Some developers from the original Firefox team have gotten together and created a new browser based on Firefox called Flock. The great thing about flock is that for its core features, it ties into existing web applications. Bookmarks are all stored in your del.icio.us account. You can view flickr photos. You can post to your blog and even use Flock as a RSS reader that is much improved over Firefox. All of this with an improved interface also.
I didn't write near as much about my experience at MAX as I had planned, but I'm sure that what happened there is going to find it's way into what I write here for a long time. It was a super conference and I think there was a real feeling of sadness at times realizing that this would be the last time that we all came together as Macromedia. Next year Adobe will be running the show and no one knows what that will bring at this point.
Some observations and thoughts from the first day at Macromedia’s MAX Conference: Flex is awesome and the price may be right now. I’m frustrated that right now there is no way to develop flex applications on the Macintosh (that I can see). The code is just XML, but you have to have something that can compile the SWF file and that seems to be Windows-only right now. Stephen Elop (Macromedia CEO) took quite a swing at Microsoft and their new flash-like features in Avalon.
I found another post about the Yahoo blog search that made things much more clear – AND OF COURSE linked to the correct page. That’s not so hard is it News.com? The Yahoo blog search is nice. When you do a search on the Yahoo news site, a sidebar is presented on the right side of the screen that displays recent blog entries with related information. You can also click a link which takes you to only blog results.
I was just reading a news.com article regarding a new blog search that Yahoo has and of course wanted to then try it out. News.com however, never seems to have links to the topics which they are discussing. This is so 5-years ago, sticky-mined. Stop thinking that you have to be everything to everyone (like yahoo) and just link to those things that a person would likely want to go to.
Macromedia’s MAX Conference starts one week from today and I can’t wait. With studio 8 just out and the Adobe acquisition, there should be a lot of exciting things going on there. Five co-workers and myself will be headed down to Anaheim next Sunday to check it all out.
Yahoo has launched a new podcast beta site. It’s a really nice site that does a pretty good job of introducing visitors to lots of podcasts. The site allows you to listen to podcasts right within the website, but directs visitors to existing podcasting tools to subscribe.
“NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire from Ranchero Software”:www.newsgator.com/NetNewsWi… and the developer of NNW, Brent Simmons, will be joining NewsGator as a software architect. The future of Ranchero’s blog posting tool, MarsEdit, is being discussed in the product’s mailing list.
“Google now has an AJAX powered RSS reader available.":reader.google.com I can’t seem to get to really liking an online reader, but as far as they go – this seems like a real nice one.
“Mozillazine”:www.mozillazine.org has announced the availability of “Firefox 1.5 beta 2”:weblogs.mozillazine.org/qa/archiv…
Hasting workshopers: Here are the final notes and downloads from yesterday’s workshop…
Apple has announced a media event for October 12th. CNet reports that Apple will use the event to release a new video iPod (I swear I read this but I can’t find it now). “MacRumors says they will not”:www.macrumors.com/pages/200… and instead release a larger-capacity iPod with some cosmetic changes.
Thank you to those that attended the workshop at ESU 9 in Hastings on Thursday. I really had a fun time out there and hope that each of you got something from it when it was all finished &em; other than a headache. ;-) I’m working on getting some final wrapup pieces posted here tonight or tomorrow.
I’m in Hastings, Nebraska today to work with 16 victims willing participants on Dreamweaver, CSS, XHTML and other standards-based issue. It’s going to be a great day… “View the Workshop Outline”:www.brianfitz.net
Wikipedia hosts one of the most complete browser comparison charts I have seen. In most cases however, it seems to be comparing the last or latest version of each browser, not breaking the features out by version.
Speaking of Sparkle. Here is a blast from someone to claims to be a PC user at Microsoft’s new photo manager (which is still in beta).
Microsoft has been rumored to have a “flash killer” in the works for a long time and it seems that the newly announced “sparkle” program may be it, but is it designed to go up against flash? It really seems when watching the available interview/presentation that it is not meant so much to be a low-bandwidth internet technology as a way to add a ton of vector-based eye candy at desktop applications.
Sun and Google announced that they will be partnering on different technologies. It’s interesting that Google (who is the big fish here) has nothing about this on their site while Sun, who really really needs this - and seems to think that they are the big player, has this as the biggest item on their site.
That which makes October the best month of the year begins today as the major league baseball postseason begins today at noon central.
MIT has put together the specifications for a computer that should cost no more than $100 to build. The 12 inch laptop computer has wireless networking, six usb ports and a shoulder-strap that doubles as a power cord. The computer would be built primarily for third world countries looking to introduce computers into the classrooms of their students. Given this, the computer also features a small crank which can be used to provide juice to the computer in areas without handy electrical power.