Browser with social networking features

05 July 2008
Platform: Windows 2000,Windows XP,Windows Vista
Type: freeware
Manufacturer: Flock, Inc
Size: 10.7MB
Rating:

Verdict: An open source web browser using Mozilla technologies

Flock is a new web browser that combines integrated photo sharing with RSS support.

Bloggers are a target audience for Flock, which is based on the Mozilla Firefox, because it has been designed to keep people up to date with news, blogs and when friends appear online.

Favourite websites can be kept up to date with other computers that a user may have access to by using the del.icio.us and shadows services. These websites can then be shared with other users,

Flock organises news from RSS feeds in a pane rather than as bookmarks. Each feed is checked for new stories hourly. Flock shows an incon in the address bar to show that a feed is available from that page. Simply click on that icon to sign up.

Flock can automatically add photos and snippets of other webpages to blogs written with Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad and WordPress. A special web snippets bar has been added to store quotes from other websites. Users simply drag pictures onto the Photo icon to upload, or drag and drop images which are automatically stored on to a Flickr or PhotoBucket account.

Search with Flock is slightly different from other browsers because as text is typed in, Flock will start searching from the web as well as a user's favourites and history. These initial results are shown in a drop down menu.

Note that versions for Mac OS X and Linux are available from the Flock website.