Featured Freeware: Flock
Flock is the first major browser geared toward social-networking addicts. Built on Firefox code and available for both Windows and Mac users, it will do absolutely nothing for you if you're looking to get away from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, blogging, and other Web 2.0 mainstays. If, on the other hand, this is one addiction you're looking to feed with a shovel, Flock has everything you need to stay one step ahead of the bleeding edge.
Most of Flock's special features revolve around its nine special menu buttons and the sidebar that sits below them.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Nine buttons at the top of the collapsible sidebar make accessing any of your social-networking or frequently used Web sites easier than Twittering your breakfast. Each button either helps you get your message out faster, such as dragging and dropping photos into Flickr, or helps you read blogs quicker, as with the integrated RSS reader. The People button turns the sidebar into a nifty way to track your social-networking accounts, and there are also hotlinks to most major blogging sites including configuration options for self-published blogs. Most regular Firefox extensions work, too. Even though it's resource-heavy, Flock is the only way to go if Twittering, Facebooking, or YouTubing is how you spend most of your time online.
Seth peers into the deep, dark corners of software so that you don't have to. He has yet to suffer a single nightmare about OS/2. You can follow him on Twitter. 
But Flock it's Great.
- by tm_anon December 1, 2008 1:23 PM PST
- The people sidebar only gets in the way when it's not in use, but that's when you should use the nifty little feature that gray x is good for. When collapsed, it still checks all those sites and stores the information for when you want to check them again. Flock actually got me into RSS feeds and is currently helping me look for jobs using them. My favorite feature of Flock is the clipboard, there's nothing like it that I've seen in any other browser and, because of how it holds photos, I've been able to share them more easily by simply dragging and dropping into my Instant Messenger. The link shows up for the image and the person I'm talking to just has to click it to view it. I used to think the only thing missing from Flock is a portable version so that I could use it from other computers, but then I found one listed in the forums at flock.com. With the current obsession with Chrome, I've even found myself going into those stories, chat rooms and forums and spreading the word. The most repeated line about Chrome is "It's really fast, but....." Flock doesn't feel really fast, but it also doesn't seem like it's doing anything until you realize you've just checked your myspace, facebook, twitter feed, email and a myriad of other social networking sites in the time it would take Chrome to load up 2 of them. Flock isn't faster at page rendering that Chrome, it's faster at getting you the relevant information.
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