So for about a month now I’ve been testing the new social browser called RockMelt. It’s still in beta and there are a few kinks to iron out and some features that should be included but so far it’s a great browser.

ABOUT ROCKMELT

Well, the browser is great to start off with because it’s a custom build of Google’s Chromium (development build of Chrome) browser and integrated into Facebook (you need a Facebook account to log into and use RockMelt). Like I said, it’s a social browser – integrating your browsing and social media interaction all in one place.

So what do you get in the browser that makes it social? Two applications are currently integrated into RockMelt, Facebook and Twitter. Otherwise, it just wouldn’t be a social browser, now would it.

EDGES

As I mentioned earlier you need a Facebook account so you get all your notifications and news feed from Facebook on the right hand side of the browser – the sides are referred to as Edges in RockMelt.

The top icon is for your invites you get to dish out to friends whom you also want to introduce to RockMelt.

The next icon is Google’s URL shortener extension which I added – yes a lot of Google Chrome extensions work just the same in RockMelt as they do in the latest Chrome browser.

Next is the GMail Labs Notifier extension which gives me a counter of unread emails and the next one is a RSS Feed of my Gmail Inbox which shows a preview of new emails as well as an unread count.

The next two icons relate to Facebook. The first is my notifications icon (when people comment on something I commented on, or my status update, or liking a status update or comment I made). The second is my Facebook news stream, which you see on the Facebook home page when you view your Most Recent news stream items.

Below that is the Twitter app which you can enable in RockMelt by supplying your Twitter username and allowing RockMelt to access your Twitter account. This means you get to view your Twitter stream, reply, re-tweet and update your own Twitter status.

The next is simply another Chrome extension to capture portions of browser screens for sharing with others.

The last icon on the right edge is where you can change which RockMelt apps are active or not as well as where you can include an RSS stream of the recently visited websites.

Yup, RockMelt identifies RSS streams of websites as you visit them so that you can include them on the right edge and get updates as and when they’re made available. I still prefer all my RSS feeds in Google Reader though.

The great thing about this is that you can be browsing a website, reading some RSS feed article and you can still keep an eye on your social stream. Once there are new unread items in either Facebook or Twitter you can see the count as an icon overlay. Simply click on the icon and you get a window appearing with the unread (and read) items.

The other great thing is that a number of third party sites are integrated by RockMelt so that for example if someone tweeted a photo and posted it through YFrog it automatically appears in the stream for the user that posted it, you don’t even have to browse to the image hosting site to view the photo.

The same applies to YouTube videos tweeted or included in a Facebook status update. The player is embedded into the stream so that you can play it from there.

The left edge is where you get to see, in real-time, all your Facebook friends whether they’re online, idled, or offline on Facebook. By clicking on the avatar of your friend you can open up a chat window to chat to them (through Facebook) and/or send them a Facebook inbox message.

Avatars with a green icon next to it means the user is currently active on Facebook and their Facebook chat is set to online so that you can chat with them or send them a Facebook message.

Those with orange icons have been idle for a certain period of time on Facebook so they may not be available to  chat but you can still send them a message.

Those that have grey icons are no longer online on Facebook or like me, are not logged into Facebook chat right now. I prefer to keep my real-time conversations in Skype, my preferred instant messaging platform.

The thing that I found irritating/intrusive to my browsing was the constant shuffling if avatars as people came online and/or went offline on Facebook so I use RockMelt with this edge hidden (ctrl+shift+left arrow to toggle the left side, use the right arrow to toggle the right edge or ctrl+shift+space to toggle both edges).

Depending on how active/inactive you are on Facebook and/or use the Facebook Chat facility you may or may not use this feature in RockMelt.

If, however, you want to see a specific friend’s wall only you can click their avatar on the left edge and click the recent activity tab. Click on your own icon on the top left to update your Twitter/Facebook status.

But that’s one of the great things about RockMelt is you’re not forced to use features you don’t want or don’t need. It’s customizable!

SHARING

Another feature that makes this a great social networking tool is the in-line sharing of stuff that you’re currently reading. So someone emailed you a link to a funny YouTube video, simply open it up in a new tab in RockMelt and check out the video. You think it’s worth sharing to others on your Twitter and/or Facebook stream? Great, hit that Share button at the top, to the right of the address bar.

You’ll then be presented with a Twitter/Facebook share window (you get to toggle between the two if you have both apps active in your RockMelt browser).

Just like the share option in Facebook you get to pick a thumbnail (if you wish) to include in your post and add your own comment – simple as that, without leaving the page you’ve just been reading/watching.

And for Twitter, RockMelt have acquired the me.lt domain to automatically shorten URLs for you and automatically pick up the title of the page you were viewing and include it in the Twitter status update. Of course, you can edit this as you wish, add hash tags, etc, before actually posting it as your Twitter status update.

And in case you missed it, there’s a search field at the top as well, so you can search even without leaving the current page you’re viewing since the results are shown in a window. Of course you can open any result (or the entire list of results)  in another tab.

Could it be any simpler?

But don’t just take my word for it – try it out for yourself. You can also watch the promo video below which screencasts some of the features I’ve spoken about above, and more.

Welcome to the new technolgy called nano-blogging: Flutter

Now you can tweet, erm, flap even faster!

Check out the video below for more cool info. [via 2oceansvibe.com]

Why? Because he tweeted the following:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Then, literally, moments later someone tweeted the following:

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

He tried changing his profile to private so that it would not be included in the public timeline but the Internet is a funny place, with caching and all. Someone even created a website in honour of him, nicknamed CiscoFatty.

It seems people just don’t understand that if you say something on the Internet, and especially so on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter that someone you may not want to find out, is bound to find out. But my boss isn’t on my friend’s list, I hear you say. Yes, that may be so but the theory behind six degrees of separation means that your boss is connected to you, whether you like it or not.

The MSNBC article includes some great “case-studies” of people that have gotten themselves into serious trouble by virtue of what they said online.

Thanks for the link, Baldricman.

He even posted a video (below) to prove that he had gained administrative access to Twitter.

Coding Horror has explained why it was so easy, and why as application developers we need to insist on building more stringent methods in our applications and highlighting this potential security flaw, if not implemented correctly, to companies we build these applications for.

Do you use Gmail? Do you use Twitter? Well now you can have the best of both worlds. TwitterGadget has just introduced their Gmail gadget that embeds Twitter into Gmail. Voila both applications in the same window and they’ll follow you wherever you go. All you need to do is log into Gmail, go to your settings and then labs and enable Add Gagdet by URL and then once you’ve saved your settings go back to settings and you’ll see a Gadgets tab, click on it and add the TwitterGadget URL. [via Lifehacker]