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RockMelt social browser comes to the iPad, offers up news stories tailored to your interests
Remember RockMelt The "social web browser"? The name doesn't come up often, especially when we talk about conventional browsers like Firefox, Chrome, IE and Safari. Well, rest assured, the startup is still alive and kicking: after releasing an iPhone app earlier this year, it's introducing an iPad version as well. As ever, the browser is built around social networks like Facebook and Twitter, but instead of emphasizing chat and status updates, it's all about using your social network to help curate a newsfeed that matches your interests. In other words, you could do a traditional web search and sift though the results, but if you sign in with your Facebook or Twitter handle what you'll actually see are stories that RockMelt thinks might appeal to you. In theory, the browser will learn, over time, what you like and what you don't, and at any point you can add specific news sources as you would with an RSS feed. As an added bonus, the experience of reading articles from within the app is actually quite smooth, but that's neither here nor there. And, of course, what would a social browser be without the ability to share cat videos? In addition to sharing things with people directly (i.e., through email), you can use so-called emoticodes like "lol," "want," and "aww" to comment on a story without actually commenting on it. (Think of it as the equivalent of liking something on Facebook: it's less intrusive than posting random links on your friend's wall.) The app is available for download today, and we're told versions for other platforms are in development. In the meantime, check out the screenshots after the break to get a basic for the layout.
StormDriver social web app gets alpha release, booming launch video
You're not really reading this. Okay, you are reading this, but the problem -- we're told -- is that you're reading it like a little Pac-Man trapped in a blind maze, in which all the other Pac-People surfing this page are hidden from view. Don't you want to smash those walls down? Don't you want to immerse yourself in that sweaty throng of humanity? Oh, you do? Then you need StormDriver, a social web app which has just started alpha testing. Similar to the RockMelt browser that came out last year, it's an overlay that allows geeks on the same page to interact with each other, rate content and follow real-time feeds that point them towards hot sites and discussions. The video and press release after the break make it all sound very enticing, but remember the ancient phrase: never pull down a fence until you know why someone put it up. Update: if you want early access to the system, leave your email address at the source link.
RockMelt adds iPhone app for social browsing
RockMelt is launching an iOS version of its browser with built-in social networking functions, offering automatic syncing between desktop and portable versions. This automation, company founder Eric Vishria says, is what differentiates their browser from other offerings. "We're not going for the power users, the ones who already know how to customize a browser," he says. Instead they're aiming at the vast majority of users who just want to get on reading what interests them instead of tweaking settings. Following the termination of Flock, RockMelt looks to be going from strength to strength, and the new mobile version can only help its progress, especially with the automatic syncing of bookmarks, contacts and settings. The app hasn't been approved by Apple yet, but it's expected that it will be available by the end of this week.
Flock updates to 0.60, adds features
We've covered Flock before, but just in case you didn't catch our previous posts, here's a quick rundown: Flock is an OS X/Linux/Windows open source "social web browser" built on the Firefox core, offering various well-integrated tools for contributing back to the web you're browsing. Amongst other things, it has a built-in blogging tool, bookmarks are saved to online sharing services (del.icio.us, and now Shadows), Flickr surfing/uploading and a whole lot more.I bring this all back up because I just noticed that Flock has updated their developer preview to version 0.60, with a lot of additions and improvements: drag and drop Flickr uploading, searching Flickr by tags and text, a new blog editing engine with support for categories in WordPress and other MovableType-based blogs, the shelf can act as a topbar, a new online bookmark service (Shadows.com) with support for private online favorites (del.icio.us doesn't do that), a Technorati topbar, a better RSS reader and more.While Flock is still a developer preview - which really means pre-beta - I recommend you still give it a look. I heard a podcast interview with one of their higher-ups who didn't recommend anyone pick it up as their main browser, but they still do a good number of things that either haven't been done in other browsers, or simply aren't done nearly as well through plugins and extensions. You can download the developer preview here, as well as a full list of release notes and changes here.[UPDATE: I'm not sure what's up with the Flock download page, but version 0.60 is apparently not available for download (the links point to the previous 0.4.10 version). TUAW reader Joel noted in the comments that the most recent version, 0.5.10, is available from the hourly builds page.]
