Flocking away with Cardinal

If some time ago I was mentioning in another weblog post how Opera 9 was about to miss a great opportunity to join the Web 2.0 boat I guess that Flock has seized that opportunity and much more ! Yes, indeed, folks, as you have read already a few times Flock has just released their first beta of Flock: Cardinal. And lots of people seem to have been convinced about this new release, so much so that they have decided to switch over. Techcrunch, Solution Watch and specially Paul Stamatiou have already shared some very useful reviews for those folks who are new to this refreshing way of engaging, reaching out, sharing, collaborating out there in the Internet. I can certainly recommend the superb description of the many features put together by Paul. Worth while a read and a bookmark !

I was even more happy when I actually saw a couple of days ago how some of the folks that I normally follow are actually moving to Flock as well as their preferred web browser. If you would remember I actually made that move myself a few months back and up until now I do not regret it a single bit ! I just love the experience. For the last few months I have been getting more and more involved with the so-called Web 2.0 or social software movement and I must say that if there is any successful factor that I can mention that has helped me adopt quite a few of the different offerings out there that is all down to Flock itself and how it has managed to integrate quite nicely all of the different offerings that everyone would possibly be interested in. It is just superb to be able to create a weblog post, to share my favourite bookmarks online with others, to browse through my Flickr account looking for pictures I want to share, to use some of my favourite flock extensions (FireFTP, ChatZilla, Performancing for FireFox, IE Tab, GreaseMonkey, Session Manager, etc.), to read some of my favourite RSS feeds (The rest are going into Omea Pro and Newzie), etc. etc. The list goes on and on and on.

Of course, I had to upgrade to the first beta version, Cardinal, and I must say that the experience of using such a powerful web browser is even much better now. I really like how the different options have been put together in such a way that setting it up for the first time is a no-brainer and would not take you more than a few seconds to configure everything. Then you are ready to flock, I tell you. And the best thing is that once you try it out it would be very difficult that you would go back. I mean, I have always been a big Opera fan and throughout all these months making use of Flock I haven’t missed it at all as my default browser. I still continue to use of it every now and then, but as soon as I would need to make extensive use of any of the social software tools that I get to use on a daily basis I am switching over. As simple as that.

There is not much more that I can say that may not have been said before already. I can only suggest that, if you haven’t tried it out yet and have got accounts for each of the different applications I mentioned above, you should give it a try. Trying is believing, they say. So take the browser for a spin for a week, not just for a few hours, and I can certainly tell you how you will not be back to anything else that you may have been using ever before. That is how good it gets with this Beta 1. So imagine the possibilities when it goes into gold release… If that ever happens. After all, it is a Web 2.0 experience …

Technorati Tags: Flock, Cardinal, Flock+Extensions, FireFTP, ChatZilla, GreaseMonkey, Session Manager, Omea Pro, Newzie, Opera, Opera 9, O9, del.icio.us, Flickr, Performancing, Web2.0, Social Software