Well now, speaking of extensions.

Engadget.com has an entry on porting firefox extensions to Flock.

They link to a guy called Geoff over at frobba.com where he details how to dissect your extensions to make them able to install in Flock.  It’s not too difficult to do, as the extensions just have a small part in the one file contained in the extension, that lists the intended browsers that the extension is for.  Extract, edit the file, insert some xml, close, and voila, flock allows you to install the extention.  Beware however, that not all extensions will automagically “just work” in flock if they work in firefox.  There are bound to be some extensions that won’t work.  Flock and Firefox are, after all, not the exact same browser.

Technorati Tags: flock, extensions, firefox

After playing a bit more with flock, I found their Extensions page.

I immediately installed my standard extensions, being AdBlock (Flock has AdBlock plus), the Web Developer extension, and Noscript (a nice javascript dis/enabler…).

The one extension I initially passed over was the CustomizeGoogle extension, as I was already using the Personalised Google Homepage, and thought that this extension was going to do the same.  Boy was I wrong.

I noticed that RIP had an entry about CustomizeGoogle, I read through it, and tried it out.  He has a pretty good summary of what the extension does, so click over there to read a bit more.  Also check out the extend.flock.com CustomizeGoogle entry, and also the CustomizeGoogle homepage.

When installing the extension in Flock though, make sure you do it via the extend.flock.com site, as it’s been modified to install into Flock, and the extension on the CustomizeGoogle.com page only seems to install in Firefox.

Technorati Tags: flock, firefox, google, extensions, customizegoogle

I’ve been using flock for the past couple of hours, playing with the features, seeing what it can do.

My first thoughts are that it’s Firefox++, but it definitely shows that it’s a preview release.  So far no crashes, but several little niggles, rough edges that need attention.  It has all the great features of Firefox, plus a bunch more.

It has nice integrated blogging features, with a “Blog this” option.  After setting up access to your blog, it allows you to select text on a webpage, right-click, choose “Blog this”, which then opens a window, with the selected text automatically blockquoted and with citations.  This allows for nice quick blogging of interesting pages or quotes.  The blogging integration includes support for blogger.com blogs, and Metablog compatible blogs, Movable Type, and blogs that support the Atom API (not sure how that works though…).  I use WordPress, which is Metablog compatible.  You supply it with your blog’s username and password, and voila, instant access to add, change and delete your blog entries.

Flock also features del.icio.us integration, where it doesn’t use local bookmarks, but uses your del.icio.us account to store your bookmarks for you, including any tags you specify.  By default though, it is set to save the bookmarks offline.  You have to enable “Favourite Sharing” in the Flock preferences.

Flock’s extension support seems to be a bit buggy, as it took me several attempts to get some extensions installed, instead of the browser displaying the binary content of the .xpi file.  I can’t get the Bloglines notifier installed, as the extension managed doesn’t have an option to install an extension from a local drive, and it constantly insists on download the bloglines xpi file, instead of opening it with the extension manager…

Another ‘extension’ type feature they added was flickr.com integration, where you can get the browser to login to your flickr account, and you can drag and drop pics from flickr into your blog posts.  Handy.

There’s also a window called the Shelf.  It basically functions as a visual clipboard for selected-and-dragged-to-the-Shelf text from webpages, also blockquoted and and citations added.  Text only though.  Also handy.

The  blog this feature can do with a bit of work.  I’m typing this entry in the blog this window, and I’m finding some rather odd occurrences like pressing enter to break a paragraph, makes a paragraph break further down the page, etc.  Also, looking at the html that this feature produces, it’s not as clean and legible as I’d like it to be.  A nice thing is that they add technorati tags to the post.

Flock also seems to render pages much faster than I’m used to.  The
browser handles well, similar to Firefox.  Curently though, it really
just feels like Firefox that’s been tweaked a bit, and some extensions
built into the code.

I’ll definitely be sticking with Flock for now, it’s fast, works, and it has a lot of potential…  To read a bit more on getting started with Flock, and what it is capable of, have a look at the Flock Getting Started page.

Technorati Tags: flock, browser, firefox

Looking at my Personalised Google Homepage this morning, I saw an article on Slashdot about a new browser called Flock being released into public as a developer’s preview. What’s special about Flock? Well, it’s based on Mozilla Firefox, but doesn’t fork the Firefox code.

Flock also features some useful built-in features like RSS, de.licio.us integration, and even Flickr integration.

Zdnet.com.au has a story on Flock, talking a bit about the browser’s history, and where it’s going… Geoffrey Arone, co-founder of Flock, has a mention of Flock on his blog, with some pictures too.

The concept of including social aspects and integration of social website tools into a browser is quite an interesting idea, where Firefox has been doing it with extensions for a while now. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Flock and its developments.

There are Windows, Linux and MacOS binaries for download, and also some source tarballs… If you’re into trying and testing early code releases, go download now.

See my first thoughts on Flock here.

Linspire, the self-proclaimed World’s Easiest Desktop Linux, is giving away their OS for free for a couple of days. (Usually sells for $49.95)
Click on the link above for details, offer ends 6 September 2005.

Wow, the guys over at Lego are brilliant.

They’ve come up with a piece of software that you download for free (9mb download only), and you can design your own custom Lego sets. OK, so this has been done before with Lego Creator type software. What’s special about LEGO Factory? Well, you can order the pieces from lego.com to actually build the sets you designed! You even get to share your designs on their website.

The prices aren’t too bad either, the one example I saw had 607 pieces, and cost $40. OK, maybe that’s expensive.

Kids have it easy these days.

So yesterday I found Google’s Google Talk app. Downloaded it (along with the new Google Desktop), and installed. The two interface very nicely together, Google Talk becoming a panel in Google Desktop [googleblog.blogspot.com].

I already had Skype installed and running (With the Pamela voicemail app to take free voicemail.), so I decided to compare Google Talk with Skype.

First impression? I’m not impressed. Google Talk had a very obvious “International Phonecall” feel to it, with a two second-or-so latency, even though we are on the same ADSL network and 15km from eachother. Also, when comparing it to Skype in terms of quality, Skype’s quality just seemed more superior than Google’s, more crips, louder, clearer.

Google Talk is a brilliant concept, and its release was timed perfectly. However, I think Google needs to do a bit more work on getting the call quality up and the latency down, before it will become a viable competitor to the likes of Skype or VoipBuster.

Google Talk also seems to be lacking in the feature department. The great thing is that its Instant Messaging is based on the Jabber chat protocol [wikipedia.org], which makes it nice and open and gives you the ability to connect to the Google Talk server using any Jabber enabled IM client (such as Gaim [wikipedia.org] or Trillian [wikipedia.org]). What it’s missing is the ability to break out of the Google server onto land or cellphone lines, which I’m sure is in development right now, and I look forward to it. Another great thing that Google has there is the fact that you use your GMail account to authenticate to the server, which just adds to the value of GMail accounts. There’s also now talk that Gmail is about to become a non-invite-only sign-up-if-you-don’t-have-one system, see the Google Blog entry here [googleblog.blogspot.com].

I’ll be running both Skype and Google Talk (The two seem to be able to work just fine when running at the same time, I’m not sure what happens when you get a Skype call when you’re already in a Google Talk call. Heh.), and will definitely be keeping an eye on Google Talk’s development. Google has yet another goldmine there, and I think with the next version it’s bound to become a very viable alternative to the other more mature VOIP services out there.

Google Talk’s release was all over a lot of news sources yesterday, so I gathered some links about it here:

• Google poised to unveil new messaging system [iol.co.za]
• Google gets everyone talking [iol.co.za]
• Google Talk takes a bow [news24.com]
• Google gets to talking [GoogleBlog]
• Google Talk Far From Superior [cbsnews.com]
• Google Talk (Beta) [pcmag.com]
• Google Talk lives… [zdnet.com]
• Google News Search on “Google Talk” [news.google.com]

Oh yes, the Big G has done it again.

This time, Google has released Google Talk, a jabber-combatible messaging server, and a Windows client to accompany it. They have detailed instructions on getting most of the popular IM clients out there to connect to their server.

Several things stand out to me about this new service, one specifically being the second-last column on their IM Clients page, being:

Voice calls to other Google Talk users

Their Google Talk Windows client allows you to VOIP other Google Talk users. Excellent!
I will be trying it out tonight when I get home. Meanwhile, fire up your favourite IM client, and connect now.

It seems you need a gmail account. If you still don’t have one, where have you been? I have lots of invites to send, so let me know if anybody wants one.

Go Go Gadget Google!

Oh, and for some interesting Easter Egg goodness, see this slashdot.org post about a ‘hidden’ game.

VoipBuster beats SkypeOut’s rates – Engadget – www.engadget.com

That’s pretty impressive. Head over to VoipBuster to download the client (Windows only I’m afraid). This is the deal. You download, install, register. You buy a single Euro’s worth of credit on their system, and you get free phone calls to a list of over 20 countries. Landlines only though. No idea how they do it, but as Engadget points out, free is a good price.

I think this is great, and I’d definitely use it if I had somebody to phone. But for receiving incoming calls, I’d recommend the Gizmo Project over Skype, as it’s (a) Open Source (Skype isn’t), and (b) It seems to support other standards like SIP phones, etc. out the box. The only thing Skype has up on GizmoProject is that Skype has a Linux client, Gizmo’s one is still on it’s way.

Boing Boing has a post about a Show all inbound links to this page Greasemonkey script

This is a very cool script for the awesome Firefox Extension called GreaseMonkey. The script is called TechnoProxy and was written by the guys over at Peer Pressure.

TechnoProxy is basically a “who links to this page I’m viewing” script, and it shows this information very uninvasively with a transparent panel at the top of your browser window, once you click on the small icon in the top-left-corner of the window. It cleverly uses the Technorati XML services to accomplish this.