goodbye macjournal, hello flock!
April 20th, 2008
My relationship with MacJournal was indeed short lived. I noticed right off the bad that it wasn’t translating special characters properly and I don’t want to have to worry myself with plain text this and unicode that. I just want the thing to work; post my content to my blog and keep an offline copy for me. Is that so much to ask?
Not that MacJournal is a bad app, mind you. This isn’t a scathing review and I’m not discouraging you from trying it out for yourself. What I do want to say though is this: MacJournal sucked for me and Flock most definitely does not. 
Flock isn’t an offline editor. At least that’s not all it is. Flock, in actuality, is web browser that has the meat and bones of Firefox, with the skin, hair, and brains of a social networking application. If any of you have been following me for any length of time, you’ll know that I have a love/hate relationship with social networking and that because of the work that I do, I pretty much have to at least try having a profile on every single social networking platform that exists. It gets exhausting. That’s where Flock comes in.
Flock manages updates from my friends across several of my existing social networks, handles feeds, media, and yes, even helps me upload content like blog posts. I’m writing using Flock this very second. Awesome, huh?
The best part, as I mentioned a post prior to this one, is that I can publish the same content to several sites. So, if a blog is personal, I can send it off to blogger, xanga, and soon, MySpace. It even has a photo uploader for uploading to various pic hosting sites online.
I’ve only been using Flock for a few days and I’m already impressed with it as an app. I’m hesitant to say that I like it as a browser. The interface is pretty catered to social networking and there are very few options when it comes to changing that. It can also be a little bit difficult to figure out because there’s so much going on. There seem to be a few quirks too, that I’ve only brushed across a few times, but overall…it’s looking great so far.
That’s about all I can offer as a first impression review. I’d encourage you to download a copy yourself and check it out if you’re in to the whole “social network” or “blogging” thing online. It just may make your life a lot easier.
Tags: flock, browser, macjournal, offline post editing, blogging, MySpace, social networking
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Maybe There Is Hope For MySpace…
April 20th, 2008
Just when I pretty much abandon the platform completely, I read about this. My biggest beef with MySpace (besides the fact that it’s buggy, not secure, and doesn’t play well with Macs) has always been the closed architecture and refusal to accept what the Web 2.0 community wants: control. But here Tom goes surprising me by actually opening some of his stuff up to developers.
First, it was the ability to edit my status with the service hellotxt (which is awesome, btw). That disappeared for a bit, only to start working again a few days later. Not enough to keep MySpace as my primary social network, mind you, but a step in the right direction. Now what MySpace needs is the ability to post blogs from external editors (and preferrably, be able to export that content later…as I’ve recently learned, copy/paste is not the most efficient nor fun way to move your blog from one place to another), and then on to the dream of every social networking netizen out there: be able to sync up items like favorite movies and relationship status from a centralized manager. Update once, and it spits the info out to facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc. One can only dream.
So then I read this article that explains how my new favorite web browser, Flock, will be adding MySpace compatibility sometime within the near future. This is awesome, because as I type this, I’m doing so using the built in blogging tool on Flock after which I can choose to send this to various locations. In fact, I’ll be posting this to notbadbutgood, my personal blog, and for the first post in a long, long time, xanga. Crossing my fingers, there is the possibility that the MySpace compatibility the article speaks of may include blogging. I can then blog on MySpace again! Write once, post everywhere has been my dream since I started doing this blogging stuff.
Of course that means that the several days it took me to copy/paste my entire MySpace blog to blogger were kind of a waste of time. Although, I did get pretty speedy with the “command-c, command-v” keyboard combos. So there is a purpose to everything danial san. Wax on, wax off.
Tags: myspace, hellotxt, notbadbutgood, blogging, xanga, blogger, flock, open source, centralized profile management, identity management, social networking
Filed under: news, notbadbutgood, web | 1 Comment »
now testing flock, now testing flock…come in flock
April 18th, 2008
This’ll be a shorty. Not in the cool rapper way, like “shawty”, but in the traditional way like, um, short.
I’m trying out a bunch of new web services and apps, and Flock is one of the new kids on the block down in Browserville. This isn’t really a review because I’ve only been using Flock for nigh unto 30 minutes orMaybe that’ll show up once I click publish?
If I can select multiple locations, that would be rad. Especially if this ever adds MySpace Support, because I could then upload to Blogger, Xanga, and MySpace simultaneously. Bye bye painful choice of where to blog, hello user preferred blog in multiple places easily.
Since I’m not reviewing, and I did promise this would be short after all, I’ll quit here. I’ll let ya’ll know how Flock is! Maybe you’ll want to try it out to.
(if you’d like to try it out before I give my opinion…check it out here)
(if you’d like to read up on various browsers available on the mac and which are cool…check that out here)
Tags: flock, browser, browsers, web apps, blogging, mac
Filed under: web | No Comments »
my first foray into macjournal…and hellotxt
April 8th, 2008
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
That?s the sound of relief. After SO many hours of manually exporting blogs from my MySpace, I’ve finally done it. I’ve separated my blogging universe into three separate blogs: notbadbutgood (this one, in case you haven?t noticed), Red House (my film blog, and incidentally, my film production site), and a blogger one for friends and family (if you want that one, just ask me for it).
It just so happens that I’m typing this post on some fancy new desktop software called MacJournal. Well, it’s new to me…and I don’t technically own it yet. I’ve been wanting a good offline editor for some time to work on my posts and keep them organized, and this here is my first test. So stick around if you care as each of these posts will probably be kind of like a review as well. Maybe if the gumption hits me, I’ll blog about which one I chose and why later on.
But this post isn?t about that really. No, this post is to let you know about hellotxt. This fun tool is awesome if you?re like me and you?re trying to maintain several social networks at once. Specifically, it updates the ?status? thing that twitter so wonderfully pioneered and has since been replicated by nearly everyone else. Feels good to be the first, don?t it twitter?
So it’s a web-based microblogging tool that spits out whatever you put in there to tons of different sites. MySpace, facebook, twitter, Pownce…if you can think of it, it’s probably there. Saves TONS of time. What I don’t get is why twitter and hellotxt don?t merge. I mean seriously, if I could twitter and it gets spit out like hellotxt style? Dang.
The only downsides that I’ve found with hellotxt is that yes, it’s truly web based. No widgets or ability to post from other devices like IM. There is a mobile browser version that is semi-reliable on my BlackBerry, though admittedly I haven’t tested it on other phones/devices. It keeps giving me http errors, so I’m guessing it has to do with the fact that I’m using a WAP dealio. Or maybe I’m full of it and it has nothing to do with that.
Bottom line…hellotxt rocks the house dope if you need to update your status across several of your social networks.
Best part? Yeah, it’s free.
Filed under: notbadbutgood, web | No Comments »