Line Rider to the ultimate extreme
This Line Rider video is off the charts insane. It’s an illustrated video, meaning someone took a bare-bones but impressive line rider course and put illustrations all over it to make it even cooler.
Test post from Flock
I have to admit that when I first heard about Flock, I thought that the hype was totally out of proportion with what it deserved to be. A Mozilla-based browser with a bunch of baked-in extensions seemed like a dumbed-down version of what someone could easily cobble together with Firefox and some carefully chosen add-ins. Of course, the downside of doing it yourself is that you need to do the legwork of figuring out what to install, then maintain the install yourself - sort of a pain. The upside, though, is that you get exactly the functionality you’re looking for, and nothing extra.
I gave Flock a try back then (well over a year ago), and while I was pleasantly surprised that it was better than I expected, it certainly wasn’t compelling so I promptly forgot all about it.
Recently I’ve heard a lot of people online (particularly ones I trust) talking about how good the Flock 1.0 beta is. While I’ve been trying to avoid the “me too” attitude of having to try every new tool that gets some good comments, I have to admit my attitude about maintaining a browser with all of my preferred extensions is getting a bit cumbersome. If Flock can get it 75% right, it’s good enough for me.
Surprisingly, Flock seems to be getting it right. All of the baked-in functionality works extremely well, and is virtually seamless. While I haven’t yet tried installing some very important add-ins like Greasemonkey, I hear that Flock is compatible with many (but not all) Firefox extensions.
If you’re looking for a browser that integrates with your online life, services like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, or del.icio.us, have a hard look at Flock. Like me, you might be surprised at what you see.
Oh, and did I mention it integrates with your blog? This post was written entirely in the built-in blog editor in Flock.
Tags: flock, browser, web, beta
More high-profile blogger bellyaching
Back in July, Robert Scoble wouldn’t stop talking about the wonder that is Facebook (search for the word Facebook on this page, for example). Then, less than a week ago, he posts a very honest and interesting look at the truth about web traffic - the truth being that there simply isn’t as much traffic out there as we’d all like to believe.
But wait a second, I seem to remember that back when Scoble was extolling the virtues of Facebook, he claimed that part of the reason blog traffic was down was the fact that people are spending their time on social networks like Facebook.
Now, every other post he writes on his blog or Twitter account seems to be for the purpose of bellyaching that he can’t add more than 5,000 “friends” to his Facebook account. This last one states that he agrees with the statement “Facebook sucks” because of this problem. Yeah, yeah, we get it.
Inasmuch as Robert Scoble is an influential web personality who is nothing if not thought provoking, I think the time has come for a large company to stand up for themselves, and not give in to the bitching and moaning of the edge cases. It seems like the Robert Scobles of the world can’t handle it when they can’t simply complain and get their way.
The truth is that Facebook is designed with a 5,000 friend limit for a reason. Nobody truly has more than 5,000 real-life friends, so why bother having to architect a system to handle more? Facebook has a vested interest in ensuring that people use their system in the way that they intended, and get a good experience while doing so. Scoble is abusing the system, then complaining bitterly that it’s not working out for him. In the long run it’s not going to hurt Facebook in the slightest, but it sure is making Scoble look like a spoiled brat.
Testing Ecto
I’ve been reading quite a bit about the latest beta version of Ecto, and decided that I had to try it out for myself. Typically I’m not big on external editors for blogs, however I have to say this one is growing on me, and I’ve only been using it for about four minutes.
I wish that it were possible to have my AOL overlords allow API access of some manner so that I could use one unified interface (something like Ecto) to write posts for all of the blogs that I could potentially write for.
If you’re a Mac user and you want to see what I’m talking about, check out this page.
Hat tip to David Chartier.
