Are you wanting a browser that can work as a social hub from the first moment that you start it up? If you love the idea of a browser that is ready to go out of the box then join us as we look at Flock.

During the Install Process

When you are installing Flock there are two install windows that you should watch for. The first one lets you choose between the “Express Setup & Custom Setup”. We recommend the “Custom Setup”.

Once you have selected the “Custom Setup” you can choose which of the following options will enabled. Notice the “anonymous usage statistics” option at the bottom…you can choose to leave this enabled or disable it based on your comfort level.

The First Look

When you start Flock up for the first time it will open with three tabs. All three are of interest…especially if this is your first time using Flock. With the first tab you can jump right into “logging in/activating” favorite social services within Flock. This page is set to display each time that you open Flock unless you deselect the option in the lower left corner.

The second tab provides a very nice overview of Flock and its’ built-in social management power.

The third and final page can be considered a “Personal Page”. You can make some changes to the content displayed for quick and easy access and/or monitoring “Twitter Search, Favorite Feeds, Favorite Media, Friend Activity, & Favorite Sites”.

Use the “Widget Menu” in the upper left corner to select the “Personal Page Components” that you would like to use.

In the upper right corner there is a built-in “Search Bar” and buttons for “Posting to Your Blog & Uploading Media”.

To help personalize the “My World Page” just a bit more you can even change the text to your name or whatever best suits your needs.

The Flock Toolbar

The “Flock Toolbar” is full of social account management goodness. In order from left to right the buttons are: My World (Homepage), Open People Sidebar, Open Media Bar, Open Feeds Sidebar, Webmail, Open Favorites Sidebar, Open Accounts and Services Sidebar, Open Web Clipboard Sidebar, Open Blog Editor, & Open Photo Uploader.

The buttons will be “highlighted” with a blue background to help indicate which area you are in. The first area will display a listing of people that you are watching/following at the services shown here.

Clicking on the “Media Bar Button” will display the following “Media Slider Bar” above your “Tab Bar”. Notice that there is a built-in “Search Bar” on the right side. Any photos, etc. clicked on will be opened in the currently focused tab below the “Media Bar”.

Here is a listing of the “Media Streams” available for viewing.

By default Flock will come with a small selection of pre-subscribed RSS Feeds. You can easily unsubscribe, rearrange, add custom folders, or non-categorized feeds as desired. RSS Feeds subscribed to here can be viewed combined together as a single feed (clickable links) in the “My World Page”. or can be viewed individually in a new tab. Very nice!

Next on the “Flock Toolbar is the “Webmail Button”. You can set up access to your favorite “Yahoo!, Gmail, & AOL Mail” accounts from here.

The “Favorites Sidebar” combines your “Browser History & Bookmarks” into one convenient location.

The “Accounts and Services Sidebar” gives you quick and easy access to get logged into your favorite social accounts. Clicking on any of the links will open that particular service’s login page in a new tab.

Want to store items such as photos, links, and text to add into a blog post or tweet later on? Just drag and drop them into the “Web Clipboard Sidebar” for later access.

Clicking on the “Blog Editor Button” will open up a separate blogging window to compose your posts in. If you have not logged into or set up an account yet in Flock you will see the following message window.

The “Blogging Window”…nice, simple, and straightforward.

If you are not already logged into your photo account(s) then you will see the following message window when you click on the “Photo Uploader Button”. Clicking “OK” will open the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” with compatible photo services highlighted in a light yellow color. Log in to your favorite service to start uploading all those great images.

After Setting Up

Here is what our browser looked like after setting up some of our favorite services. The Twitter feed is certainly looking nice and easy to read through…

Some tweaking in the “RSS Feeds Sidebar” makes for a perfect reading experience.

Keeping up with our e-mail is certainly easy to do too.

A look back at the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” shows that all of our accounts are actively logged in (green dot on the right side).

Going back to our “My World Page” you can see how nice everything looks for monitoring our “Friend Activity & Favorite Feeds”.

Moving on to regular browsing everything is looking very good… Flock is a perfect choice for anyone wanting a browser and social hub all built into a single app.

Conclusion

Anyone who loves keeping up with their favorite social services while browsing will find using Flock to be a wonderful experience. You literally get the best of both worlds with this browser.

Links

Download Flock

The Official Flock Extensions Homepage

The Official Flock Toolbar Homepage

• 0 Comments

The latest release of Google Chrome has geolocation enabled by default, and if you are worried about privacy or just don’t want websites to prompt you for your location, we’ve got the quick details on how to turn it off.

Readers should note that the new Geolocation feature doesn’t give out your details by default, so don’t panic. It’s also only active, at the time of this writing, in the Dev channel builds of Chrome—so if you are using the regular stable build this feature won’t arrive for a while anyway.

Note: If you’re a Firefox user, be sure to check out our guide to disabling geolocation in Firefox 3.x.

What’s this Geolocation Feature About?

Geolocation is a way for your browser to tell a website about your physical location, so you can get results tailored to where you actually are—for example, if you visited Google Maps it can ask you for your location to give you an accurate picture of where you are.

To use this feature in Google Maps, you would click on the small white icon to activate the feature.

As soon as you have clicked on the small white icon, a thin green toolbar will appear at the top of the webpage, asking to Allow or Deny.

?

How to Turn Chrome’s Geolocation Off

If you want to turn geolocation off you will need to open the “Chrome Options Window”, navigate to the third tab, and click on the “Content settings… ” button.

When the “Content Settings Window” opens go to the “Location Tab” and select “Do not allow any site to track my physical location”. Once that is done close out the “Content Settings & Chrome Options Windows”.

When you go back to Google Maps and try using the small white icon again this is the message that you will see at the top of the page. Now that is much better!

If you are unhappy with geolocation being enabled by default in the latest Dev Channel release then this will help get the problem sorted out nicely.

• 0 Comments

Now that the new goo.gl URL shortening service has been active for a bit you may be wanting to add it to your favorite non Internet Explorer/Firefox browser. See how easy it is to enjoy that goo.gl URL shortening goodness with the “goo.gl with prompt for copying Bookmarklet”.

goo.gl with Prompt for Copying Bookmarklet In Action

To add the bookmarklet to your browser simply drag it to your “Bookmarks Toolbar” and get ready to start creating those shortened URLs.

For our example we chose one of the wonderful malware removal articles here at the site. All that you will need to do is click on the bookmarklet to create your shortened URL.

The wonderful thing about this bookmarklet is the small pop-up window that provides an easy way for you to copy the shortened URL.

You can see the “Context Menu” for the small window here…definitely nice. Once you have copied your new URL you can close the window by clicking on “OK” or pressing “Enter”.

Now you are ready to use your new shortened goo.gl URL wherever you like or need to.

Conclusion

If you have been wanting to add goo.gl URL shortening power to your favorite browser then this is the perfect bookmarklet to have.

Links

Add the goo.gl with Prompt for Copying Bookmarklet to Your Favorite Browser

• 0 Comments

Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.

GmailThis! in Action

To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.

This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.

Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.

Conclusion

If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.

Links

Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser

• 0 Comments

Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.

GmailThis! in Action

To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.

This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.

Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.

Conclusion

If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.

Links

Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser

• 0 Comments

Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.

GmailThis! in Action

To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.

This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.

Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.

Conclusion

If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.

Links

Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser

• 0 Comments

Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.

GmailThis! in Action

To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.

This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.

Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.

Conclusion

If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.

Links

Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser

• 0 Comments

Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.

GmailThis! in Action

To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.

This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.

Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.

Conclusion

If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.

Links

Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser

• 0 Comments

Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.

GmailThis! in Action

To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.

This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.

Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.

Conclusion

If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.

Links

Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser

• 0 Comments

Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.

GmailThis! in Action

To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.

This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.

Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.

Conclusion

If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.

Links

Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser

• 0 Comments