Tech: Flock Coming Along, Still Needs Work

FLOCK - What is Flock? Flock is a "social browser", that is, a browser that helps you to be more social on the web. From the Flock people themselves: "We believe that it should be easy for everyone to contribute to and participate on the web. To that end, we've started with integrating tools that make it easier to blog, publish your photos and share and discover things that are interesting to you."

Flock is based off of Firefox (the great thing about open source is anyone who thinks they have a better idea of how to do it can put their programming where their mouth is) so those of you familiar with Firefox will recognize the basic layout of Flock. What Flock does is add more, at least in terms of being socially active on the web. This is a great idea. We live in exciting times and it's been fascinating to see how the web has changed us socially, and continues to due so. I think blogs are a great idea for anyone who wants a website but doesn't have the time or the know-how to do it themselves. Flock makes it even easier to blog. Flock also intergrates with Flickr, which is the easiest way to post pictures online I've found, and Del.ico.us, which lets you store your bookmarks online and share them with others if you like. Also, Del.ico.us lets you tag bookmarks with different keywords so you can put a link in more than one catagory.

Del.ico.us brings up an interesting aspect about Flock. Flock doesn't use bookmarks in the traditional sense. When you start using Flock you create a Del.ico.us account and Flock references that account for your saved links. In Flock you can also stars links, kind of like how you can star mail in Google Mail. This method of organizing favorite links works great when you're trying to find an obscure one you indexed long ago but haven't visited lately. I'm not so thrilled with trying to get to my everyday links this way, however, as they're never quite in the same place. Under the favorites menu there's a Recent Favorites selection which let's the commonly visited sites float to the top, but you still have to look through the list and find the site, it won't always be in the same spot. It's kind of like how recent MS products reorder the selections of drop down options to your particular use habits. In theory it's a great idea, put in practice it can get confusing because you have to relearn where the selection is, even if it's closer to the top. More frustrating is that to search through your links you have to either go to the Del.ico.us page or the Manage Your Favorites selection (both under Favorites). Once you get there it's great, but it's just another step you have to take.

The blogging feature is pretty cool too. There's a button with a quill on it, and when you click it you get a little write pad with all your blogs listed in a drop down menu (once you set up the account login through Flock, which is easy). Instead of having to surf over to your blog page, you can blog from anywhere. Select some interesting text you happen upon while surfing and want to share with the world, just highlight and right-click to get the Blog This option. Piece of cake. It makes blogging a much more organic and enjoyable process. It's what you might call seemless intergration. Might, because at least with blogger.com it has a couple of issues, such as posting pictures and links I've had trouble with through Flock.

I'm not surprised by these issues, though, as Flock is still in beta and only at the 0.5 version. "Flock is currently available only as a developer preview. This means that you can try it out but that it's not quite ready to become your everyday browser." - says the Flock homepage. It's actually pretty close to being ready, though, I'd say. For only being beta, it already has a ton of extensions to use, though sadly, no session saver yet. I have a feeling we'll be getting that soon, though. For the curious, I think it's worth checking out. Like Firefox it has a small footprint and is not a resource hog. The presentation is asthetically pleasing and slick. An altogether pleasurable experience, if a little incomplete. :)

Sports: A Dim Chance For Three in a Row, But a Chance

Patriots - With some of their players back from injury the Patriots are beginning to play a little better. They've won their last four game, and should win their fifth after next weeks date with Miami. Earlier in the season I figured they would make the playoffs, only thanks to the weak division they're playing in this year, but that they'd be eliminated in the first round. Now I'm upgrading to them winning at least one, maybe two playoff rounds, especially if they clinch the third AFC seed next week... here's hoping the Bengals lose to Kansas City, but they won't.

Now for the bad news.

It's injuries that have really held them back this year, and just as they were getting their feet on the ground again three players go down last night due to injury, Bruschi, Samuel, and Johnson, all of whom are key, but Bruschi and Samuel are essential, I think, to them getting anywhere. What does this mean for the playoffs? Hard to tell, as the Patriots are notorious for being stingy on the injury info, and for good reason. The Patriots official website offered this helpful factoid on Bruschi's condition: "The team offered no word on his condition." Uh, thanks.

The other bad news, from my point of view, is that of their ten wins so far this season, only two have been from playoff contending teams, the Steelers and the Buccaneers. The Steelers still have to win this Sunday to make the playoffs, and the Bucs need to win as well to wrap up their division. Earlier in the season I was comforted by the fact that the beat up Patriots had gone 4-4 while enduring what seemed to be one of the toughest schedules they'd ever had, facing five division champions from the year before. But now that only one of those teams, the Colts, have won their division, it looks more like the Patriots went .500 against a much weaker looking schedule than we first thought, and only managed to beat the Steelers and the Falcons, neither of which a division leaders this year.

The Pats have actually done fairly well, however, considering they've had one of the worst defenses of any team, thanks to the injuries. Over the previous three games before last nights Jets game the Pats had only allowed 10 points. Not bad. A good sign the defense had come around. But then the Jets, the 3-12 Jets, were allowed to score 21 points. Okay, I'll only charge 14 against the Pats defense as 7 came off a Brady pick, the defense couldn't do anything about that. But those 14 points came in the fourth quarter, exactly when you want to be able to shut a team down. That concerns me. Maybe it was the injuries. Maybe they didn't want to risk more injuries and they knew they'd win anyway. I don't know.

So what's to make of this mixed bag? Will the Patriots three-peat the Super Bowl this year? In all likelyhood, no. But I feel they've at least got a shot, however small, which I didn't feel before. Maybe Manning goes down. Maybe these last three injuries amount to nothing. And what exactly would it do to Indianapolis if by some fluke the Pats make the AFC Championship game and beat them, in Indianapolis? That would be epic. It won't happen, but after the Red Sox 0-3 comeback against the Yankees I've learned you never know. So I'll be watching this post season with more interest than I thought I would have two months ago, and maybe, just maybe, Belichick can pull another rabbit out of his hat.

Entertainment: Fun With Dick And Jane IS Fun

***1/2 - Jan and I got to see this with the family and a couple of friends this weekend, and we all had a really good time. It seems that comedies have been getting funnier of late, and this was certainly a good example.

Fun With Dick and Jane follows the pattern of the last couple of Jim Carrey movies such as Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty, in which Carrey exists in a mostly real world environment, only slighly more exaggerated, so it's humor that more serious minded adults can still enjoy.

What I particularly liked about this film is that it didn't wait to get funny. A lot of comedies seem to start off with a serious side, or spend time in the first act establishing the characters without adding much humor. Thankfully Dick and Jane is an exception, as the humor starts in the very first scene and doesn't relent until the end. If you've seen the commercials, you know the film is about Carrey and his wife, played by Tea Leoni, turning to a life of crime when he loses his job at an Enron-esque firm and they run out of money. Fortunately this is not all of what the movie is about so it avoids the Saturday Night Live trap of being a one-joke act that runs on for 90 minutes. That would be boring. This movie is not. It also avoids the other trap of not making the set-up for the crime spree be melodramatic in an effort to build character motivation. While we sympathize with Dick and Jane in their destitute plight, the plight itself is extremely funny to watch, and as entertaining as the crime spree (if not more so considering the ads give away the best jokes of that part of the film). Fortunately there are so many non-crime scenarios that are hysterical that the movie is enjoyable in it's own right and not just an extension of the commercials. This film also gets on my short list of films that made me laugh so hard I missed half the jokes because I couldn't hear them.

Leoni is also good opposite Carrey and is much more than just a straight man for him to play off of, she is in on the jokes and adds a great deal of comedy relief herself. While Carrey is the star of the film, she makes him funnier and the two work well together as a comedic duo. It's hard to find a sidekick for Carrey that can hold their own, but she does and she does it well.

This film also doesn't take itself too seriously as social commentary of the Enron Era, but if laughter is the best medicine perhaps Dick and Jane is a sort of social catharsis. Although the ending is implausible, it is what you want to have happen and wish did happen. Stick around at the end as the producers take the time to thank the executives of Enron, WorldCom, and other such companies... by name.

This film should appeal to all average moviegoers.

Tech: Bill Gates Worst Nightmare

Writely - Programs like this could be keeping Mr. Gates up late at night. There's been a push for awhile now to move applications off our desktops and on to the net, which, the more I think about it, is a fantabulous idea. It would free up even more space on your harddrive, plus keep your registry cleaner and not tie up so many resources. You've probably already seen some applications of this idea such as Google Maps, but now Writely has taken it a step further.

To be sure, this isn't the first time a web-based word processing program has been introduced, but this time it's much more effective. I've tinkered with it myself and found there to be little to no lag time between what you input to the server and what you get back. In short, it's not much different than using MS Word, at least not for casual use. The other nice feature is that you can share documents online with other people if you so choose, so there's no having to email copies to people, have them edit it, then email it back. It's all done online. I'm even thinking of uploading drafts of my book so that select people can read up to the minute drafts without having to ask for them. As I've yet to reinstall any office products after my virus crash, I may try this out as my main writing app and see how it goes. And so far Writely is free.

If programs like this keep developing it spells trouble for Mr. Gates, as no one will need to buy MS Office. Even worse, there's been rumors Google wants to develop an online OS. Not quite sure how that would work or if it will ever happen, but it's got to be on Bill's radar screen. Perhaps this is why Microsoft came out with their own version of Google Maps, Windows Live Local, which by some accounts is better than it's competition. It's also why, I'm told, Microsoft was so bent on snuffing out Netscape. Once application move online, which they should, Bill's power over desktops is greatly diminished.

Sports: A Dear Johnny to Boston, But Who Cares?

redsox.com

BOSTON -- With Red Sox Nation reeling from the loss of another popular player to the Yankees, sports talk radio around Boston was, as you might have expected, dominated by Johnny Damon on Wednesday."I think they were calling [George] Steinbrenner's bluff," said Glenn Ordway, host of the "Big Show" on WEEI. "They did not believe that the Yankees were going to come in and pay more money for him.

I personally wasn't surprised, I didn't think Damon was going to be back before the end of last season. His ego got way too big, and he wanted too much money for too long a time. He won't last the four years at New York playing as great as he is now, no way. He's a great player, but he plays hard and his body is paying the price for it. I don't think this was a loss for Boston. Sure, they'd rather have him back, but not at the money he wanted. And good for the Yankees, they can add this to the list of other marquee players they've signed over the last four years (Rodriguez, Sheffield) who have won them squat. What does $200 million a year get you? Nothing in New York.

A First Post

This is something I've wanted to do for some time. Thought I'd get to it when I got the family website back up, but it's been almost three years since then. With the rise of blogs I'm beginning to question the need for a personal webpage. What's made it even easier is the new web browser Flock, a "social browser", which basically intergrates with the web better so that I can post blogs without actually having to go to the blog. It also intergrates with Flickr and Del.ico.us.

But now I am late for work. More, much more, soon.

Jonathan