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Paul Mason's Idle Scrawl

Flockin' all over the world

  • Paul Mason
  • 15 Jun 06, 01:40 PM

flock.jpgSome months ago I wrote about, and filmed, the team developing a new web browser called Flock. I have been systematically beaten up by techno-geeks ever since, for being so naive as to report on a "son of Firefox" without reporting Firefox first; or, for buying too much of the hype around Web 2.0. Well today Flock is the number one search item on : reason being they have just announced the "public beta" release of it...

...I am viewing and writing this blog from Flock, not Internet Explorer. It is a bit difficult to get your head round, as it seems to instinctively take you to all the bits of the web you don't really understand if you are over 30 (Flickr, de.licio.us, RSS etc etc).

Anyway it's out there now. I can't get very excited about it as I am a content person, not a platforms person. I am going to play around with it and report back, if I survive the inevitable tsunami of flame that comes my way every time I mention it.

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If you're not a "platforms person" why bother writing about one?

PS Where's the email link on the Newsnight website? How can I give you feedback? Apart from here that is...

Surely one doesn't have to be a 'platforms' person to comment on one. I spend a lot of my time commenting on how brilliant Firefox is -and it's of relevance not just for those people interested in 'platforms' but - precisely - for ordinary users who need a release from that terrible thing called IE.

There's multiple problems with the original blog post here -

(1) Why write about a development you are not interested in? " I can't get very excited about it as I am a content person, not a platforms person."

(2) If you are going to check Flock out then do so and report on it there and then otherwise this post is merely a placeholder "I am going to play around with it and report back, if I survive the inevitable tsunami of flame that comes my way every time I mention it."

(3) If you make mention of a previous post that provoked at least one complaint and you want to make a point about it at least link to it so people can see what you are blabbing about otherwise it just appears you are moaning about feedback that challenges your viewpoint without bothering to back it up with the original source of contention!

(4) Out of 19 lines of text only three have something substantial to say about the subject (ie Flock is the number one search item for technocrati) and four lines of opinion

Overall I have to ask what is the point of this post other than to invite criticism and thus justify the label of having been flamed?

It looks on the surface to me that the first paragraph gives some clue as to why the piece was written - it is pointed out that after Flock was announced as being in public beta (with all the attendent fanfare) Technocrati listed the tag of Flock as being a top search term at the moment of writing this article and that this negates any criticism of the previous article's focus on an aplication that is actually derived from Mozilla & Firefox technology and the author had made no mention of this in the past. At best it looks like a case of "ha-ha it's popular now so I must have been right how I reported it" and that any negation of this viewpoint is just gainsaying for the sake of it.

In future perhaps you could link to the original article so we could all see the original agenda and/or opinion.

For the record I *do* use firefox - and like it. I have used Flock regularly in the past - not recently and I'm not likely to again but it may easily have changed for the better (although when I used it 3/4 months ago it was very clunky) and FF provides all the fuctionality I need, allowing all the web 2.0 I desire - in fact IE could probably render almost all web 2.0 apps just not with the clunky buttons that FLock provides.

It should be pointed out also that as of today (just 5 days after the blog post) Flock appears nowhere on the technorati popular tags list (https://technorati.com/tags/) - a case of here today, gone tomorrow perhaps.

  • 4.
  • At 08:25 PM on 27 May 2007,
  • Frank wrote:

It is good that Ken has spoken for the hard working migrants in this country. Doors have been opened to all EU citizens to come to the UK what about those staying here before these doors have been opened. It will be very wicked on the part of this government to keep deporting illigal migrants. They should just have mercy on these poor people. I want to tell Tonny Blair that Charity Begins at home. If Tonny wants to do charity work in developing countires, he must start it from home.

If you have to do it, you might as well do it right

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