Flock 0.9 beta first impressions

Flock have released version 0.9 beta of their web browser as a Release Candidate.

I’ve been trying it over the last day or so and whilst it retains all that was unique about Flock from its initial release, it’s added some new touches.

The obvious of these is the “My World” tab which opens when you launch the browser. This is, effectively, a very cut down version of NetVibes, functionality wise. It contains Favorite Sites, Favorite Feeds (which links to the updated internal news reader) and Favorite Media. I’ll have to use these some more before I’m convinced they’re better than my normal tools, e.g. Google Reader.

It has a brand new theme which looks pretty slick, but obviously adds nothing functionality wise.

They’ve added Ma.gnolia to the favorites sharing, and dropped (their word!) Shadows, although no explanation has been given.

There are more blog services provided for the built-in blog editor, although my initial impressions are that it’s still nowhere near as flexible as Windows Live Writer.

It has retained the excellent photo bar (now named the Media Minibar, although I couldn’t get it to dispense any drinks) making it very easy to drag photos from, say, your Flickr account into a document.

It’s early days, but my initial thoughts are that there’s some good stuff in there, but nothing eye-popping. I can’t see me stopping using my current news reader or my current blog editor. Firefox has plenty of extensions to allow me to use my del.icio.us account as I want to. My World’s not a patch on NetVibes or any other number of aggregators. I’ll keep trying it for now, but I won’t be throwing away my existing suite of apps just yet.