Testing Flock, and liking it better than ScribeFire

It's been a while since I have used Flock, the "Social Web Browser", and I am happy to say that it has improved a lot since we last met.  I am typing this blog entry directly into the superb Flock blogging editor.  Here is a screenshot:

(the transparency is from Compiz; I used it in order to show the browser window behind the other things I had up).

So, anyway, here are my "likes" about Flock:

1. Super easy to connect one's social networking accounts to the browser
2. Super easy to update statuses in Twitter, Facebook, &c.
3. Nice blog-post editor, and very fast recognition of blog type, &c.
4. Great "Media Bar", that allows you to see streams of photos from feeds
5. Nice design (although, after about a month, one does get tired of it)
6. Great integration with del.icio.us
7. Nice scratchpad/clipboard
8. Super easy to use and speedy photo uploader (supports drag-and-drop)
9. Neat "My World" homepage that is supposed to aggregate your digital life
10. Fast startup time
11. Imports stuff from Firefox
12. "Search-as-you-type" supported for some engines, including Yahoo!
13. Easy tagging of blog posts

Here are my "don't likes":

1. No automatic <p> tags for real-person paragraphing in the blog editor
2. Lack of themes (I think)
3. Incompatibility with Firefox themes
4. Very awkward to install in Linux (no packages or anything; it just comes in a tarball precompiled; you extract, and run. While this is pretty intuitive, it is hard to get it set up in your menu system, with icons, &c. This section could use some work).
5. Yahoo! is the default search engine (yes, it does the search-as-you-type feature, but the search isn't as high-quality as Google)
6. No instant messaging
7. It has me subscribed to a bunch of crap feeds, like E!, CNN, and ESPN

So, that was my review of Flock. Go ahead and try it; you won't be sorry.

Blogged with Flock