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I’m pleased to write today about several exciting milestones here at Flock: this past weekend we wrapped the code development for our next release of the Flock browser. Yesterday the team kicked-off our Quality Assurance cycle and we are now driving hard towards a mid summer beta release. This is a major achievement for us at Flock, and another important step towards fulfilling our goal to become a great execution company in 2007.
In this new release, our users will see a lot of focus on the way the product “works together as a whole”, with an emphasis on the interoperability of the different pieces that deliver the overall experience. Flock will continue to improve the capabilities our users most value while also tightening the way all our features work together. Our commitment is to make Flock the best turnkey solution in the market for social media, social expression and great web browsing.
Two such key feature categories are discoverability and usability, and we have continued to take steps that help support these important areas. In addition to the ongoing focus we already have to solicit feedback from our users, we recently set up a permanent usability lab at Flock HQ, underscoring our commitment to engage in an ongoing discussion with all of our users. We just completed our first phase of usability testing with our new version of Flock, and saw some great results in improving the discovery and usability of the product. Flock’s enhanced focus on user research and usability is now a regular part of our development process moving forward.
I am also excited to announce that Flock’s team has grown significantly over the last 60 days and continues to attract dynamite talent. We’ve made top-notch additions to Flock’s engineering, QA, design, user-testing and administrative groups - please join me in welcoming Mark, ‘LilMatt’, Marcus, Pam, David, Sophie, Garrett, Kaleb, Thomas, Matthew, Brij, Tim and Bryan to our team. We’re thrilled about all the new talent that has chosen to join Flock!
The extended Flock “family” of staff, consultants, community supporters, Flockstars and developers from all around the world will play instrumental roles in helping us achieve our goals for shipping lots of new product value in 2007. A hearty THANKS to all ;-)
I welcome your comments and feedback – either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).
Thanks,
Shawn
Blogged with Flock
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Am I crazy or are you actually touting the fact that 0.8 upgrade you promised for last Semptember is only going to be in beta this summer? Did I miss something? I loved Flock but its inefficient management of bookmarks and slow popups made it unusable for me. I certainly hope Flock succeeds in the long run and I will be back to try it when there is something to try. At the moment all I'm seeing is words and no actions.
I probabely won't stop using Flock, even though I don't use most of its social features. It's sexy, it supports Diigo toolbar, and, anyway, Opera is reserved for my girlfriend :)
I agree with dominik.lukes in one thing though. Popups could open faster, and UI could be more responsive. Its unresponsiveness, for my money, is the most frustrating usability issue in 0.7.
Look at the Opera. The pages loading have virtually no impact on the interface speed. Whereas Flock seems to freeze every time there's a lag somewhere.
Then again, Flock must be real good if I use it in spite of those lags. Keep it up, guys, and thank you.
I've been expecting version 0.8 to hit the streets for quite some time, but no joy. Can you tell us what is holding you back? Is the company understaffed or are there too many bugs in the software?
I enjoy using Flock, but it seems forever to get something new from Flock. Can you give us a a clue as to when your next version will be available? I'm sure the Flock community would want to hear something from you guys.
Regards,
Omar.-
It has taken Flock longer than anticipated to release upgrades to the product.
Reasons include:
Innovation is hard. It is also incredibly fun and what our team thrives on, but - by definition - it is work that hasn't been done before and it is challenging to do in a dependable, discoverable and usable way. This is our mission and what we focused on.
As I've discussed in several of my prior postings, the primary goal I've set for Flock in 2007 is its transformation from a great idea company into a world-class innovation and execution company. Six months ago I joined a talented team already at Flock. In that same time frame we've expanded the capabilities of our company by adding many new professionals as covered in my post above.
We are focused on building the capability to release significant new product value on a regular cycle every 4-5 months. Great strides have been made and are continuing on this front.
I look forward to working with all of you in the Flock community as we execute on this plan.
Thank you for your support.
Omar - Our goal is to have our new version of Flock in your hands in the next 6-7 weeks (and earlier if possible, depending on successful achievement of our quality objectives).
I;d be using the Sulfer builds if I could just type in something like "google" and be taken to the page, instead of a bunch of Yahoo listings. I hate Yahoo.
Todd,
If Yahoo is not to your liking you can change your default search engine to something else like Google. This is done in the Search Preferences.
Mike
I am excited to see it arrive. I've been using Flock for about 6 months now, and love it.
Great to see the progress. Keep it up.
Kimbal
Shawn,
I tried that. I'm referring to the typing a URL in the address bar sans extension (eg cnet vs cnet.com). Instead of directing me to cnet, Flock presents a search using Yahoo. Very annoying.
Todd:
Yes, Firefox uses Google when unknown URLs (such as "cnet") are entered in the address bar. Flock uses Yahoo. Firefox appears to redirect users to certain domain names (such as cnet.com) when it's really sure about what site the user intended to visit when typing in a non-qualified domain name (such as "cnet").
What are your expectations vis a vis ambiguous URLs? What should happen when when you type "something" into the address bar? Both Firefox and Flock show search pages for the address "something" using their respective search providers.
Ambiguous URL's are one thing. I've gotten use to Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc directing me to the "reasonable guess" result. If I wanted to search a term, I'd enter it in the "search field." I'd prefer the reasonable guess over a search most of the time. I just hate typing extensions, they slow me down.
AFAIK, it is just the google i'm feeling lucky result that gets passed if you type an ambiguous URL. I am however a little confused; if I type cnet, for example, it takes me to cnet.com (flock 0.7.13).
I have google set as my default search engine so not too sure if that has anything to do with it.
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mc as in scottish not hammer
I don't even have Google set up as default engine, since I use an address bar shortcut for searching. And when I type 'cnet' I'm taken to cnet.com. The Flock version is 0.7.13.1.
BTW, Todd, have you tried Ctrl-Enter instead of Enter? It adds 'www.' and '.com' automatically.
Summer, eh... so that's going to be like December sometime, then?
Oh, of course! You're in the Bottom Hemisphere ;-)
thanks nice text..
I tried that. I'm referring to the typing a URL in the address bar sans extension (eg cnet vs cnet.com). Instead of directing me to cnet, Flock presents a search using Yahoo. Very annoying.
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