Well, after reading a news article on the BBC, I noticed it mentioned that the AOL Netscape company recommended its old Netscape users to switch to Firefox or Flock (as it is based on the same platform as Netscape).Well, here I am thinking “What the heck is Flock?” I’ve heard of Opera, Camino, Safari, and every other less-famous browsers, but never this “Flock” thing.

I went on a whim and gave it a try. After using it for a solid three hours, I can say that I am pleased with it. What sets Flock apart from other browsers is that it integrates some of the most common Web 2.0 websites into your browser. In essence, you log into these sites and Flock pulls information from them and displays them within the browser for convenience. That sounds like a pretty simple idea, right? Well most users of different browsers have to download add-ons in order to get some of the same features that are offered in Flock. Those of you who use Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, and WordPress (plus a few other 2.0 sites) can greatly benefit from using the browser.

What Flock brings to the table:

• A unique sidebar linking your social networks and RSS feeds.
• A “media bar” which drops down and allows you to easily view your own media (video from Youtube or images from Photobucket) and access the public collections of other people’s.
• A feature called the Web Clipboard serves as a little scrapbook of images, links and text that you want to save for later use (it resides nicely tucked into the sidebar).
• The ability to post and manage your blog (if your blog is on a major blogging network such as WordPress or Blogger) and write/save posts via the browser.

Now, you might tell me “Yes, MQ, but you can just as easily download features similar to these as add-ons on Firefox/Opera” and I would tell you that these non-native add-ons are such a freaking annoyance that nobody bothers. A while ago, I decided to download an RSS reader for Firefox and it drove me crazy after twenty minutes. The integrated services in Flock look, they hide away easily, and they’re neatly organised.

Things that need Flock needs to work on:

There are a few minor annoyances with usability (especially in the blog post window). For example, the browser is a bit top-heavy. I like have three skinny toolbars in Firefox so that I can make the most of my page space. Flock has pretty big top toolbars and that is a small annoyance to me. Also, upon starting the browser you get a short loading screen. Let me stress: it’s short. But people don’t want loading screens on their browsers. We use browsers because they’re efficient and easy to use. When my browser shows a loading screen, it tells me that the browser isn’t efficient. Hopefully, they can find a way to fix that. Firefox has the right idea in that it just opens.

Who should use Flock?

I don’t recommend Flock to my mother. That’s because she does not use the computer for social networking at all. If you use 2+ social networks, then this browser may be beneficial to you. I’m not very big on social networks and Web 2.0 sites, but I found that this browser rekindled my interest since everything is all in one place. So, if you’re a casual user of these social networks, I really recommend this browser to you. It’s built off of the same technology as Firefox is, so I haven’t seen any page rendering issues.

I’m also not going to recommend that multiple people use Flock. This is because you input your username and password for the integrated services to work. I wouldn’t want my brother or parents snoop about in my weird collection of images on Photobucket or my favourites on YouTube. You can solve this by not telling them, but I see Flock as essentially a one-person browser that centered around you. The folks at Flock should look into introducing profiles for users of the browser, but that might just complicated things even worse. Either way, be forewarned that you will have to log out of your services via Flock to ensure your privacy on a shared computer.

So, I’m basically going to start using Flock from now on. I’m part of the flock, if you will. If any of you decide to give it a try, please tell me what you think of it!

Update: Apparently you can remove the Splash (”loading screen”) by altering the Target line in the shortcut properties and adding in “–no-splash” after the quotation marks. Woot.

Blogged with Flock

Good old emo attention-grabbing title, eh? Well, I’ve been thinking about the various ways which games deal with the event of the character’s death. I’ve realised that different games want you to learn different things from dying. The old-fashioned DOS games would give you a few lives and put you back to the beginning (or to a save-point) upon death, but these days, death is a more different, especially in MMO’s. There are two lessons that various games want you to learn from dying. They either want you to lose items/experience from it and teach you that there’s risk to the game -or- they want you to learn the game through relatively mild consequences that help you learn by trial and error.  Let’s look at a few of the death consequences of the more popular MMO games:

Runescape: You lose all, but1-3 (depending on whether or not you’re skulled) of your items if you do not have a gravestone. Dying in Runescape is truly frustrating. I remember my first major death when my game lagged and I was training. I lost a Zammy kite and pirate hat, plus a good deal of other good stuff. If you aren’t a rich player, it takes a lot to get back what you lost and each time you die, you feel less and less into what you’re doing.

Tibia:  Tibia is a game very similar to Runescape in its design, graphics, and overall game play.  Dying is bit different in this game, however. In Tibia, when you die you lose a small bit of experience and you also have the chance of losing items. However, seldom does a player ever lose his equipment. Like Runescape, you’re teleported out of danger and sent to your home area.

Guild Wars:  When you die, your character is sent to the nearest respawn area which is guarded by an NPC to prevent monsters from attacking you in that area. The only catch to dying in Guild Wars is that you accumulate something called a Death Penalty (DP). The DP is a percentage that increases if you continuously die and only decreases when you or your party fights without any deaths. Basically what it does is limit your hitpoints in proportion to the percentage of the DP, preventing you from charging back into areas over and over with full hitpoints.

World of Warcraft: WoW has a very straightforward death system. When you die, you walk back to your corpse from a graveyard as a ghost (so, you can’t fight anything along the way), and respawn with half of your health. The “gotcha” part of this is if you die in an area infested with monsters that you cannot kill on your own. Your choice then is to fight and die or run. Most people know that running is not an easy option like it is in Runescape. Monsters follow you for quite a ways before leaving you alone. In cases where death is imminent, the game does not punish you for choosing it. When you’re sent to the graveyard, you have the chance to be “healed” by the Spirit Healer, saving you from the walk to your body (but, you do get 25% of your armour’s durability taken away).

Runescape and Tibia have deaths that are oriented to losing items or experience, but they take you completely out of danger when you die. Granted, in Runescape you’re really not that grateful for being in Lumbridge.  Tibia’s idea of death is actually pretty interesting. You run the risk of losing things, but not anything that’s too hard to replace (like armour). You do, however, lose some experience from dying.

Guild Wars and WoW have slightly more complex ways of dealing with death. They want you to go back and try to finish the fight, but you need to be hindered in some way for your past mistake. What I consider to be most beneficial is that you do not risk losing items or experience. Both of the games focus more on the problem at hand, rather than punishing the character for getting himself in a trap.

1. Limewire: This is probably the biggest BS program there is. On any given day, I can enter any artist/song name into the search field only to receive 10-15 “Get Laid Now!” hits, 5-10 “_____ gets punked!” ones, and 3-4 hits for content that was actual relevant to what I was searching for. No, I do not want to get laid and, no, I’m not interested in downloading whatever .exe file that magically pops up when you click said search result. This programme sucks, stop being a wuss and move on to torrents.

2. Gimp: Look, I know people use and enjoy this program, but that’s mainly for two reasons. The first reason is that it’s free and the second reason is because it’s all these people have ever used. How many people have you seen start out in Photoshop and then switch to Gimp? None. Just as my grandmother swears by her crappy greeting card software, people swear by Gimp. In my opinion, is the worst example of open-source. Sure, if you’re a good artist you can make do with Gimp. But for people starting out, Gimp is one of the worst things to start out using. Let me do you all a favour (those of you who use it), go to the Adobe site and download the CS3 trial. I hate to say it, but I have never seen any really good work come out of Gimp. Please, please stop using it.

3. Norton Anti-virus: As if this couldn’t be the utmost worst choice in virus protection programs, it is seen on millions of computers. Symantec’s host of overall useless programs like “Crash Guard” and “Anti-Bot” only exist to usurp money from middle-aged computer-illiterate morons who think that they will undoubtedly be victims of identity theft if they do not shell out money to this evil corporation. Better yet, if any of its patrons receives an inkling of wisdom and decides to choose another virus protection product, Norton stonewalls the action by disallowing the Unistall software from removing many of its components. Cheap. Very cheap.

4. Windowblinds: I know most of you will not like this as my fourth choice, but too bad. Windowblinds is a rubbish product that follows the same tactics as Symantec when it comes to attempting to uninstall the program. Windowblinds is the type of program that your little brother installs on your computer because he wants to have the UltimateNinja3000 skin to appear in red and black everywhere ad nauseum. You curse at him and attempt to uninstall the program so that he can no longer toy around with the blessed familiarity of the Windows XP default silver skin ONLY TO REALISE THAT IT WON’T UNINSTALL. Well, that’s super. As if things couldn’t get any worse, he’s now found the icon unpackager and Stardock. Thanks a lot, jerks.

5. AOL Instant Messanger: It is the year 2008. How about you make a New Year’s resolution for yourself to evolve from the primitive instant messaging service known as AIM to the ultimately superior one known as MSN. Yes, I know that leaving behind that certain cute emoticon with the wagging tongue and cute shiny eyes will be hard, but you’ll ultimately become a better person for it. Even better, there will be something called privacy in this new-and-improved instant messaging service. Believe it or not, people who are not on your buddy list can’t actually stalk you like they can on AIM! That world has become a better place ever since AOL lost its stranglehold on internet users. Make the most of it.

There’s my list. Do you think any others should/shouldn’t be on here?