Flock first impressions: problems with bookmarks - and a workaround

I just installed Flock, the new Firefox-based social web browser on my computer and had a moment to take a look what it has to offer. I won't go into details since many others have reviewed it elaborately already. I'll just say that with nicely integrated viewing and posting to Flickr (a Yahoo service), synchronizing favorites (they are not bookmarks as I'll explain below) with del.icio.us (another Yahoo service), and easy blog posting to a set of blog services gives a first impression that Flock would be a nicely designed system that offers a no-hassle set of basic yet important tools for the modern people of the web2 era.

As said I haven't used Flock many hours but it was not needed to run into a major problem. Or at least I though so at first.

The problem, as it seemed to me, was that when Flock imported my (couple of thousand) bookmarks which I've carefully organized into folders and subfolders with all kinds of separators and everything (even the order of the bookmarks is important to me) Flock simply dumped all of the folders into one level thus loosing the fine-tuned hierarchy that I had built over the years.

As if this wasn't enough I soon after realized that even though Flock browser is based on Firefox Flock favorites don't support
1) keywords (which you can use as shortcuts in firefox, which I use probably at least 75% of the time when navigate the web) and
2) just as bad, it seemed that it didn't have quick search strings either.

On top of these two deficiencies Flock also had major problems with the amount of bookmarks I fed it: Opening the favorites manager [*] made Flock unresponsive for minutes. As the favorite manager was useless for deleting the favorites the next easiest way to get rid of them was to remove the Flock favorite file (flock_favorites.rdf) from the Flock profile folder [*] (Flock seems to recreate a new empty favorites file on startup if the file is missing).

Naturally I was a bit surprised and not very happy about this discovery. After all one major issue in Flock was supposed to be the handling of bookmarks/favorites. A little searching at Flock forums proved that I wasn't alone with my problem. Flock has acknowledged users needs (sic!) but there's still no official solution for the bookmark issue(s).

For my needs I came up with a work-around, which might also be useful for other Firefox users (or Opera, or whatever proper browser that has keywords or even quick search capabilities) who would like to try out Flock but who don't want to leave behind their bookmarks. The quick fix builds on the point that even though Flock has built is own (poor) favorite system it still has the Firefox bookmarks integrated. It struck me when jsuplido commented that he had found out the address of the bookmarks manager [*] to manage the the quick searches. So I learned that Flock actually does have quick searches just like Firefox, which makes sense. It just stores them in the bookmarks.html file in stead of the Flock favorites file, since the favorites lack the keyword field.

Now, since Flock has reinvented the bookmarks by naming the bookmarks favorites (like Microsoft has called them for years) and by dumping keywords (i.e. shortcuts)--one of the most useful little innovations in the history of bookmarks, I say--it's no wonder that Flock doesn't tout the possibility to use the PlainOldBookmarks even though they're built in the system.

But jsuplido reveiled that you can bring up the bookmarks manager by just typing chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul into the address bar (after which you can make it a favorite into the favorite toolbar).

To wrap up the issue I just needed to really import my Firefox bookmarks into Flock -- and not just corruptingly convert them into Flock favorites.

The easiest way to dd this was to simply copy Firefox's bookmarks.html file from Firefox profile folder [*] and paste it over Flock's bookmark.html file in the Flock profile folder [*] (when Flock is not running I suggest). And then run Flock. Now all my Firefox bookmarks are nicely in Flock and I can easily manually add to Flock favorites the ones I want to have online or share with others. AND most importantly I can continue using my bookmark keywords and quick searches as ever before.

Problem solved!

EDIT: Flock's blog posting tool does seem to be in need of at least some recaliberation. That is I'm blaming Flock for the uneven line spacing of the post :)

---

[i] Flock favorites manager: chrome://browser/content/flock/favorites/favoritesManager.xul
[ii] Flock bookmarks manager: chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul

The profile folder paths (in my system) are:
[iii]C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\6uoj5qc5.default
[iv] C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Flock\Browser\Profiles\wxz8e1w1.default

technorati tags:english, digital-life, commentary, rants, software, socialweb

Blogged with Flock

Snap Preview Anywhere is neat

Just bumped into Snap.com, which has a nice link preview system. If you put your mouse cursor over a link on a snap enabled page you'll see a floating preview of the linked page. That is, in most cases, e.g. when the snap search engine (which is pretty neat too) has a preview of the linked page in its system.

Easy to add to Blogger, avaible for other major blog systems, too.

IE7 ei vakuuta

Enpä arvannutkaan kuinka oikeaan osuin irvaillessani HS:n 5G blogissa IE7:n launchin sloganista “We heard you” … Niinpä niin. Kuinka monen vuoden jälkeen?. Selain toki toimii ja MS:n insinöörit ovat onnistuneet kopioimaan mukaan muutamia hyviä ominaisuuksia muista selaimista. Mutta vain muutamia.

Pari ensinnä törmättyä puutetta mainitakseni:
- ei hakua bookmakeista/suosikeista (Mitä ne oikein ajattelevat!?),
- suosikeissa ei myöskään ole minkään laisia pikatoimintoja (keywords/shortcuts/tm), jotka helpottavat huomattavasti selaamista.
- Eikä myöskään mahdollisuutta ruksia avoinna olevat välilehdet aukeamaan seuraavassa sessiossa automaattisesti (nyt pitää vastata erikseen joka kerta kun sulkee selainta).
Tämä huomioiden IE7 tuskin tallentaa automaattisesti avoimia välilehtiä selaimen kaatuessa. Äärettömän hyödyllinen toiminto, joka tulee Operassa peruspaketin mukana ja toimii Firefoxissa, jos on asentanut sopivan lisukkeen.

Nämä 5 minuutin käytön aikana löydetyt puutteet osoittavat minulle, ettei IE7:ästä ole edes yritetty tehdä kunnon selainta. Ehkä tietoisesti? Tai sitten kyseessä on mammutin pakon edessä tekemä päivitys, joka on sitten toteutettu vielä juosten kusten. Uudistus tekee IE:stä toki siedettävämmän käyttää silloin kun on pakko, muttei tuo hinkua vaihtaa pois Firefoxista eikä anna hyvää kuvaa Microsoftin tuote'kehityksestä'.

Ihmeellistä touhua firmalta, jolla pitäisi olla osaamista paljon parempaan.

Seikkaperäisempi arvio IE7:sta WSJ:ssä, mihin 5G:kin viittasi.

About Google not locking users

I've written about this a few times but haven't bumped into a solid reference. Well, here's one: Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, when asked in a New York Times interview (on Google's aquisition of YouTube) about the difference between Microsoft and Google ...

... insisted that the company would not follow a similar strategy, in part because it had established a principle of not trying to control or lock up user-owned information — like calendar or spreadsheet data — that could be moved to an alternative service.

“We at Google will never trap user data,” he said.

Ok. It's "just" a promise. But such a clear promise from a company's chairman is not "just a promise". And it's well in line with Google's actions, too. Let's hope it's in line with Google's actions in the future, too.

A Comment on Pondering about Google's Evilness

Some time ago Tom Foremski pondered over the ethics of Google's pouring free services and software to the market. His column is sliced into three parts
Part 1: The limits of Google's limitless business model
Part 2: Will Google's limitless business plan test the limits of its ethics code?, and
Part 3: Could nationalism limit Google's ambitions?

Even though this isn't anymore new in the blogosphere I wanted to write out my thoughts about his article because I think it's good to thoroughly think what the emergence of Google as well at the general convergence of the web and different services means. So, I think Foremski's questioning is good. But:

I'm somewhat disturbed about some of these anti-Google comments like this. I'm left wondering if people are forgetting that the users use these services because they get great value from using them? Isn't THAT what is important? And what difference does it make if Google doesn't capitalize the added value in a way other businesses typically do or not (something that particularily seems to bother Foremski)? I really don't understand. And Tom Foremski doesn't even try to explain.

Just the fact that Google's products make it difficult or impossible for some (not all) smaller players to compete in the sector is a lousy explanation. It's really too bad for the smaller ones, but I have huge difficulties seeing it as evil or unethical from Google's side per se. Just the fact that freeware has made it more difficult for some players in some sectors doesn't make it evil!

Saying that Google locks people to their services doesn't have a very solid ground either. Let's be honest here!

Gmail is the first larger free email service that lets you both download your email and change your email service provider for free (forwarding for free). I'd say this is _un_locking peoples' emails.

And the problem in downloading 2.5GB of email? What is this?!?

I pop my email every once in a while to my computer to have an archive locally, too. Other than it being very useful for situations when I don't have a network connection but need to check out something or reply it's also common sense! No provider, especially a free one, can give you a 100% guarantee that they don't lose your data.

But even if I wouldn't download my emails incrementally it wouldn't take that long to download 2.5GB. What kind of connections do you guys have, anyways?

It's good to be wary about the privacy issues and keep an eye on how Google handles the data it collects (having said that I know that you can't really know for sure). But it's not as if MS, AOL, or other big players were any better!

This brings me back to the claim that Google is locking people. Gmail is not the only service where Google let's people keep their content. Google Reader has OPML import, and Export, too. Google Notebook let's you print your notes in a stylish less-is-more way (I keep a back-up of my notes printed as PDF). And so on.

Besides Gmail the other best example - and also the latest case for Google not locking users unlike many other services do - is Picasa Web Albums. It allows users to very easily download all of their photos back to their computers. And allow their friends/family to do that, too. This has been a huge annoyance in just about all of the photo services on the market for a long time. Many of the services still are at worst case billing you for your own photos if you want them back (ie. not allowing you to download your photos but allowing you to buy them burned on a DVD). Now, that's evil.

All this doesn't mean that Google is perfect. Far from it. It surely doesn't make all the information that users type into their systems easily available for them to download or transfer to other systems. At least Bookmarks and Blogger are service that don't have a solid, easy-to-use export system (as far as I know). But again, the other big players aren't any better - some are surely worse, though.

It's very important that people understand what they're getting into. And there are many who don't. I think that's a real and a big problem.

Why there's no iPhone and why Nokia hasn't succeeded in US

David Pogue writes in his New York Times blog about why he thinks there will never be an iPhone.
His point is that the carriers (aka. operators) have so much power and want to influence every step in the product development of mobile phones. And that Apple doesn't want to give "veto power to ANYONE over its software design". He tells about his friends' - who've worked in the Treo development - experiences: "the carriers (Verizon, Cingular, etc.) have veto power over EVERY move you make. You have to fight, -- refine, -- repeat…all in hopes that -- (they will) -- stock your phone."

I think David has a very good point. It seems to me that Apple and Nokia have had the same approach to making their devices in at least one way. They've both wanted to keep control in their product development. This might be partially the reason that Nokia has such a lousy market share in the US compared to other market areas.

This might even partially explain the 'design problem' that Nokia has had especially in the US. The carriers' influence is quite monopolistic in practice and they can influence the trends and what people 'want' very strongly.

I'm pretty sure that if the carries didn't have such a strong influence, ie. if there weren't subsidies for buying phones, Nokia - whose phones are just so much better than Motorola's - would have a larger market share - and, who knows, maybe there'd be an iPhone on the market, too.

Blogger Beta ROCKS! - includes category support

I gotta say just briefly that the Blogger Beta has finally made up my mind about my preferred blogging platform. The little thing that made me make up my mind (for now) was the introduction of categories or tags - or Lables, as Google calls them. And the other things are that it's free, convenient (the new layout tools are very nice), supports email posting, to mention a few.

The only nuissance comes to my mind after playing around with it for a while is that you can't batch edit the categories. That will hopefully be fixed in the future.

A related note for those who haven't found a good feed reader (for blogs and all aggregated stuff): I warmly recommend Google Reader.

EDIT: Google Reader just launhced a new UI. Among other things the sharing feature seems to have developed very nicely. Very nice.

E-series Raves & A Good Review of the E-series Software

Having used the Nokia E70 for a while I've really fallen for this form factor and package of features combining a 'normal phone' with:
* (rigid!) full-sized querty keyboard,
* excellent screen,
* good camera (2Mpix, minimum for photo-scanning letter-sized documents),
* good music player is an excellent base.
Not to mention
* 3G, Wifi (and bluetooth and infrared, too), VoIP, and GPS capability,
* hot-swappable memory card (support for 2GB cards),
* email client (with POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP),
and last but not least
* excellent package of business software which include
- numerous synchronizing solutions (Blackberry, ActiveSync, SyncML, etc) and
- Office document viewing and editing tools, too.

Of the last mentioned, the E-series email and synchronization solutions & Office documents viewing and editing features that interest the business users Mobile-review.com has just published an excellent review of features.

The conlusion of the review:
"... not so long ago large corporations and medium-scale business had been considered to be Window Mobile’s and RIM’s domains, with the advent of Eseries the balance of forced significantly changed, to say the least. Even though the real confrontation is yet to emerge, Eseries smartphones already have what it takes to hold an upper hand there – VoIP, powerful set of office tools and customizable mail client."

Mobile Opportunity: European vs. American mobile phone use

Michael Mace writes a very interesting post about the differences between
European vs. American mobile phone use.

Here's my comment to the post:

Thanks for the excellent post, Michael, and all commenters for an excellent discussion. A few comments about the American cellphone usage and industry from a European users perspective.

Having lived a few years in the US the biggest surprises to me have been
- coverage,
- paying for incoming calls and the impact that I think that has had to the phone usage culture,
- the ignorance of technical issues concerning the phones and the networks of BOTH users as well as the people working for the industry (phone sales & carriers' personnel).

COVERAGE

As everyone knows the coverage in the US is not nearly as good as in Europe. And as noted here it's often blamed on the smaller population densities or the mere size of the country. This is only a tip of the iceberg, I'd say. I think it's more of an issue about the general mentality of I presume just about all parties involved. I'll give you two examples.

The CEO of Verizon Wireless criticized the customers of Verizon quite harshly some two or three years ago for wanting cell coverage in unbelievable places such as garages etc. I could still probably find the article I saved someplace about his outburst. But anyway, this showed and unbelievable attitude from the number 1 carrier in the US that advertises to have the best coverage in the country.

Interestingly the other (practical) example about coverage concerns Verizon, too, but also the authorities. The example is DC metro system. I find it funny that in this free market-economy bosting country the mobile coverage in all of the DC metro system tunnels has been given solely to one company, Verizon. And guess what: it doesn't work! You usually get a decent signal at the stations but don't dream about talking in the metro throughout your ride. I had a Verizon phone only for the metro 'connectivity' for almost a year but gave it up in frustation.
Who's to blame? Not only Verizon Wireless but just as much the DC officials for making such a monopoly deal in the first place and then not beeing able to even get good coverage with that. In all European cities that I've visited you get good signal of various mobile operators throughout the metro systems.

PAYING FOR INCOMING CALLS

This was commented already, but I just wanted to add that I've gotten quite strongly the impression that this has been a major issue for people not to get addicted to their cell phones or even use them.

Tomi mentioned connectivity. Not sure how he defines it but I feel that because it's the same price to call to all numbers, fixed or mobile, the general public hasn't understood the value of connectivity.

Also the people who have had cell phones have seen an additional downside of connectivity (there are number of downsides as we all now) compared to the Europeans - losing their minutes, that is. To this date I haven't understood why should the cell phone owner pay for incoming calls when in fact the caller has something so important in mind that s/he wants to reach the person.

The result of all this: at least two-three years ago people were simply not giving out their mobile numbers, where not keeping the phones with them, had them turned off, or were simply not answering them because they didn't want to loose their minutes. Cell phones were, and partially are still seen as simply pagers. Listen to the voicemail whereever and return to the call from a fixed line. I've seen this be more or less the behaviour of surprisingly many.

IGNORANCE OF TECHNICAL ISSUES

For final comment I just want to say how surprised I've been about level of technical knowledge related to cellphones, not of the users which is understanable, but of pretty much all the people working for the industry.

It seems that most of the cell phone sales personnel that I've talked with - and I've talked with quite a few - haven't even known if their network is GSM, CDMA or TDMA. It seems that it's changed a bit in a year or so, but I think it's quite stunning that not even the T-mobile or AT&T sales personnel knew that they where selling GSM phones. No wonder people don't understand what liberties GSM gives them!

Too bad the ignorance doesn't stop at sales personnel. It's really not much better with the carriers' staff. I understand that the generalists in the customer care can't know everything. But when they've never heard of MMS, don't know if their phones can be unlocked, don't have a slightest idea what are the technical differences of their data packages, just to mention a few, I'm giving up.

It's naturally an egg and a chicken dilemma. The customers don't ask about the technical issues because they haven't ever been told any. And the carriers don't tell pretty much any technical details because the customers don't ask for any.

But in a country that uses a number of different technologies which all have their special features it gets everybody into trouble.

Thanks again for the excellent post and discussion!

--

I forgot to mention that another great problem in my opinion in the US mobile industry is the way they're packaging services. The pricing plans are very often not that good for people who'd either want to just try out the service or use it only every once in a while.

Like with T-mobile data service: it's either $30/month unlimited - or nothing! There's no way to just enable the service, without or with a low monthly price, and only pay for the data transferred. The same mentality is seen in many other areas and other carriers, too.

Like with Cingular if you want to be priviliged to make dirt expensive phone calls with your GSM phone while you travel you have to pay a monthly fee for that.
Now, how much does it make sense to pay even twenty bucks a year to have the privilige to pay shitloads more for the calls - especially in the time of various VoIP services.

It's really no wonder that Europe is ahead of US in innovation and how users are learning to use new services.

Finding and embedding album art to your digital music

After reading Darla Mack's most recent post "Nokia N91 - Adding Album Art to Your Music" I finally took the few minutes to piece together my personal experiences about finding and embedding album art to the music tracks in my library. So, here we go - my top two tools and two alternatives for them:

The best all-in-one solution for my purposes has been a free app Album Cover Art Downloader. The creator of this is a engineer student from Finland (god knows if he works for Nokia). His app both finds the album cover art and embedds it in the files in a very smooth semi-automatic process. The search engine looks into a number of album art sources [Amazon (us/uk/de/jp), Buy.com, Walmart, and even Yahoo photo search]. A *very* impressive tool.

The second best solution and an important supplementary for me has been getting the album art from whereever, placing the album art in the album folder and embedding them into the files using MusicIP Mixer's (previously known as MusicMagic Mixer) Powertools. As the Embed Album Art is a power tool it requires getting a registeration key for some $20. This is a fantastic piece of software, too. One of the best $20 buy's I've ever made (even though it's still very much in development and has it's rough corners). Check it out at if you already haven't! It's available to a number of systems including Windows, Mac and Linux.

Cheaper alternative to embedd album art that you already have is the iCoverArt which works with iTunes. It has a registeration fee of $5. I haven't tried this since I use iTunes only occasionally and found MusicIP to do what this does (and a lot more).

Finally, an all-in-one alternative from MS. You can also use WMP to either automatically or semi automatically find and embed album art to your music. For me the downside was that WMP also changes the metadata of the music files to be whatever is on it's database. For me it meant a few hours work to tracks I had just tagged in a way I want them to be tagged.

Digikko: Mitkä palvelut kuvaisivat parhaiten web 2.0:aa? - omat lisäykseni

Unohdin lisäykseni Digikon Mitkä palvelut kuvaisivat parhaiten web 2.0:aa? -listaan:

Google Notebook on tosi kätevä tapa kirjata ylös melkein mitä tahansa mihin netissä törmää (www.google.com/notebook/). Näppärä palvelu esimerkiksi yhteenvetojen tekemiseen vaikkapa jostain nettihauista. Merkintöjen PDF-tulostusmahdollisuus on oiva toiminto. Merkintöjen jako menee koko maailmalle.

Notefish on tietyiltä osin kätevämpi (sallii paremman muistiin merkittyjen leikkeleiden asettelun). Pieni start-uppi. Ei merkintöjen PDF-tulostusta, mutta salasanasuojattu merkintöjen jakaminen tekee tästä omalla tavallaan Googlen muistikirjaa kätevämmän.

Häkellyttävän hyvä Office-dokumenttien nettitaltiointi- ja muokkauspalvelu on ThinkFree, joka tarjoaa myös (kohtuuhintaista) maksullista ja asiakaspalvelullista versiota tuotteestaan. Kuten OpenOffice, myös ThinkFree tarjoaa ilmaisen PDF-tulostuksen. Jo sen vuoksi kokeilemisen arvoinen palvelu.

Viimeisinpänä löytönäni törmäsin hetki sitten Box.net datan verkkosäilytyspalveluun. 1 giga ilmaista datan säilöntää ja vuodeksi 5 gigaa ilmaiseksi pienellä kekseliäisyydellä. Muutaman viikon käyttökokemuksella todella näppärä systeemi. Monipuoliset jakotoiminnot. Yksi niitä kohtuullisen harvoja joista saatan hyvinkin ottaa käyttöön maksullisen version. Etenkin jos firma onnistuu tuomaan markkinoille lupaamansa datan joustavan synkronointiohjelman (omalta koneelta omalle Box.net tilille).

Lisäksi musiikkipalveluista Last.fm ja Yahoo Music ovat omat suosikkini.

Web 2.0 ja syötteiden lukeminen (Digikon postaus)

Digikko kirjoittaa hyvän merkinnän web2-palveluista (Mitkä palvelut kuvaisivat parhaiten web 2.0:aa?).

RSS/Atom (eli XML)-feedit (siis syötteet) ovat tosi kätevä tapa seurata itseä kiinnostavia asioita. Näissä merkittävä kätevyyteen vaikuttava kysymys on ohjelma, jolla syötteitä lukee. Hyvistä syötteiden lukuohjelmista on mielestäni yllättävän vähän juttua. Itse seurasin melkein pari vuotta muutamia syötteitä aika satunnaisesti juuri siksi, etten löytänyt mukavalta tuntuvaa lukijaa. Blogilista ja vastaavat webbipalvelut tuntuivat kömpelöiltä, suuri osa client-ohjelmista puutteellisilta. Esimerkiksi Firefoxin Sage on mielestäni surkea.

Kohtuullisen vastikään löytämäni Google Reader on istunut omaan käyttööni parhaiten. Se tukee kuviakin, mikä tekee lukuelämyksestä mukavan ja mahdollistaa kavereiden tai muiden kiinnostavien Flickr ja vastaavien kuvapalveluiden syötteiden seuraamisen. Suosittelen lämpimästi!

S60Tips.com » Transferring Contacts Between Phones

Here's an excellent tip at the S60tips.com for S60Tips.com » Transferring Contacts Between Phones. The key idea is to export all contacts to memory card and then import them into the new phone. Plain and simple, and the export uses vCard files so you can export to other devices or applications as well!