Now that OS X and Apple are becoming more mainstream, many developers (especially web guys and gals) are jumping ship to join the Mac camp. I myself am one of these people. After the switch, how does one get back to work? What editors are out there? Are they any good? Fear not, because Macintosh has many great editors and this list compares the top 5.
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I had no class today (Yes!) so I set off to solve a long time issue I had with my life: Calendar syncing. When I am at home, I love the beauty and power of my desktop calendar, iCal. When I’m out at conferences or meetings, I take my Mac with me. No issues there. Since I don’t carry my Mac everywhere I go though, sometimes I become calendar-less. When you’re as busy (or forgetful) as I am, this is an issue. Enter the convenience of my web-based Calendar, Google Calendar. Any calendar will do, I’m sure Yahoo has a nice calendar app as well, but I’m used to gCal. Sometimes though, you just need a personal assistant. Seriously, we are all busy people. If only I could afford someone to help me plan and remember things. Oh yeah, those crazy Values of N people created Sandy (the personal assistant). So now I have my personal calendar at home, my internet calendar for school and work related information, and Sandy as my personal assistant. My life could be so organized, but its not. I spend a good amount of time keeping these all synced together by hand. There has to be a better way! Yesterday, when I briefly mentioned FuseCal, Matt (from FuseCal) left a comment mentioning CalDAV. I must say, that made me curious and led me to the solution today.
When my new MacBook Pro came in December, I decided to try something new. In this case, it was Flock. I have tried it out in its wee-bit early stages, but it wasn’t yet stable enough for daily use. Now that a few revisions have come down the pipe and I have used it for a few months, I can officially endorse its awesomeness. Well, granted awesomeness is even a word.
What is Flock?
For those not quite savvy on the what Flock is, lets talk about it. First and foremost, Flock is an internet browser. So it competes with Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari/Webkit. It is actually based on the same code Firefox is which means everything Firefox can do, so can Flock. So what’s the big deal? Flock takes a different angle on the web market scheme rather than just delivering you the internet page you oh so love. It wants you to be a social butterfly. While it won’t completely help your unsocial self, It does have tools that link your browser quite conveniently with social services you might use already. These services are places such as: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Magnolia, Delicious, and so forth.
So, Here’s what I like:
1. Its just Firefox, but with a sexy face lift.
Generally speaking, anything you can do in Firefox can also be achieved in Flock. That includes Extensions/Add-Ons, live bookmarking, and whatever else you do. Tapping into all those Firefox Extensions was huge for Flock. The Flock community also builds other extensions just for Flock so it has two sources of add-on glory. Here’s a look at the user interface:
2. Its really easy to Get Started
You have all this stuff setup on you old browser and you’re too lazy to set it up again. Thats OK, Flock imports all that junk on installation. At least it does Firefox (haven’t tried any others). Yes, Flock does import all extensions as well. See:
3. Its social!
You can easily hook up with most social sites. They are introduced in an unobtrusive manner so its not annoying/counter productive. I’ve actually found myself spending less time on these sites since Flock makes using these quite efficient. Supported Services are: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, Piczo, Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress, Xanga, Delicious, and Magnolia. MySpace support is in the works for all those wondering. Setting up these services involves (in most cases) just visiting the website and logging in. Once logged in, Flock recognizes the site and asks permission to link the browser with that account. When you log out and log back in once more, it is completely setup. Simple, indeed.
4. Searching made easy.
Just like most browsers these days, Flock has a miniature search box to the right of the address box. It also allows you to search from any site that has a search box. For example, I visited YouTube and clicked on the “Add Search” button. Now anytime I want to search for a Video instead of going to Google/Yahoo, I can use YouTube. I also setup Wikipedia about a month ago. Pretty much any search box can be used, so Flock is quite tailorable to your interests which makes finding what you want much quicker. This is what was resulting when I searched for Flock. Obviously, you can search any of search engine installed as well as view pages you have previously visited.
5. Flock handles media well. Very well.
I admit this probably goes under the 3rd point, but the media stuff is cool enough to have its own section. I can view any of my friends images from Facebook, Flickr and such without actually visiting those websites. It comes in a nice little banner across the top of the page which is scroll-able and search-able. This allows me to quickly find any image I’m looking for. Once found, I can click on it to visit the site hosting it. Flock also provides ways to upload your images. Its very easy to do, completely tag-able, and just plain nice. Speaking of images, there is a built in web clipboard. You can drag any image, text or link to the clipboard for convenient safekeeping or later use. Here is the search-able, configurable media bar:
There must be a catch. What’s wrong with it?
Yes, Flock is very powerful indeed but it has some flaws. First, the blog writer doesn’t work well on AskLG. I have a self-hosted Wordpress blog. It does correctly post, but tags are improperly posted. This makes it unusable for my purposes. Sometimes, Flock alerts me up updates when those updates aren’t there. That isn’t a very big issue though, but I’m a perfectionist so I’ll complain about it. Finally, I loathe the RSS reader. Maybe I’m spoiled using Google Reader, but Flock’s RSS reader is out of date. It would be nice if Flock could link up with some popular readers to provide content through them. That idea is probably out of the realm of Flock’s powers though, since most haven’t released an API as of yet.
But you still like it?
Overall I love Flock. I use it daily. I will continue to use it, and I recommend you start. Just visit Flock.com, download, and enjoy. When you do, be sure to hit me up on Twitter or Flickr or something of that sort. Its time to be social people, join the community. 
So if you were in a Super Tuesday state, did you vote? You better have. Rockin’ the vote is the only way we get a solidified voice in how things manifest themselves. Even primaries count to get the right 2 individuals prepped for the real election. Texas unfortunately has a late primary so I won’t be voting for a while. I’ll live vicariously through you all until then.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate matrices? Seriously! We were given our first homework assignment today in Data Structures. Among the 6 problems (most of which are lengthy), we must create algorithms to find the maximum sum of any connected nodes in 2 dimensions. Once algorithms are created, we must also give complexities, and then solve the problem as a whole. I have until V-Day to finish so its going to be difficult, I’m afraid.
Today the UK Guardian put up some interesting tidbits on a blog about Web 3.0. Yes, we’re already thinking about 3.0 apparently. For those behind the times, lets review. Web 1.0 (or the Web) was about finding information. It is all about static information like most corporate websites are now. Web 2.0 was a new way of doing things online. This is based on user-generated content and interaction. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia are examples. So Jemina Kiss from the Guardian, proposes Web 3.0 is all about recommendation and personalization. She argues that the social web masses want to be able to recommend objects or ideas to others and vice versa. Also, most of this could be done automatically. Her example was Last.Fm’s scrobbling. Once you listen to a song, they automatically put it in their database with a mark saying you’ve listened to it one time. The more you listen to a particular song, the more the count increments. This data could then be used as part of a recommendation system to suggest songs you might like based off others users with similar interests. Ah yes, that could be some useful information. With data mining becoming ever more important to corporate bigwigs, I am worried how that data will be used. Of course I don’t care if they know I listen to Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, or even Vanessa Carlton (guilty pleasure). Some people do care though, and it is the software developer’s job to design a system that is opt-out or even more preferably, opt-in (but opt-in tends to never happen). Securing this data and maintaining privacy will be key to Web 3.0 (assuming Jemina is right) power. So for now, I’ll just be a pundit and throw in random comments until more sites take up this type of a model.
