've done right how we could improve. And we've got a lot of work ahead of us!

So if a bucket of source code and developer binaries sound enticing, head over to our Developer page now.

I'm just trying it now.
I'd like a "community-enabled" browser, specially using Opera as the base browser, but I'm very doubtful: one can have the idea of binding a browser to a community (like this forum? ), or services like del.icio.us/My Yahoo/what-you-want, but this forces me using these and only these services: what does happen If X, a newer, powerful online bookmark management, comes out, and I WANT to use X? I'm forced using del.icio.us, because del.icio.us support is hard coded in the browser: I can only hope that Opera/Flock/... developers, or maybe provider of X, "add" this support to my browser.
And what does happen if for example del.icio.us providers change access protocols to their service?

I think it's possible to have these kind of integrations only under well defined, open standards.

Consider integrating searches in Opera: it's a [search] "service integration", but it works because it' standard-based (pure html/http): I can add whatever search engine I want, without problems.