Constantly trying out new software is one of the fun benefits of owning a computer. Don"t like the way a program functions? Go try another. It was with much surprise to me last week when I discovered a browser I"d never heard of before. Flock, a browser based off the Firefox code base, is trying to change what people think of when you fire up a web page. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the co-founder of Flock, Geoffrey Arone, concerning their browser and the state of the web today.
Some people see the browser merely as a tool. Others see it as a means to an end. Flock attempts to provide that means, by acting as a "media and community interface" to the Internet and other people, rather than an information-polling device. I will admit that the idea is foreign to me, and didn"t make the most amount of sense at first. The more I had it described however, the clearer it became. Considering that there are millions of people who use the Internet to socialize and share with others, it makes perfect sense to have your interface to be dynamic rather than static. Geoffrey described to me the goal of the Flock browser and how it tries to accomplish this, then answered some questions I had relating to the Internet and browsers as a whole. After he summed up the purpose behind Flock, I asked him specific questions regarding the role of other browsers in business and the home.