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PC World reported this week that the product development cycle for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 has slipped but by how long is difficult to say.

Microsoft has been bombarding the computer trade press with news about the expected features of the new product, but the campaign has all the ear marks of vaporware. The vaporware tactic is designed to get end-users, especially large enterprises, to hold off making decisions to adopt technology from competitors in favor of a not yet shipped future application. The vaporware tactic is carried out by flooding the marketplace with news about the expected new product in ways that case a doubtful light on current products. It is a form of competition using smoke and mirrors. It is also called "ghosting."

The PC World story cites a posting on IEBlog, the Microsoft blog for its IE team, which says the company will post "an updated prerelease build of IE 7 for Windows XP publicly during the first calendar quarter of 2006." The posting was written by Dean Hachamovitch, product line manager for IE at Microsoft.

Microsoft attributes its decision to delay the rollout to "user requests" for an additional review cycle. Really?

Flock browser released

A new browser aimed at social networking and using the Mozilla browser code was offered as a developer download this week. Based on the revenue model of paid search advertising the new browser is entering a crowded field.

Flock Launched
New browser gives taste of Web 2.0
By Renai LeMay, ZDNet Australia
Published on ZDNet News: October 21, 2005, 6:24 AM PT

A small team of developers in California on Friday launched a cutting-edge Firefox-based Web browser dubbed Flock, which integrates next-generation Web technologies such as RSS content feeds, blogs and bookmark and photo sharing.

The team of developers was spearheaded by Bart Decrem, who is well known in the open-source community due to his involvement in the Mozilla Foundation and his ill-fated start-up Eazel, which from 1999 until its demise in 2001 aimed to bring greater usability features to the Linux desktop.

[snip]

The browser's new features are based on new Web technologies fast attracting fans in the online community--part of a movement that has come to be known as Web 2.0.

The Flock team has taken note of the Internet community's rapidly growing obsession with both blogs and the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) standard that makes it possible to speedily know when a blog has been updated.

Flock includes a built-in RSS reader, which allows a user to read all of their favorite blogs in one place, without the need to separately navigate to each one. Various Web sites and software programs already provide this functionality, but Flock is one of the first to integrate it into a Web browser.

The browser also facilitates blogging by the user with a "Create a blog post" button located in the main navigation bar. The button launches a sophisticated blogging tool that integrates on a drag-and-drop level with Flickr, a popular online photo management and sharing service recently acquired by Yahoo.

Flock integrates with a number of popular blogging services, including Wordpress, Six Apart and Blogger, according to Decrem's own blog.

All of the features both reflect popular usage within early adopter elements of the Web and are squarely aimed at providing collaborative Web browsing features.

[snip]

Decrem also addressed the issue of how his free software project would attract revenue.

While he acknowledged most Web browsers were freely available, he said several companies, such as the Mozilla Corporation and competitor Opera, had been able to leverage integration between their software and online services like search engines to make money.

"Opera's CEO recently explained that his company was able to release the browser for free thanks to an expanded search sponsorship arrangement with Google," he wrote. "The Mozilla Foundation has alluded to search related business arrangements and has created a for-profit subsidiary."

Social butterfly browser debuts

Killer Buzz Flocks to New Browser

By Jeff MacIntyre
Wired

02:00 AM Sep. 14, 2005 PT

Perhaps the world does not need another web browser -- but it may want Bart Decrem's.

Decrem and a small cadre of programmers in Palo Alto, California, have spent this summer quietly readying Flock, an open-source browser, for an early October beta launch. Several members of the team, including Decrem, hail from the Mozilla Foundation, which produced the Firefox browser upon which Flock is built.

Flock advertises itself as a "social browser," meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It's a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user.

It's no coincidence that the buzz has built rapidly to a rolling boil. Blogger and tech pundit Robert Scoble simply calls it "awesome." Given the recent swell of anticipation surrounding Flock, the preceding stealth period seems quaint by contrast. Since an August demo at Bar Camp, enthusiastic blog posts have amounted to love letters in their enthusiasm.