Darryl.net

It’s time to step up the editorial quality of the postings on my site. So far I’ve been posting about launches - and there have been many in the photospace as of late - but it’s time to dig a little more into the meaning of each launch.

A few days ago, Flock finally put up a public beta of the branch of the Firefox code they have been working on for some time now. I’ve heard some outcry that Flock is doing a bad thing by taking our beloved Firefox in a different direction and - God forbid - making a commercial venture out of it. Why not contribute back to the Firefox tree? Why ‘pirate’ the hard work of thousands of dedicated developers to line the pockets of a few?

This is capitalism at work. The market had a hole in it: people have been using the same ho-hum browsing experience for a decade now, and as websites and services have advanced, the browser has done nothing (besides add the Javascript, clean up the memory leaks, accept plug-ins, etc etc - which is a lot) to integrate the experience with the rich functionality of the desktop. In fact, the goal has been to isolate it from the desktop for security reasons.

In comes Flock and says “hey, we can make a better broswer that blurs the lines between desktop and web, and, by George, we’ll get paid by the search engines if people come our way.” So, the ever-present drive for innovation (and IPOs) has given us what is, in my opinion, a great new browser.

I met w/ Bart, one of the founders of Flock, last week and he took me through the experience of sharing Photos with my friends. The ease with which he could upload photos, blog photos, or view new photos from his friends was astonishing. A perfect blend of the desktop and web. I predict many downloads for Flock this summer. If this happens, the people will have voted.

The same debate ensued when Apple made OS X out of the Berkeley Systems port of UNIX. Most people on both sides of the debate probably own a Mac by now - OS X is, after all, the most widely-sold UNIX-based operating system.