The Cynosural Blog

The idea that Flock Favorites (a.k.a bookmarks) sync up with your account on the tag service del.icio.us is very neat, but needs quite a bit of work. All your favorites wind up on del.icio.us, including those things you may not want up on a someone else's server, like intranet links, financial accounts, and other bookmarks that you want to have handy, but wouldn't want to risk being exposed.

The user needs to be given much more control of their favorites for Flock to compete in the new [and rather unspectacular) browser wars.

• the hierarchical folder structure for organizing bookmarks evolved over the past decade because it works; the limited "collections" feature for flocked favorites isn't as useful
• bookmarking and tagging at one time is useful, but users should be allowed to control the behaviour of the "starring" feature - does it just add the URI to "Your Library" in Favorites, or should starring the URI open a dialogue to tag and add the site to a "Collection" Update 2005.10.23;17h50: You can do this; go to Tools | Options > Web Services > Favorites Tab and click Clicking Star performs "Add and Tag" - though you can't add to a collection yet
• the users need control of syncing with a tagging service, such as del.icio.us, at the individual URI and "Collection" level - some are sync'd, some aren't; some are shared, some aren't
• and what about other tagging services, such as BlinkList and TagHop, and whatever tag definition, management and sharing service/software/protocol you may use Update 2005.10.23;17h50: it looks as though Flock will have this feature as the previously mentioned Web Services option currently has greyed out add, delete and make default buttons

Hey, 'tis pre-beta, and maybe Silicon Beat did a disservice to Flock by "letting the cat out of the bag" while it was still a kitten. But, while I still like the cool blue look, I don't see any reason to change from Firefox any time soon. Two good opposing points of view are from Mark Evans than Miss Rogue.

In my bookmarks' personal toolbar folder, I have a subfolder named "Tagging" where I've collected the javascript plugins that allow me to quickly add-to and access my del.icio.us, BlinkList and other tagging service accounts. It doesn't sync my bookmarks with these accounts, but this Flock feature is easily duplicated, half automated, half manual. But look at those items I've listed, and maybe Flock will win out for those interested in tagging.

Technorati Tags: Computers and Internet, Tagging, Flock