Go and FLOCK yourselves!
Posted on October 24th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,866 views
Flock is groovy. If you don’t know what it is yet, it’s a web browser which integrates with social networking sites.
Under the hood, Flock is just a version of FireFox. You can install FireFox extensions on it, including the FireFox StumbleUpon extension.
The default theme for Flock is super cool grey, with light blue and orange icons. It totally enhances your browsing experience. I think Flock is set to become my web browser of choice now.
Best of all, when you access the linked social networking sites such as flickr and facebook, it does some really groovy things. I clicked on a friend’s facebook profile and Flock alerted me to the fact that a media stream was available. I didn’t know what that meant, but Flock is so user friendly it displays short helpful explanations in a collapsible yellow area at the top of the page.
I followed directions and down came a neat black bar at the top filled with all my friends pics from her photo albums. I could select to see each album individually or just see all the pics in one stream. Clicking on a pic, displayed it in the familiar facebook gallery page.
Flock presents the user with a number of useful options to use the image elsewhere, such as in your blog. You can blog anything you see in Flock, with its built in blog function. Once you’re set up your login info, you’re set to send anything you like directly to your blog.
There’s more! I haven’t told you about the My World page, or the People page, the RSS feeds, the clipboard sidebar that you can drag and drop any content you like into, or the Account sidebar that logs you into all your popular services. Like the old Peter Stuyvesant cigarette adverts used to say, “There’s so much more for you to enjoy!”
If you’re a FireFox user, Flock will seem like a natural fit to you. Call it an upgrade if you like. If you’re an Internet Explorer user, you should try Flock – it will blow you away. 
Don’t just stand there, go and FLOCK YOURSELF!
Tags: del.icio.us, facebook, flickr, Flock, ma.gnolia.com, photobucket, rss reader, social network browser, twitter, YouTube
Filed under Flock, web browser | 3 Comments »
Whose the DADDY of social networking sites?
Posted on September 26th, 2007 by Richard Catto 4,546 views
It’s not Digg, neither reddit, nuh uh del.icio.us, nor muti, amatomu is not-the-mama, afrigator who?
It’s StumbleUpon!
If you want traffic, get onboard StumbleUpon today!
I discovered this yesterday when I installed Alex King’s beautiful WordPress plugin called Share This. It’s a thing of total beauty. Customising it with your favourite social site is child’s play. I added Muti to it in under 5 minutes, including the little muti thumbnail graphic.
Ironically, the first site I shared one of my posts with was StumbleUpon which produced a very healthy flow of traffic. Seeing that, I was encouraged to stumble more of my posts, and I experienced a sudden rush of people from all over the world. A heady experience when that happens.
Share This doesn’t spread a whole row of tiny little graphics across your web site (that no-one can decypher), instead it places a simple green distinctive Share This icon to left of the words. Clicking on it, brings up a window which allows your visitors to share your posts with all the social sites you have installed, as well as send your post to friends via email.
Alex King is working to integrate his amazing plugin with ShareThis.com who offer a very useful service. It integrates with facebook, so I was able to share a site with a friend directly onto her facebook wall. I think it would be better, though, if it went to her facebook email.
Okay, so now I have to thank Candy Tothill for introducing me to StumbleUpon. Thank you, Candy! She is a published South African author and she is also an avid blogger – insidecandy.blogspot.com.
Tags: afrigator, Alex King, amatomu, Candy Tothill, del.icio.us, Digg, Inside Candy, muti, Plugin, reddit, Share This, StumbleUpon, Web traffic, WordPress
Filed under StumbleUpon, Web traffic | 6 Comments »
