I'm Loving Flock

I've never ever before jumped on the abandon Internet Explorer bandwagon for some upcoming browser. I'd try Firefox or Chrome or others and find a lot of things I do not like.

And then, for whatever reason, YouTube stopped working reliably in Internet Explorer. I wasted a lot of time looking for a solution.

And then I found Flock. Initially I was pleased that in Flock, YouTube worked. But Flock seemed alien, with way too much going on. And when I answered yes to the question if I wanted to add Flock's Blogger enhancements, I did not think I liked the enhancements.

At first.

And then, this morning, the light bulb in my dim brain turned on. I have now made Flock my default browser.

Long ago Internet Explorer quit remembering my logins and passwords. Flock remembers them all, automatically.

Flock integrates with all sorts of things, like Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, MySpace, DIGG.

Flock checks my spelling as I type. I don't run the spell checker after I'm done writing. Flock has already taken care of it.

The only thing I've found that I don't like is Flock is unable to use some of the Internet Explorer type enhancements to a webpage. Many of those a website maker uses, knowing they may be only viewable in IE. The only one I've noticed not working is I sometimes use a stationary watermark background. In Flock, the background scrolls, rather than stay put. No big deal, but it does sort of make my Eyes on Texas website look not like what I intended.

I'm wondering if Flock is going to be absorbed into the Google Empire, what with that nice integration with Google's Blogger seeming like an indication that the two are in cahoots.

Flock Fixed YouTube

My one longtime reader may remember a few days ago I started to be vexed by a problem with YouTube. I'd uploaded a video, which, when it finished processing and I tried to play the video I was told "We're sorry, this video is no longer available."

I Googled "We're sorry, this video is no longer available" and learned that this particular problem is epidemic, starting some time around June of 2008.

I found some people have quite a conspiratorial explanation as to what is causing the problem, speculating that some YouTube tech people were disgruntled when YouTube was absorbed into the Google empire. So, they began sabotaging YouTube.

Maybe that type explanation would explain why Feedburner has problems. Google also absorbed Feedburner. Feedburner has not been able to get the Google ads working, either within the Feedburner account via using the "monetize" tab, or after Feedburner passed off the monetizing thing to Google, with a message saying you can now control your AdSense Feedburner ads within your Adsense account. The ads do appear in Google's Newsreader, but Feedburner just displays a blank space. But you can see the ad code if you look at the HTML.

Very annoying.

Anyway, various people found various solutions to the YouTube problem. Delete your temporary Internet files, flush your DNS, use Firefox or Google Chrome, disable Google Web Accelerator. None of these fixed my YouTube problem.

Then I read several people saying something called Flock, that being a Web 2.0 browser, fixed the problem. I thought, I'd been down the try a different browser route twice already.

But, I downloaded and installed Flock anyway. And it fixed the problem. I have not seen the sorry "We're sorry" message since.