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Browsing With Flock For A Change

January 18, 2010 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

The Social Web Browser

Both Flock and Firefox are powered by the same technology, Mozilla. Flock is very close to the structure of Firefox but, there are somethings that make Flock better, especially for ‘Social Media’ users. A better provision of user-friendliness and convenience is what Flock serves. I’m not saying that Firefox is not good enough. It’s just vintage! Why don’t you try something new? It’s a same browser with better features.

So you are thinking, what exactly are those features that make Flock better than ‘my Firefox’?

Highlights (Considering Firefox 3 and Flock 2):

Flock and Firefox both have larger memory footprints than earlier versions, but memory management has improved greatly. The good news is that Flock and Firefox do a much better ‘house-keeping’ job managing memory over time. This means that Flock will consume the most memory only on it’s first run. On subsequent start-ups, Flock will require a relatively flat amount of memory, rather than increasing its consumption over time. This also means that less memory will be consumed when multiple tabs are open and when extensions are installed. Flock has a number of powerful features built on top of the Firefox architecture that allow you to have a truly unique browsing experience. These features come with a price, and that price is a slightly larger memory footprint. Comparing Flock to Firefox with no extensions installed is like comparing apples with oranges. In order to enjoy any advanced functionality in Firefox you need to install extensions, unlike Flock which has lots of advanced features built right in. Firefox extensions will increase both the memory footprint, and the risk of memory leaks over time. That said, all of the memory improvements in Firefox (including many memory leak fixes and much better memory management ‘housekeeping’ practices) apply to Flock , so you should experience notably improved browsing performance with Flock than you’ve experienced in prior versions,
Flock quickly integrates with each Firefox security update,
With my personal experience, i found Flock more stable than Firefox,
The first thing you’ll notice is the blue Flock Star within the Media Bar instead of Flock 1’s grey star. Clicking this star will favorite the current stream and turn it orange, just like when favoriting a web page. Clicking an orange star in the Media Bar will, for the first time, provide a collection of options for this favorite media stream. The first is an option to delete said stream, as many people found it difficult to delete a favorite media stream in Flock 1. This dialog will also offer options to rename the favorite media stream and to place it in a folder (folders being yet another new feature). These combine to allow a brand new level of organization for favorite media streams, saving even more of your valuable time, Data Source: Flock
Flock helps you stay connected on social media websites through ‘People’ sidebar.

Have you tried it yet? Do it if haven’t, because it’s not a crime to try something new, isn’t it? You have the right to share your opinions in the comment section, so please add a comment!

Tricking Google Search With Scroogle

January 7, 2010 by Raj Agrawal 6 Comments

Update as on 17th November, 2015 – Scroogle.com no longer exists.

No cookies. No search-term records. Access log deletes within 48 hours

It’s a quite difficult to obtain and maintain privacy on the web. With the various intentions of collecting user data, it’s really hard to be anonym us all the time. Google Search collects the user’s IP address, search items along with the date and time which can be avoided by using proxy anonymizers and even better, by using a search engine called Scroogle.

Wikipedia reveals:

Google originally placed a cookie on each registered user’s computer, which can be used to track that person’s search history, and that cookie was not set to expire until 2038. As of 2007, Google’s cookie now expires in two years but renews itself when a Google service is used. There is no evidence that Google turns over information to the FBI or the NSA, though some users remain anxious about the possibility. In response, Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features.
In early 2005, the United States Department of justice filed a motion in federal court to force Google to comply with a subpoena for, “the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a two-month period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query).” Google fought the subpoena, due to concerns about users’ privacy. In March 2006, the court ruled partially in Google’s favor, recognizing the privacy implications of turning over search terms and re-using to grant access.

Who is Scroogle? How does Scroogle work?

Scroogle, a Mozilla Foundation, is a nonprofit organization with a history of activism on privacy issues. For more info visit: Link

When you enter a search term through Scroogle Search, Scroogle randonly grabs an IP from a pool of it’s IP addresses called Goo IPs. It uses SSL to encrypt your search activity.Then Google issues a new cookie with a new ID, and sends the search results. Scroogle deletes the cookie and saves the results in a file which is also deleted within hour. Google records Sroogle’s IP address, search items and the date and time.

Is there a Firefox, Flock, Microsoft IE7 / IE8, Opera or a Chrome extension available for Scroogle?

Yes. A short tutorial on ‘how to’ is available on the website. www.scroogle.org

So, if you have used this service, do share your experiences in the comments section.

That Annoying ‘On Behaf Of’ Notification In Gmail

September 22, 2009 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

Interlinked Gmail Accounts

I use two Gmail IDs and have interlinked them to make things more convenient i.e I receive and reply to emails from my regular ID that have been sent to my blogger email ID. This is because i have configured my Gmail account to forward all the incoming conversations to my regular ID and also allowed it to send and reply to emails in the name of my blogger email ID. This is one of the coolest features introduced by Gmail. But, this feature comes along with one inconvenience. Gmail adds the Email ID of the original sender in the email header which is easily readable by the recipient, which makes the feature useless for professional and business conversations.

On bringing this issue to the notice of Google. They justified that, Gmail needs to authenticate the Emails sent using it’s SMTP servers to avoid the sent emails to be flagged as SPAM in the recipient’s mail box. Hence, the “On Behalf Of” can be easily seen in some of the Email clients.

The feature is expected to be fixed in near future due to a large volume of user requests.