Today Flock was released to the general public, in a beta release. I find the entire concept of flock rather interesting. It's goal is to be the web 2.0 browser we have all be looking for. While I applaud there ability to make it easier for me manage my photos, blogs and bookmarks, I don't think its heading in the right direction.
The reason I say this is because I think Web 2.0 is all about pushing the browser to the background. It's about unlocking the door between our local stored information and make it transparent to the web. The browser has always been the door to the outside world and I think it's time we start looking at it differently. Web 2.0 also expressed goals of emulating desktop application through the web. Flock, in my mind accomplishes neither of these goals.
If you look at Flock, its a dowloadable program that you have to install and then it opens like a normal browser. There are some simple setup steps to gain access to your flick/photobucket, blog and del.icio.us accounts and it does make the process simpler yet it doesn't really make the way in which I do things any easier.
Let me put it another way, what I would really like is a system that just does away with the browser completely. Basically the easiest way I can see doing this is by enhancing the right click options. For instance, I should just be able to go to My Pictures, right click on one and go sent to flick/photobucket. Or maybe I just open MS word or Notepad write a few lines of text and then right click and select "send to blog". Lastly, why not just link my favorites to del.icio.us directly, or anytime I come across a link, whether online, in a pdf or .doc and right click and go "send to my del.icio.us".
Maybe we could just call the company RiteClick and get rid of the browser completely. Lastly, if you really want to re-invent the browser, make a system for people to more easily develop rich applications though the web. I think it would be great to have a shopping application that I could run from my desktop, maybe something that looks at dozens of shopping sites and makes it easily for me to review, compare, sort and buy and do it dynamically so you don't have to refresh and you can easily drag and drop items into your cart or favorites.
