Tag: Flock

Flock: having one of those “Genius! Ah ha!” moment

Flock%27s%20Flickr%20Browser%20TopbarSo it’s late, and I’m catching up with my life, but I have to say, something in the latest Flock release really struck as me as like… "Yes! This is what I’ve been talkin’ about baby!"

So, simply enough, I’m over on the great Paul Stamatiou’s blog, replying to a discussion going on about Flock. I’m wanting to point out to Justin Hoffman that Flock isn’t a waste of time, in fact, it’s quite necessary given that browsers haven’t changed a whole lot in 10 years.

To substantiate my claim, I remembered that Bart had showed me a screenshot he took that compared Netscape 1.0 and Firefox 1.0 and that there was barely a difference between them, in terms of the default set of buttons and interface elements. Anyway, finding that shot would lend credence to the notion that competition in this space is desperately needed.

So, where to look? Well, thinking that Bart had blogged about it, I do a Google search for "site:decrem.com netscape". Nothing matching the screenshot is produced… Stymied I wonder where the heck I saw that thing.

Flickr!

Now this time, something different happens. I bust open the Flock Flickr Browser Topbar (a mouthful fer shur) and start typing Bart’s Flickr ID — oo, autocompletion! I tab into the tag box and type netscape, then hit enter. 

Voila, there it is! I grab the link, past it into the comment and I’m done… or am I?

Well, that was 90% of the aha. That I was able to find something very specific using tags on Flickr in literally no time. 

The second part of this is what I’m doing right now: blogging about the experience. Not only was I able to find a specific image very quickly and easily using Flock, I was able to upload the screenshot you see here using the Flock Flickr Uploader — and then drag it into Flock’s blog editor to talk about. Holy genius! I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but that’s pretty friggin’ sweet.

So if you haven’t yet, or if you’re still on Flock 0.4.10, definitely take a peek at the latest release. It’s still got a ways to go, but man, just these simple improvements to the Flickr and blogging integration are huge productivity boosters. (Now if only I could get that whitespace issue resolved I’d be blogging from Flock all day!)

A modest release; an update on the camps

Been sitting on a number of posts that I don’t know I’ll ever get out, but I need to spread these few things.

Flock 0.5.11.7+First, modest Flock update in the wild (0.5.11). Jesse’s got the details on this updated developer preview. Go get it and tell me what you think!

Andrew Fèrriere -- the host of Wine CampSpent yesterday and some of today scoping out the venue for Wine Camp with Miss Rogue (that’s Andrew Fèrriere over there — the proprietor of the Wine Camp venue: Fèrriere Vineyards). Had some revelations about how the event should happen — and started planning the thing in earnest using Backpack. Will have details later this week.

In other news, Mashup Camp is tomorrow, the first-ever trademarked decendent of Bar Camp! Oh, and not only is there a signup list for The Son of Mashup Camp already, but the “Bar Camp of Mashup Camp” — Mucho Camp — will be taking place at the birthplace of the original Bar Camp — at SocialText‘s offices. So if you didn’t make it onto the Mashup Camp list, definitely show your inclination and then drop by Mucho Camp.

What else? Well, Boxes and Arrows has a great article about the formation of Bar Camp. A great read.

Then we’ve got Bar Camp LA and Bar Camp Dehli coming up March 4-5.

Bar Camp Austin needs posters (yes, Whurley, I’ll do them!) I expect those of you heading to SXSW to make the pilgrimage to this stellar event (trust me, nothing can prepare you for what’s in store…)!

And finally, Enric needs help planning and promoting his Indie Film Camp.

Qumana 3.0 Beta out; state of the blogtoolosphere

Qumana LogoQumana has released the 3.0 beta of their blog editor, touting the following features:

  • a “blog manager” that locally stores your drafts and published posts
  • support for trackbacks and pinging
  • improved editor with valid XHTML, plus ability to view and edit code
  • a way to refresh the editor (‘New Post’) – to clear away published material and start a new post instantly
  • improved image dialogue, including preview and auto upload trigger from Drag & Drop

Looking through their Tour, there’s some remarkable similarities in their workflows to how we’ve solved similar issues in Flock (adding a blog, tagging). This suggests to me that there is some consolidation and consensus emerging in client-side blogging apps. MarsEdit 1.1 similarly added tags late last year and some other niceties.

Some things are still pretty unique to each editor… like Qumana’s Adgenta program or the DropPad feature that enables drag and drop blogging from the desktop (Ecto has something like this as well). Ecto also features email integration with the Mac Address Book to notify your friends of updated posts.

But so besides pimping Qumana’s release (hey, more choice is a good thing!), I also wanted to point out that we’re starting to see at the least the beginnings of some standard features in blogging apps, including a kludge for consistently adding tags to posts. As I use the excellent Ultimate Tag Warrior to tag my posts (when composing via the web interface), I’m hoping that tags will soon become something represented in the standard blogging APIs (I know Matt‘s already done some work on this that we’ll be taking advantage of soon). Once that happens, tools like Flock, Performancing, Ecto, MarsEdit, Qumana and so on will be able to offer native tag support and not just append that extra data to the body of the posts.

Flock seeking interaction designer…!

So I have a funny thing to post… Flock is looking for an interaction designer — which is similar to the role I’ve played so far except that it will be far more… erhm… focused! Yes yes, we’re looking for someone who can really execute on pushing pixels into place, on coming up with real world, grounded solutions, and someone who can design user flows, soup to nuts and really get inside someone else’s thoughtspace to understand the problem opportunities that Flock can solve.

Check the description for details; the first test is whether you can figure out whom to contact about the job (hint: serious applicants won’t apply in my comments!).

Out of stealth at 106 Miles

Speaking about stuff and nonsense

Went and was a “contender” at Joyce Parks’ and Adam “I Find Karma” Rifkin 106 Miles gathering tonight against Kevin “Rank that Tail” Burton.

Yeah well, I think there was less antagonism than Joyce might have hoped for, but nevertheless, it was a good chance to actually express some of my varied views on the state of open source, the Bubble 2.0, the whole stealth/beta thing… and a couple other topics. Maybe someone will podcast it, I dunno.

David Weekly told me his biggest takeaway had to do with having some humility when launching something on the web… which, I admit, Flock did not. And which, I admit, caused us to experience a trial by fire that taught us a great deal about the way things are… and about the important of expressing, with clarity and honesty, why you might not exactly have the kind of humility one should have when coming out and boldly pronouncing that you’re going to change the world…

Well, I’ll keep it brief, but the story goes like this: I came to San Francisco a little over a year and half ago. And when I got here, I knew no one. But through the power of networks, open source… getting involved in Mozilla and CivicSpace at the right time, hell, I was able to get the job I currently have now, doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing: taking back control over technology and putting it to work for regular folks (myself included!).

So when I came to Flock and helped formulate the vision for what they should build, well shit, I was full of vim and vinegar and busting to tell the world all about it.

And so I did. Publicly. On our website. On our website that asked for your email address. And that was just like the countless other “private beta” sites that cropped up around the Web 2.0 conference.

Which was fine and good and so on, but that now represents something dirty or tainty it seems. Well whatever, that’s not the important thing here.

The issue is how we launched Flock… and how all this beautiful enthusiasm and hope and optimism turned into vengeful anti-hype and disdain. And whether or not, given the opportunity, I would have done anything differently.

The answer, simply, is, “no”.

We endured a trial by fire that any project with our level of visibility deserved. We underwent a continued scorching that demanded to know whether or not we were legit or just the first in what might become a trend in Mozilla-derivative businesses using the success of Firefox to get ahead.

Are we? Well, I don’t know. Really. That’s not the project that I think I’m working on, but I’m just a lucky kid who happened into this mix of things. And I’m emboldened by the success I found on the Mozilla project; on having my ad in the New York Times, on being mentioned in Wired and Rolling Stone. These are things I never dreamed of when I came out here — why would I? But having experienced them — serendipitously — I’m convinced, as I was prior to Web 2.0, that what we’re doing is important, is relevant, has the potential to change things… and for the better.

What we didn’t communicate when we launched was a timeline — was how long it would take to get to the fabled One Dot Oh, if indeed that denomination even makes sense anymore. While I was going off on how we were going to change the web and, by extension, the world, I forget to mention that, Oh yeah, this’ll take us a couple years. So don’t hold your breath… just yet.

But y’know, at the same time — well, I’m glad that we said what we said. I’m proud of the vision that we have for Flock. It’s saying something — it’s taking a risk where it might make more “sense” to stick with conventional wisdom of what a browser is all about… And heck, I don’t know if we’re going to succeed and make this thing happen now, today, this time around. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that we’re asking these questions, now, that browser-makers can start to think about expanding beyond the baseline concepts of “history” and “bookmarks” in the browser and start to incorporate “people”… “web services”… “syndicated content”. And on and on.

Anyway, as I’ve just blabbed all this out, this is part of the humility — the mea culpa of saying, “Man, did we learn a lot!” And yeah, I’m sharing it with you just because, well, it’s worth knowing that if we had it to do all over again, maybe a touch more of humility would have helped, but no, I wouldn’t do it any different than what we did.

Autocomplete for my life

<img src="http://static.flickr.com/35/97329052_83e237710f_o.png" class="alignright" alt="So when creating blog posts, I’m constantly scrambling for some self-lovin’ link, something I actually wrote from awhile back, a link to a friend or two, or something that I read on the web, either recently or way back when. And there’s permutations there within, but what I’m talking about are linking to things from within and without the experience that makes up my life.

Write what you know, the saying goes.

Well, I tend to, except constantly typing in aye aych REF quote aych-tee-tee-pee-colon-backslash-backslash [link] gets really tiresome after awhile.

And filling out acronymns and abbreviations. Guh. I know what they are — calm-poo-tor, why don’t you fill in my lonely readers with what I’m brevifying?

So I had this idea for a feature a long time ago, except I envisioned it happening ipso post facto… once you were done writing the post, you’d run a little “linkification app” that would run through and fix your abbreviations, acronyms and even linkify words and phrases that you’d linked up before… So when I type Tantek, well, it knows that I’ve typed Tantek before and can add the link that I used back then, complete with XFN attributes and hell, even a title. Oh, and sure, turn it into an hCard while you’re at it.

But so here’s the brainstorm I had this morning (in the shower, where all my good ideas come from — don’t ask me why — but I really would love one of those scuba boards next time you want to buy me somefing nice). The idea is a small adjustment to this concept… Hey, if the browser is indexing everything I’m visiting, and we’re grabbing events and people data from microformats, why not autocomplete in real time — pulling in from my events, my locations, my friends and contacts — even from the photos that I’ve uploaded? If the the browser is your context for composing, it knows everything (well almost) that you’ve touched on the web — including comments you’ve left, photos you’ve uploaded, pages you’ve favorited it. Yeah, Matt could even do this with a Greasemonkey script for WordPress.com that autocompletes from your delicioius account.

Anyway, point being, I at least tend to write about my experience — and things that I come into contact with. Why can’t the browser (or whatever editor I’m using) make it easier for me to link to the things that I’m talking about so that other people have a richer understanding of what it is I’m usually rambling about?