browsers

A Newbie's Guide to Flock

What is Flock and why should you use it?

Flock is essentially Firefox with a handful of highly focused extensions built in to let you connect with social services like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and others. We think Flock 1.0, which is now in public beta, offers a fantastic browsing experience that brings you the best of Firefox with a few tweaks that prove to be exceptionally helpful. For Web newbies out there, Flock's offering provides an easy way to manage and monitor profiles, media uploads, and communications with all your social networks while continuing to browse other sites like you would in any old browser.

Here are four steps to get you up and running with Flock's biggest features:

1. Setting up permissions and accounts

Once installed, Flock will want to make itself your primary browser. We'd recommend holding off on making it the default until you decide whether or not you like it more than whatever you're currently using. Just remember the default browser is the one that URLs open up from when clicked on from other applications on your computer.

Flock is based on the same underlying code as Firefox, and basic features work the same, so if you're a Firefox user you'll feel right at home.

To experience what Flock offers beyond Firefox, the first thing you'll want to do is connect it to your social networking accounts. To do this, you'll have to introduce yourself to the sidebar menu, which is where you'll find nine icons that serve as ground control for most of Flock's special features. Click on the one shaped like a key, which takes you to the accounts and services control panel. Here you'll find links split up into four sections for people, media sharing, blogging, and social bookmarking. Clicking each of the links will take you to the site or service, and if you've got login credentials, entering them will automatically save your account settings.

Continue reading to learn about ways to track friends, exploring and saving social media, and easy ways to share and blog Web content you come across using some of Flock's built-in tools.… Read more

Opera's betas

Culminating in a party at San Francisco's Rickshaw Stop last night, the biggest Web browser publisher from Norway--also, the only Web browser publisher from Norway--kicked off a number of beta versions. Opera 9.5 beta 1 and Opera Mini 4 beta 3 were made public yesterday, introducing a heap of new features.

Opera links mobile devices to Web bookmarks

The newest versions of Opera's Web browsers will allow both mobile devices and PCs to share a common set of bookmarks.

The Norwegian browser company is set to release beta versions of Opera 9.5 and Opera Mini 4 later Thursday at a rock show, of all things, in San Francisco on the last day of the CTIA conference. The company is most excited about a new feature called Opera Link, Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera, said in an interview just a block away from the Moscone Center and the CTIA crowds. Opera Link is a … Read more

Visual search comes to Nokia phones

If you start seeing people pointing their Nokia camera phones at books, product packaging and other print materials, it's not that they have some weird cell phone-related tic. More than likely, they're using the Thrrum Visual Browser for Cameraphone Search.

The browser lets users point the camera in their phones at objects of interest and get relevant information, product prices and more, right on their handset. Mountain View, Calif.-based 23half, which makes the software, just announced that the app will be available for select Nokia Nseries phones, including the N73, N73ME, N95 and N95-3. It's also … Read more

Flock comes together, releases v1.0

The Web 2.0 definition of a misanthrope is somebody who doesn't belong to any social networking sites, and by that yardstick I fit the bill. I don't have a MySpace account, nor a Facebook. I do not Twitter except when I've had way too much coffee. I'm not even going to begin to tell you what I think a LinkSpank is, and as far as I'm concerned, Digging requires a shovel and a backyard. I have neither.

So I may not be the best person to evaluate Flock 1.0 beta, a browser built on Firefox that is designed to make interfacing with social networking sites extremely easy. Still, I've got a Flickr account and I blog. Would Flock be useful for a social minimalist such as myself?

How green is that brand? BadBuster colors the credentials

BadBuster gives a quick glimpse of "green" ratings of businesses you run across while reading searching, or shopping online.

BadBuster took a few quick minutes for me to download and set up, although it stalled on one of two Windows XP machines. Once installed, BadBuster underlines on Web pages the names of brands and goods it has ranked, with colors indicating the level or lack of "greenness." For example, green underscores the BP oil company, known for its "Beyond Petroleum" campaign, while glaring red marks notorious polluter Exxon. Yellow is the middle rating.

Roll … Read more

De.licio.us + Google Web History = Hooeey

Hooeey is a new bookmarking and tracking service for your browsing habits. You install a small toolbar in your browser, and it will quietly keep tabs on all your tabs, including which sites you're going to, how long you're staying at each one, and when you're doing it. At the same time, Hooeey adds a social networking layer, letting you share specific sites with others, both on the Hooeey network, and other, larger social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us and Reddit. The goal is to let you centralize your favorites, and make them easier to share … Read more

WebRunner keeps you focused

Mozilla's WebRunner is a single-serving version of Firefox that strips away all the bells and whistles. There's no Web surfing to be done with this lightweight tool. Menus, extensions, themes, toolbars, and navigation have all been excised, like a sculptor cutting away excess marble.

What you're left with is a Site Specific Browser for Windows, Mac, or Linux that uses bookmark files with the WEBAPP extension. The installer configures these files to open in WebRunner, but there's no "launch program" icon or option. You just double-click on a WEBAPP file you've downloaded or created, and off you go, ready to get to work without getting distracted by the temptation to surf anywhere else.

Wii's Opera Internet channel goes Web 2.0

Yesterday an update rolled out from the folks at Opera, bringing the highly popular Wii Internet channel into the 20th century with full support for USB keyboards, widgets, and link sharing. Normally this news would not excite me, but as a Wii owner, having struggled to actually type an e-mail, or enter anything more than a URL or login using a Wiimote on the onscreen keyboard, believe me when I say this is big.

In addition to the keyboard news, Opera is now supporting two very interesting Web features. The first is a new "Widget View" mode, letting … Read more

Mozilla aims Firefox at mobile devices

Another star is coming into alignment in the mobile Linux galaxy: Firefox.

Mozilla has set up a group to develop the Firefox Web browser for mobile devices, hiring new staff and elevating the priority of the work to the same level as desktop computers. Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, announced the mobile Firefox move on his blog Tuesday evening.

"We are serious about bringing the Firefox experience and technology to mobile devices," he said. "Bringing Firefox add-ons, the Mozilla platform, open source, and a large and passionate community to the closed and fragmented mobile … Read more