WIth the new website design by Bryan Veloso of Avalonstar fame, Flock has come back on the radar in a major way. In my application hold, Flock has been residing in a state of intermittent use for several versions. When I first tried Flock, my review was good. The main problem I had was that I didn”t use a wordpress or any other premade blog / CMS like drupal. So, the concept of ‘creating one place’ for my entire online social activities wasn’t really achievable. Recently, I have been fiddling about with the newer version of Flock which now has a great FLICKR interface. My own Logical Blog interface has also developed with the recent upgrade version I created for my reboot. As I began thinking about moving over I had an idea (and yes it did hurt and is dangerous so I try not to do too often). The idea was simple, to split my browser usage between to definite areas of my life and how I use the web.
One of the main problems I have with browsers is that within the space of about 10 minutes I can stack up a tab collection many would be the envy of tab lovers around the world. For this exact reason a long time ago I rejoiced the creation of tabs as a method for browsing – you can only shudder at what the window count was before that discovery. This is great if I use a plugin such to show thumbnails along with tabs, but nobody opens web pages logically enough to use the tabbing system to it’s full extent (OK that should possibly I don’t). So, I had a problem. A mass of tabs and illogically lined up websites and time spent clicking back and forth. Link this with the tendency to wander from the web page I was using – it’s something I like to call “open browser syndome”. This syndrome refers to the fact that invariably if you have an open browser it is a kin to having a bag of fresh cookies – you just can’t help yourself reaching beyond what you are doing and grabbing some random cookie web page goodness. I know I should have more self control but there was that cool link, great application, glorious widget, kicking design and so on and so on…. until you hit a deadline brick wall, have no food as no money and end up singing in a subway for your dinner…. or something like that. Let’s just say an open browser is a dangerous thing and especially around me.
My core idea was to split the functions that I did and to do this I had to look at how I use browsers. I nailed down the following divides in my activities:
- Work related
- Viewing designs working on
- Validating and debugging
- Using my CMS to work on content
- Reviewing sites for clients
- Hosting and database administration
- Online banking
- Basecamp for project management
- Getting stock images and components for clients
- Searching for online tutorials, tips and bobs for coding or design
- Social related (this sums up anything non-work so loosely social)
- Flickr
- Forums
- Reading blogs
- Shop and ebay
- General wandering around various websites and other’s del.icio.us bookmarks
These are of course a generalisation and as anyone I do a whole lot more with my browser, but these are the main ones. For me, there are also 2 other functions that I always felt I should have done through a browser but have ended up using non-browser. That was using my del.icio.us bookmarks and also reading feeds. I have tried to do both in the past and always ended up going back to using application based solutions.
The divide was set and I began my little experiment of living between two browsers. This has gone on for a few weeks. My flock default set up looks like this:
I have to admit Flock has come a long way and only because of this was my experiment possible. This experiment wasn’t just about Flock, but that was a trigger for the entire concept. The findings so far have been promising. In my little brain the splitting makes sense and avoids me wandering. If I am working I only have Safari open and then when I am out of working hours or just don’t mind being lead to wander; I open up Flock also. It has been a definite success for me from a time managment and also from an ease point of view. I can recommend this for people to try, you never know by splitting your browser activity you might not only get a bit of organisation and tab insanity relief – you might just end up enjoying it and becoming more productive because of it.
