Planet Flock

Flock 2.0 is on its way to the final release, and many of you have noticed that besides all the Firefox 3 goodness, the experience is pretty much the same as in Flock 1.2. Well, it’s pretty much the same, not exactly the same. One discreet feature is the recognition of Media RSS feeds for the mediabar.

Media RSS on the French website lemonde.fr

While Flock has been doing a lot of service-specific integration, it has never been the intent for the long term. We do service-specific because we have no choice, but we are eager to support open standards (and promote them) as they get available. Our blog editor had support for MetaWeblog and ATOM Publishing Protocol from the beginning, and now it’s the turn of the mediabar to get some open standard love.

Media Discovery

What does it mean for you, the user? Well, it means that besides the 7 supported services, you can consume content from any website that advertise an RSS feed. You can try it, in Flock 2.0beta2. Here is a selection of websites:

• I can has cheezburger
• Smugmug
• Le Monde (if you can read French)
• And many more! There are so many sites I can’t keep track of all of them.

Custom Search

So when you visit a page with a media rss feed, you can see it in the mediabar and subscribe to it. It gives a experience similar to Flock’s news reader, but with an experience more tailored to media content (images and videos). But there is more. It’s really an advanced feature, but if a website provides a media rss feed for a given search result, you can use that to add search in the mediabar.

Example: Hulu
Hulu is a website with TV content from the major networks (FOX, NBS, PBS…) with limited advertisement. You can get search for it in Flock’s mediabar, again that’s for Flock 2.0beta2:

1. Open the URL “about:config”
2. Search for “rssSearch”
3. Change the value of flock.photo.rssSearch to:
   [{"hulu":{"id":"hulu","title":"Hulu Videos","url":"http://www.hulu.com/feed/search/%s","icon":"http://www.hulu.com/images/hulu.ico"}}]
4. Open the mediabar

Voilà! You can now search for your favorite TV shows in the mediabar.

Search for "Homer" on Hulu.com

Get support for your site

If you have a feed with images or videos on your website/blog, you can get it in Flock’s mediabar pretty easily.

The easiest way is to pipe your feed through Feedburner, making sure you enable their SmartCast feature. Feedburner will nicely add the required markup to your feed (and they have a lot of other features too).

If you’re tech savvy and you’d rather do it your way, there is some documentation that I wrote for that.

Hi Folks,

Right on the heels of Flock 1.2.3 is Flock 1.2.4.  This release contains Mozilla’s Firefox patch 2.0.0.16 as well as a few other fixes.  1.2.4 is on our website now.  Editions, localizations (including our latest translation to Japanese!) and Automatic updates will be available in the next couple of days.

There will be a Flock 1.2.5 sometime in early to mid August to move Flock over from Youtube’s soon to be deprecated API.

Thx,
Mike

Update: Flock in Japanese has been released. You can download it here.
Update2: A blogger found the right words to announce this release:
Flock 日本語版 ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!!

It’s been a long time, but we’re finally there: the release of Flock in Japanese is very close! You can read details (in Japanese) on the blog of one of the translators. It even includes a link to a pre-release of the Japanese version. As the translator says, it’s better to send feedback about the translation directly to the translators. If you use the “feedback” button, that get to our support guy who won’t understand much.

As good news always come by two, an other member of the JA translation team will make a seminar about Flock, in at OSC Kansai 2008 (Open Source Conference) on July 18th. If you’re in the region at that time, that’s a good opportunity to meet between Japanese Flock users/contributors.

And again, congrats to the JA localization team!

I’ve spent a day hacking on a new extension. It’s for gamers (like me!) who like to check reviews about new games before they buy. I’ve put Amazon customer reviews score, the mandatory Metacritic score. More to come - let me know what you think should be there.

Also, when you visit Metacritic, IGN or Gamespot, games get detected, so all you need when you’re viewing a page about a game is to click on the famicom icon, and the info will open on the left. Pretty cool, eh?

It’s in AMO sandbox now, so if you don’t have an AMO account with Sandbox access you can also download it here. And if you like it, don’t forget to write a review on AMO, so it can get out of the sandbox!

"Boom Blox" in VGSpy

Hi Folks,

Mozilla has released their 2.0.0.15 patch for Firefox.  We’re about a day or two behind with our follow on patch.  We’ve got a couple of additional fixes we’re trying to land and test before updating everyone.  These bug fixes include:

• Improved Digg performance
• Fix a sharing bug with the new version of Yahoo! Mail
• Fix the media magic on YouTube Videos

Our current schedule looks like we’ll release to the website Flock 1.2.3 on Thursday, 7/3.  As this is just before a long Holiday weekend in the US, we’ll be updating the localized builds and turning on the automatic updates  for all editions on Monday 7/7.

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

There is a bug in Apple Mac OS 10.5.3 that can cause Mozilla based browsers such as Flock and Firefox to experience unkillable hangs after installing Mac OS 10.5.3. Bug details are here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436575. We’ve pulled this patch forward from Mozilla’s Firefox 2.0.0.15 patch and released a 1.2.2 to the site.  We’ll update the localized builds on Monday.  Also, since this bug only manifests itself on initial install of the browser, we are not going to release an Automatic Update for this version.

The remaining pieces of the Mozilla’s 2.0.0.15 patch will be released as part of Flock 1.2.3 release in a couple of weeks.  Other fixes scheduled to be included are:

• A fix for the media magic on YouTube videos
• A fix for Digg refreshes
• A Yahoo! Mail sharing bug
• Better apostrophe encoding
• A Magnolia login fix

Flock 1.2.3 will be released to all editions and languages and will be available as an automatic update.

Thx,
Mike

Wow… there has been a ton of release activity mostly around Flock 1.2 So much so I haven’t had a chance to keep you all updated with in a reasonable time frame. This is going to be a pretty long blog post with lots of detail. Grab a cup of coffee and I’ll fill you in.

Since the last blog post on this blog we had an emergency rollout of 1.1.4 to accommodate a Facebook change. The change unfortunately could not be done with as a web detective fix. This was probably one of the quickest turnaround times from bug discovery to in the field fixes we’ve ever done. The bug was discovered on the evening of May 12 and the fix was turned around and out in the field by May 13th. The ironic part was just as we were deploying the fix after an exhausting 24 hours, Facebook changed their page again. Fortunately this second change was fixable via web detective. It was very impressive to see everyone at Flock mobilize to fix this bug so quickly.

But that’s all old news. We’ve recently released Flock 1.2 (and shortly afterwards 1.2.1). First, and very excitingly, we’ve added two new localizations.

• en-GB - Queen’s English translation thanks to bouncysteve!
• zh-TW - Traditional Chinese thanks to Hillwood!

Flock 1.2.1 was released two days later when realized we were sending what some people would call private information to Digg. Basically, there was a feature in the RSS reader that would let you know if the article in the feed had been dugg or not. To do this we were sending over the feed article in the clear to Digg in an API call. Since we take our user’s privacy seriously we decided to yank out this feature. We’ve been working with Digg to provide a way for us to send an encrypted hash to avoid any privacy issues in the future.

The final little challenge for 1.2.1 was getting the automatic updates out. One of the things we monitor is the rate of daily update pings that comes in from the Flock browsers. A significant dip usually means that there is a bug in the field that is causing people to stop using the browser. About 3 days after turning on the automatic updates we saw a significant dip in update pings but no corresponding storm of feedback in email or on our forums about something being broken. This was troubling and confusing. We were worried that we had either broke Flock so bad that people were not using it or, some how broke the update mechanism. Ether scenario would be far less than optimal.

But, as it turns out, one of the things we inadvertently did differently for 1.2.1 was to provide a full update instead of a partial update to most of our users. (we usually provide partial updates for one release back and a full update for anything more than one release back. In this case we had a short lived 1.2 release so everyone that was still on 1.1.4 were getting full updates). So, instead of a couple hundred bytes we were sending 9 MB for Windows and Linux and 18MB for Macs. When downloading updates in the background, Flock (and Firefox) will download the update package 300k at a time every 10 minutes as to not diminish the browsing experience. For a full download this could take 8 hours! While downloading the update, Flock will NOT send further update pings, which makes sense, and if you use your browser for a couple hours before shutting down for the day, it will take several days for the full update to download. During that time, no update pings are sent explaining the dip we saw. Mystery solved and what we’ve done is to make a partial update for 1.1.4 to 1.2.1 users and turned the updates back on.

With all this distraction we haven’t been able to wrap getting the final localizations available. We should have the final localized versions available for 1.2.1 (IT, ca and hu) very soon.

That’s all for now but more coming soon!

Thx,
Mike

Blogged with the Flock Browser

To commemorate the consulting work I’m doing for NASA right now, I whipped up a little space-themed content-pack for the Flock browser.

You can grab it here.

UPDATE: Screenshot below:

Hi Folks,

Flock 1.1.2 is now available in Simplified Chinese from http://www.flock.com/versions.  Many thanks to Hillwood and Stef!

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

We’ve turned on the automatic updates for 1.1.2 so they should be showing up at your browser doorstep in the next day or so.  L10N versions are also available at http://www.flock.com/versions and automatic updates will be turned on tomorrow.

I’m very pleased to announce the availability of 1.1.2 now in Hungarian!!!  Thanks to Csega, Stefan and Dukebody!

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

We rolled out a couple of Web Detective fixes over the last couple of days to fix the following issues:

• Login detection with Facebook
• Media magic not showing up on Picasa photos
• Logout detection with YouTube
• Persistent session in Magnolia after logging out

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

Not much really.  As many of you may have read, Flock is launching an Eco version of the Flock Browser with a new skin, some favorites and a bunch of feeds related to the Environment just in time for Earth Day.  Originally, Flock 1.1.2 was to be the container for all this content.  During our testing we noticed some really slow first run startup time because of all the feed content loading in.  We decided to roll a 1.1.3 version of Flock for Eco with a fix that does a better job of not bring the browser to it’s knees  while loading in a ton of feeds.

Since we’ve just started rolling out 1.1.2, With 1.2 (aka Grouse) just around the corner in May, we didn’t want to burden the user community with yet another update.  Unfortunately, a couple of download sites have picked up 1.1.3 off of our mirrors.  So, if you see a Flock 1.1.3 out there on a download site, don’t be dismayed.  You haven’t missed much and all that love will be in Flock 1.2.

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

Yesterday we released 1.1.2 to the Flock website.  We’ll begin automatic updates on Monday as well as release the L10N versions.  This patch contains

• The 2.0.0.14 patch for Firefox
• A couple of Gmail fixes
• A fix for using the updated Truveo API.

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

On Thursday Flock released a Web Detective upgrade to fix the automatic login detection for YouTube.  All Flock 1.1.x browsers should be picking up this change.

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

Sorry for the missed blog post about 1.1.1 (I was on vacation and my human clone apparently decided to run off to some far off exotic land never to be heard from again).  Last week we released 1.1.1 which was basically included Mozilla’s 2.0.0.13 patch for Firefox as well as a few web detective fixes.  It is available for download and as an automatic update.  L10N versions, now including Italian, are available at http://www.flock.com/versions.  Automatic updates for L10Ns should be available Monday or Tuesday.

Mozilla has just announced a 2.0.0.14 patch for Firefox currently scheduled for April 15 and we’ll follow up shortly with a Flock 1.1.2.

Thx,
Mike

The first Victoria DemoCamp is tomorrow 5.30pm, Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 @ 834 Johnson St. (Juliet Living Demo Space, a.k.a. the OLD peacock billiards place). DemoCamp is basically a hipster geek term for people coming together to give demonstrates (or presentations) (practice) on technology products or services (only needs to be loosely related to tech).

Based on the BarCamp and Open Spaces concepts, the first DemoCamp was held in Toronto and inspires events of the same name in many Canadian cities and other locations around the world. Victoria organizer Mark Lise was inspired by attending DemoCamp Vancouver.

The following demos are currently proposed:

• Why DemoCampVictoria was created (Mark Lise)
• Fortuno (Jesse and Jason)
• Genetify (Andrew)
• BountyUp - Social Commerce (Joshua McKenty and Todd Khozein)
• DailySplice (Rian)
• Flock - the social web browser (Clayton Stark and other Flockers)
• Songbird (Steven Bengtson and Peter Van Hardenberg)

The format usually has the audience (participants) vote on what demos they want to see. What doesn’t get voted in at one event, often gets voted in at the next.

As BabyCamp could start any day within the next month, I hope to make it for the first hour tomorrow night.

Hat’s off to Mark and crew for putting this together. I’m sure it will be an awesome event.

Update: I did make it to the first half of the event, and took some photos. It was an awesome event! Dave Chard and team were incredible hosts! Dave is the founder of the real estate development company Chard Development and behind the Juliet condominiums being developed in downtown Victoria. Urbanist Yule Heibel made the introductions that resulted in this venue, and it seems this relationship will continue to grew and be a great benefit for entrepreneurs and technologists in Victoria– Dave welcomes other opportunities to host similar events!

I had a very interesting conversation with Yule about urbanization of downtown Victoria, got to catch up a little with Boris Mann, and have a little face time with the incredible — and recently relocated to Victoria — Darren Barefoot. I saw some people I haven’t seen in a while and met quite a few wonderful people. The demos were great!

Looking forward to the next one.

Hi Folks,

A Web Detective fix for HTML displaying in the webmail flyout has been deployed.  Happy Webmailing.

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

As you probably know, we’ve release Flock 1.1 to the website yesterday.  That is just one of many deployment steps.  Here’s a picture of what is still ahead:

• On Monday we’ll turn on Automatic Updates for 1.1 users for a couple of hours.  This will give us an indication of any potential update issues not uncovered in QA before turning on full blast
• Later in the week we’ll turn on Automatic Updates permanently
• Several localized builds are ready or nearly ready (you can check the status here). These will get pushed out over the next couple of days as well.

Also note the Gmail seems to be under a constant state of change.  We’ve already got a couple of Web Detective changes pending to be rolled out very shortly.

Finally, Spanish and German Facebook doesn’t seem to be playing as nicely with Flock as the English version.  Hopefully this will be a simple web detective fix as well.

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

We’ve deployed a Web Detective fix for Twitter to fix a pretty severe issue with the people sidebar not populating at all.  Flock browsers will automatically pick up this fix in the next 24 hours or so.

Thx,
Mike

Hi Folks,

For all those happy Xanga users out there, a Web Detective fix for Xanga login detection has been tested and released.  Flock Browsers will automatically pick up this fix in the next 24 hours or so.

Thx,
Mike