Patrick Sullivan
Web Developer at Pickering Creative Group
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RockMelt
All this social stuff just kindof comes and goes for me. Sometimes I'm interested, sometimes I could care less. So I won't blogzor or twitner or bookface for days or even weeks at a time. And then I do it all for a few days. The cycle repeateth.
Most times I just don't have anything all that interesting to say. I try not to fill the internet with any more useless crap than there already is. No one really needs to know that I'm at Laundryland spin cycling my drawers (I'm not, ever. Not a fan of that place.). Even if I was who cares? So I twatter/fakebuch/blogner when I actually want to share.
And there is the issue of finding the app I want, when it is time to do that sharing. Smartphone? Sure, pick the app and go. At the desk? Go to the website, login, or open tweetdeck or whatever to get mah share on. It sure would be nice if they were all in one place. Enter RockMelt.
Rockmelt is a browser built on Google Chrome that loads all of your social crapola in the sidebars. Facebook Friends on the left according to login status, configurable feeds on the right. Chat with people right from the friend icons. Write on their walls. Tweet from your twitter feed. One button to share the site you are currently looking at in the center to your configured social networks.
It also has one of the cooler search features I've seen. There is a search bar to the right of the address bar (pretty standard) but searching in it drops down a list of the hits. Clicking on one previews the result in the main browser window. Click another and it will change. Click out of the search area and stay on the site you just previewed. Each search result also gives you a small button to open that result in a new tab. All browsers should take a hint from this functionality.
RockMelt is available for PC and Mac right now. It is still in beta and you have to connect through Facebook to download it (free). Once downloaded and installed, you have to connect to Facebook to start it up. It asks you to allow it access to a LOT of your Facebook data. That made me pause a little. If that bothers you, then maybe RockMelt isn't for you. I assumed that it wants the access to let you do cool things in your browser experience. So far, I have not been disappointed.
It lets me do the things that I want to do easier than I could do them before. Other apps have tried to do that for me but this is the first that I am digging. I spend my day in a browser doing web development. Now I can keep up without switching focus.
Nice work Team RockMelt. Keep it up and don't be evil with my Facebook info :) .
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