Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pellette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at house stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, it's always his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened to Saturday night when you dressed up sharp
Speaker 1: and you felt all right, I'm not going to answer that.
Speaker 1: Let's go and talk a little bit about a browser
Speaker 1: that's made the news recently. And by recently I mean
Speaker 1: in early November of two. Thank you. We do have
Speaker 1: lots of people who catch up, That's true. They go
Speaker 1: through the entire archive, so somebody awesome. And then that
Speaker 1: means that every time we get that wave, we get
Speaker 1: the people writing in and saying, hey, whatever happened to
Speaker 1: the old listener mail intro? We wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about rock melt. Yes, now I wrote about
Speaker 1: rock Melts and the blog. You do read our blog,
Speaker 1: don't you? Um? Some time ago? At that point, it
Speaker 1: was a few months ago now, and it was one
Speaker 1: of those things that people were sort of starting to
Speaker 1: talk about the possibility of a new browser coming on
Speaker 1: the scene to compete with the already entrenched Internet Explorer, Safari,
Speaker 1: Chrome and Firefox. Now. Part of the reason that people
Speaker 1: were talking about this was the involvement of a certain
Speaker 1: gentleman who um is certainly no newcomer to the browser
Speaker 1: wars and that would be Mark and Yes. Yes uh so. Mr.
Speaker 1: Andreeson was one of the people who developed Netscape, the
Speaker 1: Netscape Internet Browser, yes, and before it, the Mosaic Web browser,
Speaker 1: which many of our listeners may not even be familiar with.
Speaker 1: It was a project um that started within basically as
Speaker 1: a school project, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, um
Speaker 1: and it was pretty much the first viable web browser. Um.
Speaker 1: I say pretty much because I forgot to go look
Speaker 1: and find that out. But I'm almost certain that it
Speaker 1: is the first viable browser. And it did turn in
Speaker 1: it did involve the evolve into the the Netscape commercial
Speaker 1: web browser. Um and uh. Of course Mr Andreason dropped
Speaker 1: out of the spotlight for that particular thing, went on
Speaker 1: to become a tech entrepreneur, moved on to other projects,
Speaker 1: and now he is one of the investors in Rock Melt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The story was broken back in August of two thousand
Speaker 1: nine my Miguel Health over UM and and at the
Speaker 1: New York Times, and he mentioned that uh, that Andreason
Speaker 1: had decided to put some money, invest some money into
Speaker 1: this this startup venture, and the product was going to
Speaker 1: be called rock Melt. Now at the time, back in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, there were very very few details about
Speaker 1: the browser that that we were privy to. But even
Speaker 1: then we knew that it was going to be a
Speaker 1: web browser and that it was going to have some
Speaker 1: form of integration with Facebook. Yes, that that it was
Speaker 1: going to require that you sign in through a Facebook
Speaker 1: I D in order to use the browser UM, which
Speaker 1: is interesting that we we actually knew that much detail
Speaker 1: back then. It was also interesting that it was apparently
Speaker 1: news to Facebook, or at least that's that's you know.
Speaker 1: The executives that that helped tried to contact said that
Speaker 1: they had no involvement with rock Melt whatsoever. Well, I
Speaker 1: think one of the things to point out about that
Speaker 1: UM is that may not be such a big surprise
Speaker 1: considering the availability of the application programming interface yes a
Speaker 1: p I UH from Facebook. Basically, you can bake a
Speaker 1: lot of Facebook connectivity into your project. Of there are
Speaker 1: different kinds of project web projects, and in this case
Speaker 1: of software project um without because Facebook has already made
Speaker 1: that available, so they don't necessarily have to have that upfront.
Speaker 1: They can already be working on that without uh, you know,
Speaker 1: giving Facebook the heads up. So you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: what would possess Mr andrees and to invest a significant
Speaker 1: amount of money into a new browser? After all, as
Speaker 1: Chris was pointing out, the browser market has no shortage
Speaker 1: of contenders. Yes, I mean you still have Internet Explorer,
Speaker 1: which is still the dominant browser on the market, although
Speaker 1: its share is declining. It's no, it's no longer um,
Speaker 1: it's no longer I would say that it's no longer
Speaker 1: assured its place as number one. There there's a chance
Speaker 1: that other browsers could take that over for a while.
Speaker 1: Look like it was gonna be Firefox to do that
Speaker 1: because it was making steady gains, and then Google Chrome
Speaker 1: hit the the market and that has managed to do
Speaker 1: quite well as as well. So you might think, well,
Speaker 1: what would possess anyone two support a browser when we
Speaker 1: already have so many on the market. Not necessarily that
Speaker 1: the browser, the new browser wouldn't be better. It might
Speaker 1: be better, but sometimes it doesn't matter. You come out
Speaker 1: with a superior product, but the other product is so
Speaker 1: entrenched in the market that it doesn't matter. You could argue,
Speaker 1: and people have argued that this is the case with
Speaker 1: MP three players. There are people who say, I'm not
Speaker 1: necessarily one of them, but there are people who say
Speaker 1: that the Apple line of iPod products our inferior in
Speaker 1: some ways to similar products. Correct And using that argument,
Speaker 1: you might say, well, wait a minute, this, this other
Speaker 1: MP three player has more features and has a greater capacity,
Speaker 1: lower price point, what or whatever features it might have
Speaker 1: that are different from the iPod, why is it more popular?
Speaker 1: And really the iPod has just become entrenched in the
Speaker 1: MP three market. Um, same sort of thing with the
Speaker 1: web browsers. So what could make Mr andrees and think
Speaker 1: that the rock melt was a worthy endeavor? And really,
Speaker 1: I think the answer comes down to the fact that
Speaker 1: people are using the web differently than they were fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. That's true. You know, back then it was
Speaker 1: all about you go to a web page, you read
Speaker 1: the content, and you may not ever go back to
Speaker 1: that web page ever again because the content would pretty
Speaker 1: much stay the same, right, right, and you might do
Speaker 1: a little bit of internet shopping, but there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot in the early days. I mean, it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the late nineties that started to take off. And then
Speaker 1: of course you had the Internet bubble and uh and
Speaker 1: after the bubble burst and a lot of companies, well
Speaker 1: business that that really took a huge that made a
Speaker 1: huge dent in in online shopping for quite some time.
Speaker 1: So really, the element I think that has changed the
Speaker 1: web the most in the last few years is social networking,
Speaker 1: right at least that's that's one of the easy things
Speaker 1: to point to when people talk about web two point oh.
Speaker 1: In most cases, what they're talking about is some sort
Speaker 1: of social media technology that is embedded in a web page,
Speaker 1: like for example, blogs were what I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people consider sort of an early web two point
Speaker 1: oh technology. So you write your blog post and you
Speaker 1: give you leave the comments open so that other people
Speaker 1: can comment on your site, and it starts a dialogue
Speaker 1: between the reader and the author and between the readers
Speaker 1: themselves too, and then from there we've gone through other
Speaker 1: types of uh web two point oh technologies, but that
Speaker 1: was that's sort of one of those things comments on
Speaker 1: shopping sites, for instance, and of course the social media
Speaker 1: sites including my Space, friend stir, Facebook, Twitter, and all
Speaker 1: the myriad other sites including you know, things like flicker
Speaker 1: and YouTube, where the primary purpose is not necessarily to
Speaker 1: have social networking, but that it's a huge, huge aspect
Speaker 1: of that. And I think, uh, you're right. I think
Speaker 1: that is supposed to be the This is the hey,
Speaker 1: we haven't used your favorite word in awhile, convergence of
Speaker 1: social media technology and the browser, so that the social
Speaker 1: media part is always on, no matter what site you're visiting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's that's the basic idea of rock Melt, and
Speaker 1: that that explains why there's this close relationship with Facebook
Speaker 1: where you have to sign in to Facebook in order
Speaker 1: to use the rock Melt browser the way it's intended
Speaker 1: to be used. Um. Now, Chris and I both have
Speaker 1: access to the rock Melt browser as we record this.
Speaker 1: It's currently in beta test mode and it's invitation only.
Speaker 1: Um And and that's just a for for right now.
Speaker 1: That that's actually sort of a new development too. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even open to beta testing, uh participation until probably
Speaker 1: just a few days before recording this. We had a
Speaker 1: few days to play with it, but it's enough time
Speaker 1: to really kind of get a first impression. Now, the
Speaker 1: way the browsers laid out is kind of interesting as
Speaker 1: opposed to you know, most browsers have the main window
Speaker 1: is all the web page, and then you'll have a
Speaker 1: maybe a bar at the top and possibly one at
Speaker 1: the bottom that would allow you to do some navigational features. Right,
Speaker 1: you have your your web page controls, the browser controls themselves, um,
Speaker 1: and then an information bar at the bottom where you
Speaker 1: see your address and if you have plug ins, which
Speaker 1: is you know, very very popular for Firefox and Chrome
Speaker 1: especially as well as other browsers too, but primarily, but
Speaker 1: primarily those they're they've made themselves very open to that. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll have those you might see those on
Speaker 1: an additional panel or or toolbar, um. But yeah, for
Speaker 1: the most part, that's you know, it's all part of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rock melts a little different. Uh. Now when you're
Speaker 1: looking at the main body of the browser, when you're
Speaker 1: looking at the actual content. Uh, it's going to look
Speaker 1: very familiar to anyone who's used Chrome because rock Melt
Speaker 1: is built on Chromium, which is the open source code
Speaker 1: that Chrome itself is based upon so you can think
Speaker 1: of rock Melt and Chrome is sort of cousins. You know,
Speaker 1: they're not directly related. It's not that rock Melt is
Speaker 1: a Chrome built it's just using the same base code
Speaker 1: that Chrome uses. Right as of right now. Um, according
Speaker 1: to Seth Rosenblad c net uh, rock Melt, the current
Speaker 1: data zero point eight point three four point eight three
Speaker 1: three is built on Chromium six. There you go. Um,
Speaker 1: you can take that to the bank folks. Of course,
Speaker 1: probably by the time well, I mean it's in beta,
Speaker 1: so by the time this goes live, that will probably
Speaker 1: be updated from that point. Um, actually it may have been.
Speaker 1: That's a few days ago from now, so that aren't mean.
Speaker 1: Beta's tend to move pretty quickly, and sometimes sometimes they're
Speaker 1: very tiny changes that are not perceptible to users. It's
Speaker 1: all on the back end and it you know, we
Speaker 1: don't ever really notice it. Uh. Well, anyway, that's that's
Speaker 1: the main portion of your your browser. But unlike other
Speaker 1: or unlike most browsers, rock Belt also has edges or
Speaker 1: little panels along the side that allow you to access
Speaker 1: um uh extra content. Uh. And by extra content, I
Speaker 1: mean things that you have specifically designated as being interesting
Speaker 1: to you. So you have your Facebook friends on your
Speaker 1: left side, all the ones who are currently online, which
Speaker 1: allows you to chat with them using Facebook Chat. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, it will show you you get
Speaker 1: the familiar, well semi familiar if you're used chat programs
Speaker 1: that will probably be uh comfortable for you. You'll see
Speaker 1: a dot next to their name. Um, I thought I
Speaker 1: had that turned. Mr Plett needs to mute his iPad. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you if you look at the left side,
Speaker 1: you'll see your your Facebook users, and you'll you'll see
Speaker 1: their photos, you know, the thumbnail photos, and there'll be
Speaker 1: a green dot if they're online and a clear dot
Speaker 1: if they are not. At least that's the way I remember.
Speaker 1: I believe, I believe you are correct, and so you can.
Speaker 1: You can initiate a Facebook chat directly from your browser.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be on your Facebook page in
Speaker 1: order to do it. And then on the right side
Speaker 1: are some icons that will include things like Facebook status
Speaker 1: is as well as direct um interactions on your Facebook page.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you posted a status update, You'll
Speaker 1: have one icon that will alert you if people uh
Speaker 1: respond to that stas update or if or like it
Speaker 1: or whatever, or if they post your wallpost directly, that'll
Speaker 1: come up under one icon. Under a second icon, you'll
Speaker 1: be notified whenever your friends are updating their Facebook pages,
Speaker 1: so you have two icons for Facebook. Then you you
Speaker 1: can also link to your Twitter account if you have one,
Speaker 1: so you can get Twitter updates that way, and the
Speaker 1: browser itself will even give you live updates. A little
Speaker 1: window will pop up with the the update, whether it's
Speaker 1: a Stats update or a Twitter update, um, those those
Speaker 1: will come in in real time. You can also subscribe
Speaker 1: to RSS feeds this way, and you will have a
Speaker 1: little icon that will tell you whenever the web page
Speaker 1: that you've subscribed to has been updated, and you just
Speaker 1: click on that little icon, it'll pull up the most
Speaker 1: recent content. So the the idea here is you can
Speaker 1: browse one web page and be alert to all the
Speaker 1: updates on the other web pages you're interested in, and
Speaker 1: you can keep up to date with them without having
Speaker 1: to keep popping around to you know, different, you don't
Speaker 1: you don't have to physically go to each web page
Speaker 1: to check because you have the little alert system there.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of curious to see how that's gonna
Speaker 1: play out because in general, websites don't like it when
Speaker 1: you can find out what information has been updated without
Speaker 1: actually visiting them, because that can come into some problems
Speaker 1: with advertising deals and impressions. So it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see if that has any if there's any resistance from
Speaker 1: website administrators to this new browser. Resistance is futile. Yes,
Speaker 1: I heard that somewhere. I heard it as well just
Speaker 1: now in fact, well, um so, reactions from the tech
Speaker 1: press have been sort of mixed. Yeah, there's there's some
Speaker 1: people I think who really really dig it. They but
Speaker 1: they're using it in a very specific way. They're using
Speaker 1: it specifically to keep track of all the social networking
Speaker 1: stuff they do. They are not technically using it as
Speaker 1: a browser, or at least not not relying it upon
Speaker 1: it as their new browser. Almost every review I've read
Speaker 1: that was positive called it a great a great Facebook browser,
Speaker 1: not necessarily a great web browser. Um and that's kind
Speaker 1: of how I use it. I no, I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say that. It's sort of funny to say that
Speaker 1: because it's primary purpose is as a web browser. So
Speaker 1: I think basically the difference being the social media aspect.
Speaker 1: I think That's why it comes off that way, is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, people are supposed to be thinking of it
Speaker 1: in those terms, and of course you know, we're being
Speaker 1: asked to think of it, you know, especially that the
Speaker 1: journalists are thinking of, well, what's different about this? The
Speaker 1: the chromium functionality seems to be pretty much the same
Speaker 1: for me, uh, you know, in my experience as it
Speaker 1: has been. But it does give you a little bit
Speaker 1: more oomph when you're looking at things like, well, do
Speaker 1: you want to like this thing that you're looking at?
Speaker 1: You know, sort of. It just makes it more simple
Speaker 1: to do that without having to look for, you know,
Speaker 1: the like button. Yeah, you can. You can share web
Speaker 1: pages directly to your Facebook page. Let's say that you're
Speaker 1: visiting a site and you're reading, let's say, um, uh,
Speaker 1: let me get a good website, um, how stuffworks dot com.
Speaker 1: Let's say you are visiting how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and you're reading a really cool article like how Asimo
Speaker 1: works by Jonathan Strickland. So you're reading how Asthma works
Speaker 1: by Jonathan Strickland on how stuff Works dot com and
Speaker 1: you're thinking, this is a really neat article. I would
Speaker 1: like to share this with my friends and within rock Melt,
Speaker 1: you can do that just by clicking a little share button.
Speaker 1: It's part of the browser itself. You don't have to
Speaker 1: look for a share button on the article. You don't
Speaker 1: have to copy the u r L and go to
Speaker 1: your Facebook stas page and paste it manually. That way,
Speaker 1: it's built into the browser directly, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a neat feature. You can also do that with things
Speaker 1: like you can you can tweet things directly that way
Speaker 1: as well. And it has its own built in u
Speaker 1: r L shortener. I believe, although I haven't really played
Speaker 1: with that, I heard that there were some problems with
Speaker 1: the u r L shorten or at least other people
Speaker 1: were experiencing ms. They were testing the links that we're
Speaker 1: being shortened, and we're having trouble getting to them, especially
Speaker 1: from browsers that were not rock melt. Um. I have
Speaker 1: not personally tested that, so I only I've only that's
Speaker 1: secondhand knowledge to me. Yeah, and it's beta too, so
Speaker 1: you should expect there if you if you're trying this
Speaker 1: out for yourself, if you also haven't an invitation to
Speaker 1: use rock melt and you've found it to be buggy,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really to be expected, but we haven't
Speaker 1: even reached a release candidate yet, so so what we're
Speaker 1: using is the earliest usable build from outside of its
Speaker 1: own internal testing area. Uh. It's one other thing I
Speaker 1: thought I would mention before we talk more about about
Speaker 1: the the our impressions of this UM and I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's an easy way to get around it. Those edges
Speaker 1: that we talked about, the left and right edges, Right,
Speaker 1: they tend to cut off the edge of the web
Speaker 1: page you're looking at. Yeah, bugs me too. It means
Speaker 1: that you have to you have to scroll horizontally as
Speaker 1: well as vertically. Well, it depends too. I feel compelled
Speaker 1: to point out that the world seems to be moving
Speaker 1: toward the UM the wide screen aspect ratio, so I
Speaker 1: think that's going to matter less in the future than
Speaker 1: it does for those of us who are you still
Speaker 1: using some sort of screen with a four to three
Speaker 1: aspect ratio. Right, that's a good point. Yeah, if I
Speaker 1: were using a newer computer, then perhaps I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: this issue. I'm not going to say anymore about that
Speaker 1: particular situation. I mean, it's okay that my screen is
Speaker 1: primitive and that half my keys don't work and I
Speaker 1: have to avoid words with the letter E in them.
Speaker 1: That's fine, that's fine, I'm I'm all right with them.
Speaker 1: My prediction, my my prediction that you're going to get
Speaker 1: a new computer by the end of the year. I'm
Speaker 1: running out of time. That happened. Yeah, that's that's looks
Speaker 1: like that's going to lend in that ex category. Um
Speaker 1: and used to that if you listen to our recap
Speaker 1: show from the beginning of this year. So, um, there's
Speaker 1: one thing that I found interesting that's not directly about
Speaker 1: rock melt. Um. I am somebody who likes to try
Speaker 1: out all kinds of new, uh techie things, which probably
Speaker 1: surprises very few of our listeners. Um, you know, just
Speaker 1: to to give him a shot. And the browser wars,
Speaker 1: especially since they've become free. Um are I think a
Speaker 1: really neat opportunity to really compare one piece of software
Speaker 1: to another. So it's every time a new browser comes out,
Speaker 1: I'd like to give it a shot if it's free,
Speaker 1: And I tried one some years ago that actually has
Speaker 1: a lot of this functionality built in already. UM. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you, Jonathan have heard about it, but some of
Speaker 1: our listeners may not have. Yes, I'm gonna guess it's Flock. Yes, indeed, Flock,
Speaker 1: which actually has been up for Webby Awards and a
Speaker 1: number of other awards because it's got a lot of
Speaker 1: the features already built in. It's got social networking capabilities
Speaker 1: for uh, Facebook, Twitter, UM, in addition to others including Flicker,
Speaker 1: UH and YouTube and UM. It actually migrated not too
Speaker 1: long ago, just a few months ago, from a flock migrated. Yes,
Speaker 1: the flock migrated from Nice from the Mozilla platform to Chromium.
Speaker 1: In fact, it is using the same build of Chromium
Speaker 1: six that that UM, the current version of rock melt
Speaker 1: is using. And this again, as according to Mr Rosenblatt
Speaker 1: Um and UH. The thing that I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of the other tech writers say is that, well,
Speaker 1: flock has quite a few users, but really it's not
Speaker 1: even making much of a dent in the market. So
Speaker 1: why does rock melt feel like it's browser is going
Speaker 1: to beat that, you know, limited success of Flock. I've
Speaker 1: tried flock and I like it a lot, I would
Speaker 1: say that, Andreason's involvement is probably part of it, because
Speaker 1: I mean, here you have someone who was behind one
Speaker 1: of the most successful actually the story of of Netscape
Speaker 1: Navigator would be an interesting one to cover at some
Speaker 1: point in tech stuff because you talk, you talk about
Speaker 1: a web browser that seemed to be the dominant browser
Speaker 1: and it wasn't ever going to change, and and then
Speaker 1: it changed rather dramatically and relatively quickly. Um, the fall
Speaker 1: of Navigator was pretty impressive. Actually. Uh So, I think
Speaker 1: Andreson's involvement probably has something to do with it. And
Speaker 1: and I get the feeling that the Rock Melt folks
Speaker 1: are really media savvy. They're very very good at getting
Speaker 1: their message out there, and so a lot of tech
Speaker 1: companies kind of lack that that ability to interact with
Speaker 1: the media in a compelling way. It's because you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them are are very technically savvy,
Speaker 1: and they're very good at putting together the product, but
Speaker 1: they're not as good at selling the product to the media. Um.
Speaker 1: There are other companies that are phenomenal at selling product
Speaker 1: to the media, like Apple, which also makes amazing products.
Speaker 1: I'm not that wasn't a knock against their technical savvy,
Speaker 1: but they are very very As the day we're recording
Speaker 1: this podcast, Apple managed to to to get the media's
Speaker 1: interest in a big announcement that turned out to be
Speaker 1: the Beatles coming to iTunes yep. Um, Yeah, it's funny
Speaker 1: to note, um actually that it wasn't that long ago. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean this, this is one of Apple's announcements that
Speaker 1: was pretty quiet and by the terms that they're frequent,
Speaker 1: uh show stopping pr events that they managed to put on.
Speaker 1: Um that they opened Safari up for plugins, and I
Speaker 1: think that, uh, Apple probably sees the writing on the wall.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're not even third in the browser wars,
Speaker 1: but I mean they have a reasonable market share, but
Speaker 1: it's still tiny compared to the big guys, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's one of the reasons they
Speaker 1: are opening themselves up to allowing plugins is for things
Speaker 1: like this social networking functionality. Yeah, to kind of head
Speaker 1: off the impact that browsers like rock Melt and flock
Speaker 1: could have. Um. I think the rock Melt and flock
Speaker 1: approaches are really interesting. It it seems like it's a
Speaker 1: big risk to me because it seems to be placing
Speaker 1: the bet in that social networking is the way the
Speaker 1: web will continue to grow. It'll be the the evolutionary
Speaker 1: force that pushes the development of the web into the future, um,
Speaker 1: which it's quite possibly true. But the problem is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the future is really hard to predict, as
Speaker 1: we have discovered every December here at tech Stuff, uh,
Speaker 1: and that placing your bets like that can come back
Speaker 1: to haunt you. It may be that two or three
Speaker 1: years from now, no one would really be as interested
Speaker 1: in a socially a social networking kind of browser that
Speaker 1: like rock Melt because it no longer is relevant, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a little dangerous in some ways. I would
Speaker 1: say that the argument of going with a browser that
Speaker 1: you can you can tweak with plugins might be the
Speaker 1: better way to go. But on the other hand, going
Speaker 1: with a browser with this stuff is h is built
Speaker 1: into the browser means that it's at least in theory,
Speaker 1: going to work properly. Because with plugins you can get
Speaker 1: plug ins that end up interfering with one another and
Speaker 1: can make a browser unstable. And you you know, so
Speaker 1: if you've ever had Firefox and you've added a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different plugins and Firefox is really unstable, that's
Speaker 1: one potential reason for that instability. Doesn't necessar certainly mean
Speaker 1: that that's what's causing it, but it's possible It's also
Speaker 1: possible that those the plugins could open you up to
Speaker 1: security vulnerabilities and other problems, especially if it is a
Speaker 1: UM developer who may or may not know what he
Speaker 1: or she is doing very well. Somebody who's new UM
Speaker 1: may not understand that, or even somebody who's experienced. I mean,
Speaker 1: anyone can make a mistake. So, I mean, they're there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of things that that do that. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny that you would you would bring
Speaker 1: up the big guys comparatively because I read an article
Speaker 1: in Computer World by Greg Kaiser, who talked to several analysts.
Speaker 1: Al hilwa At I d C said just that basically,
Speaker 1: the big browser companies may very well just go, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna offer plug ins that do
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing as Rock Mountain Flock and basically
Speaker 1: torpedo them before they can really make a dent in
Speaker 1: the market UM. But Gardner's Ray Veldez suggested that it's
Speaker 1: possible that Rock Melt is trying to do one of
Speaker 1: the classic small business small tech business moves. He thinks
Speaker 1: that it's possible that maybe they're going, hey, Facebook, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got this really cool browser. It's really good. If
Speaker 1: it had your name on it, maybe you want to
Speaker 1: buy us. Yeah, we look really good. It's possible I
Speaker 1: could see that happening. Um the it'll I'll be curious
Speaker 1: to see how it all turns out. There are also
Speaker 1: other questions that we honestly don't know the answer to yet,
Speaker 1: Like because you have to sign into Facebook, does rock
Speaker 1: Melt get any of that data? Right now they're saying
Speaker 1: that they're not really they have no interest in that.
Speaker 1: That's they're not looking at selling your data to advertisers.
Speaker 1: But you have to wonder you're using Facebook connect to
Speaker 1: launch this browser, and how much of that information is
Speaker 1: rock Melt privy to and and and how does that
Speaker 1: now that that information is actually or that that connectivity
Speaker 1: is baked in of the browser. Are their security vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: that we don't know about, or that maybe rock Melt
Speaker 1: itself hasn't anticipated that could come to haunt people who
Speaker 1: who are early adopters of this this web browser. I
Speaker 1: think I'll probably find out because I have it. Well,
Speaker 1: here's something that as I was putting this research together
Speaker 1: for this podcast, I would not have anticipated as an argument.
Speaker 1: But again, as at the time we're recording it. Just yesterday,
Speaker 1: Facebook announced that it was unveiling a new social messaging service. Now,
Speaker 1: if rock Melt can build this into the browser, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with its integration with Facebook, UM, it would
Speaker 1: make it basically an email program, a chat program, and
Speaker 1: a social networking program, and then you wouldn't need necessarily
Speaker 1: a separate mail client or a separate web browser. You'd
Speaker 1: have it all in one piece of software. It actually
Speaker 1: looks kind of like refined version of what Google Wave wash.
Speaker 1: And it just seems to me that in a way
Speaker 1: rock Mount may have been ahead of its game, perhaps
Speaker 1: without even knowing it, just simply by you know, latching
Speaker 1: onto the the Facebook wagon and following wherever Facebook goes.
Speaker 1: So that could be just an added argument for that. Now.
Speaker 1: Mozilla also not too long ago announced F one, which
Speaker 1: is a set of a plug in that will allow
Speaker 1: UM some functionality for UH social media purposes. I read
Speaker 1: a little bit about it in a PC World article
Speaker 1: by I'm afraid I'm gonna mispronounce his name kier Thomas
Speaker 1: k e I r UM. But basically it allows you
Speaker 1: to share UH links to different websites and UM works
Speaker 1: with Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail. UM. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: again another example of the big guys catching on and
Speaker 1: going ahead and and and baking that in. If I
Speaker 1: knew you were coming, I want to bake that into
Speaker 1: my browser. That was a long way for a bad joke,
Speaker 1: but I've gone, I've gone further distances for weaker payoffs,
Speaker 1: so I can't really criticize. But yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's just it's weird to see, um, you know, in
Speaker 1: the in the in the age of apps taking over
Speaker 1: for the browser in some instances, um, something that's sort
Speaker 1: of like a browser app, um, you know, specifically aimed
Speaker 1: for a subset of web users. So that's, uh, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a zag if you will, to the zig.
Speaker 1: So I'll really be interested to see how rock Melt
Speaker 1: performs once it comes out of beta and becomes publicly
Speaker 1: available to everyone. Clearly, all the techy's immediately tried to
Speaker 1: get an invite. I was very fortunate to get an
Speaker 1: invitation from uh Mr tom Merritt, who was kind to
Speaker 1: extend that to me, and then I immediately extended one
Speaker 1: of my three invites to Mr Palette. So you yeah,
Speaker 1: so so we that's how we managed to get into
Speaker 1: that because we were not part of any of the
Speaker 1: initial announcements or anything. But I can say that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a browser. It goes quickly because it's
Speaker 1: based on Chromium. UM. I don't like the fact that,
Speaker 1: because of the way my screen is, I have to
Speaker 1: scroll horizontally. Although I guess I could in theory tweak
Speaker 1: it so that the page is a little smaller and
Speaker 1: fits on my screen, it's just me. Just means that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to read things as easily as
Speaker 1: as my eyes are getting old people. UM. So my
Speaker 1: initial reaction is that it's an interesting way to keep
Speaker 1: up with all your social networking stuff. It's also interesting
Speaker 1: way to keep up with all those sites that you
Speaker 1: really enjoy and you want to to know when there's
Speaker 1: new content on those sites. But it's not enough for
Speaker 1: me to adopt it as my primary browser. My primary
Speaker 1: browser right now remains Chrome. Yeah, I can say, I
Speaker 1: mean I could see that a night. I fiddle with
Speaker 1: all honestly a lot of different browsers. UM. I've used flock.
Speaker 1: One of the things I like about flock is that
Speaker 1: you hide for the most part, you hide a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff um that normally would appear on the uh.
Speaker 1: In this case in rock Melt, where you have that
Speaker 1: persistent bar on the left, well actually both rails, um.
Speaker 1: You know, you can hide a lot of that and
Speaker 1: and and Flock. And I haven't tried the new version
Speaker 1: of Flock that's based on Chromium. I used the one
Speaker 1: that was based on Mozilla, which I liked very much. Um,
Speaker 1: But I don't, you know, if Facebook is something I
Speaker 1: don't use as often as some other people do, so
Speaker 1: I usually check in two or three times during the
Speaker 1: day and spend a lot less time on it, so
Speaker 1: you know, I see the value in that. But I
Speaker 1: do like the fact that the browser wars have heated
Speaker 1: back up again a lot of times. Or right after
Speaker 1: Internet Explorer essentially crushed what was then Netscape, people basically
Speaker 1: said it was over with, and I'm glad to see
Speaker 1: that people are putting new technology out there. Of course,
Speaker 1: Opera UH, with its tiny, tiny market here, still has
Speaker 1: some innovative features that others pick up on after that
Speaker 1: and used to their advantage. But I still like Opera
Speaker 1: an awful lot. I don't use it as my primary browser. UM,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think I think it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see where it goes. I don't know that it will
Speaker 1: ever be number one, but rock Melt certainly has its
Speaker 1: place if it can, you know, once the bugs get
Speaker 1: worked out. Sure, So we're gonna wrap this up. Guys.
Speaker 1: If you guys have an access to rock Melt, you
Speaker 1: want to let us know about what your experience was like,
Speaker 1: you can let us know either on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: Are handled, There is text stuff h s W or
Speaker 1: you can write us an email. That address is tex
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com. Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon, Jonathan. Actually, this
Speaker 1: was just handed to me. It looks like how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com now has an iPhone app. Sweet awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah um, I got to to take a look at
Speaker 1: this earlier, and guys, this is pretty cool. The iPhone
Speaker 1: app is sort of a way to integrate all the
Speaker 1: cool stuff we do at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: So you guys may have listened to one of our
Speaker 1: podcasts and we talked about there's this great article on
Speaker 1: the site, but you're not at your computer, so you
Speaker 1: can't really check it. Well, the iPhone app actually lets
Speaker 1: you browse articles and blog posts, even lets you interact
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter, and you can listen to podcasts
Speaker 1: at the same time, and it has all the house
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com podcasts on it, not just ours,
Speaker 1: but you know good ones too, so you can listen
Speaker 1: to those and look at the articles and and go
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter and it should work perfectly with
Speaker 1: your iPhones and iPod touch it awesome. What's uh? It
Speaker 1: looks like it's now available on the iTunes store, so
Speaker 1: that's good to know. How much does it cost? It's free, ah,
Speaker 1: brought to you by the re invented two thousand twelve Camri.
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you