Jeff Keeping It Real!

After my review of Flock Web Browser For Serious Users I received an email from Vysr asking if I would be so kind as to try there new app that would be out in a couple of days. The techie in me said sure I would give it a try. I received my invite/link today and installed the new app in my flock web browser (also works for Firefox). The toolbar to the right showed up in the lower right corner of my browser’s status bar.

The app is clean and inconspicuous you hardly notice it there. This app works by select text in the web browser and clicking on one of the buttons. Here are what the buttons look like and represent.

Lets test roamabout social plug-in/app. I went to Vysr’s contact page and highlighted the address and then clicked on the mapquest icon. You get a popup/pop out next to the toolbar. A map of the address I highlighted shows up, pretty cool!

I highlighted the zip code and clicked on the weather icon and magically I see Vysr is having a lovely day in Palo Alto, CA.

As you can see this nice light weight app/plug-in is indispensable in it’s capabilities. I have not touched on the other buttons such as stock quote: Highlight a company name and see there stock price and performance. Wikipedia: Highlight any word to see what Wikipedia has to say about it. There are many more worth looking into like You Tube, Flickr, news, share, and even play a game.

The only issue I am having is the Twitter button is not allowing me to login. This is a must for me as I use Twitter a lot. I have personally spoke to Vysr and they are looking into it as it is working for them. Well it works for 2 out of 4 people. At least Vysr took my call and I spoke to Erica the Product Manager and she was insightful and very knowledgeable about RoamAbout. We talked about how the error messages (user error messages) could be a little more intuitive.

I suggested a few things that would make my experience a better one.

1. Allow login to your You Tube and Flickr accounts. That way I can see my favorites and pictures.
2. I use Tumblr and Friendfeed a lot and suggested maybe adding a button for those.

If your a firefox or flock user I would recommend looking at this add-in to make your surfing experiences just that much better. I would like to thank Bernadette for the invite and look forward to watching Roamabout application take off and go mainstream.

This review is not paid for and is solely my opinion. However, if Vysr wants to send me some logo items I sure won’t through them away. Oh and I wear a XL t-shirt

Hope everyone enjoyed this review and if you have any new application’s for Windows XP/Vista, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock or Windows Mobile 6 you would like reviewed feel free to contact me via the Contact us page at the top.

Received an invite to checkout Skydeck they want me to love my cell phone bill.  So I just had to stop by and see if they can make me love my bill.  Don’t know about you but it is pretty hard to love a cell phone bill no matter what someone does with it. 

What does Skydeck do?

Skydeck helps you to manage your cell phone, your cell phone bill, and the contacts you communicate with using your cell phone. For example, we enable you to see all of your call records in one place, link them to your contacts, tag and annotate them, and search your calls the way you search your email. Additionally, Skydeck will use the information in your cell phone bills to intelligently organize and rank your address book and allow you to network with others on the site.

Once you signed up for beta they will send you an invitation to try there service.  I found the setup process rather easy.  You need to have a logon to your cell carrier website.  Skydeck currently supports AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile in the US only.

Once Skydeck logged onto my cell carrier it downloaded my cell bills for analyzing. Then it asked me to import my contacts to cross reference.  I used Gmail but they offer Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail and Plaxo.

It will put the contacts in a rank.  The rank is based on your call usage from the bill.  It even gives a nice little 5 bar scale.  You can add your own picture to each contact to make a little more visually appealing.  You can ask your friends/contacts to join Skydeck so that you can link to them as a connection.  This is the part I am not sure about yet.  I will need to find someone willing to link to me to see what it’s capabilities are.

What do my Connections get to see? >>

Click ‘Edit my profile’ on the left side of the screen to get started and then choose ‘Add Connections’ to find people that you know.

To see this page again, click “What is the Skydeck Network?” in the bottom left of the Network tab.

I am not so convinced this will benefit me since I am already on a ton of networks.  Might be worth a look to see if it fits into your online scheme.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

There is a new web browser in town and it’s name is Flock The Social Web Browser. What is Flock you ask, from the pages of flock…

“Flock is built on the Mozilla Firefox open-source browser, so it has
all the features you’ve come to expect in a high-quality web browser,
like intuitive buttons and menus, personal customizability, reliable
security, enhanced privacy protections, and automated updating.
However, Flock is much more than that! The Flock Social Web Browser has
been fully integrated with a wide range of social networking websites
and popular blogging tools. So with Flock, you can now keep in touch
and share text, links, pictures, video and more with friends, family
and co-workers across the entire internet with unparalleled speed and
seamless ease.”

It allows you to customize your sidebar with your online accounts for one click easy access. I am still working with it to see how it may benefit a user. I have in recent months switched from IE to Firefox and who knows maybe a new one in my future. I am using there Blog editor that is built into the browser.

As I was typing this I tried to paste a copy of an image I made and it shut everything down. Now normally I would not be happy but upon launching Flock again it asked me to restore my last session (humm Firefox like) and all tabs were up and running and even started my steam I had going of Twit Live and by the way thanks @leolaporte for recommending this browser. I than launched the blog editor and it to restored my failed session and away I go continuing this post.

I highly recommend checking out Flock and see what you think. Be sure to come back and leave me a comment on what you think.

Tags: flock, web browser, internet, twit