Flock, more than a themed Firefox?

August 13th, 2007

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The other day I was writing a blog entry, and I needed to put a image in my post. Trying to do this I remembered how easy it was to do this with Flock.If you haven’t used Flock before I suggest you do. Although it is built on top of Firefox, I believe it is more than just Firefox with a few new buttons and a new skin.

Flock is a gateway to many web 2.0 services. Flickr, Photobucket, Youtube, Wordpress, Blogger, and more. When you log into any of these services, Flock will save the info and from that point on, and give you access to the accounts with out even visiting their website. Lets say I want to put a photo in my blog. In firefox I would go to photobucket.com, then upload the image, then I would grab the html and paste it into my entry.

With Flock, all you have to do is hit the little arrow.

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And drag your photos onto the window that comes up, then you can crop or rotate. When you are ready you hit upload and it goes strait to your photobucket or flickr.

Then when you want to use the image in you blog. You click the camera icon. The first orange icon.

And a tray comes up with the photos in your account.

You then click on the image you want.

And select how you want it, or you can just drag it into the textarea.

See how simple that is.

Just writing to you blog is simplified as well.

Hit ctrl+shift+b.

Write up your blog, then hit publish.

It can manage all your blogs just that easy.

Do you have a separate program or use a web service for your rss subscriptions? Well not anymore, Flock has a built in rss reader, and a really good one in fact.

When you view a page will a rss on it, Flock will ask, but non-intrusively, if you want to subscribe in the rss reader.

Then when you want to view your rss feeds, click the second orange icon.

And this window comes up as a side bar.

Then you can pick a rss and it will open it up.

So you can get all your favorite feeds right in your browser.

Flock is full of great features, and I’m finding new ones every day. Flock is now my default browser.

You can get flock here.

Cheers,
Octalmage

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Myspace and Msplinks

August 13th, 2007

The other day I was on my myspace and as I was hovering over a link I just added I saw this.

What in the world is msplinks?

Well I did some research and found that it is a technique used by myspace to stop spammers.

When they find a spammer or phisher, they put a stop on the address at msplinks, and since all the links on myspace go through msplinks, anybody that clicks on that link will be redirected.

This sounds like a good thing right?

News Corp is a “Global vertically integrated media company“, and is also the current owner of myspace.

To me this sounds like a perfect opportunity to get stats on the most popular websites, which might be beneficial to a news company.

Plus, I think I should be able to decide what websites I view.

Thats why I wrote this firefox plugin.

This plugin will convert all msplinks back into the original link.

Download

Please install and spread the word.

OctalMage

note:I dont really believe any of that, I just want a reason for this plugin.

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