众生阁

台湾：十三億中國人沒「翔」到：完了

Pasta Chang — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:41:42 +0800

鸟巢九万观众「啊」惊呼声中，刘翔临阵退赛，激起网民愤怒。一位网民说，「这是建国以来最大的忽悠（忽弄）！」但也有网民说，要刘翔承受十三亿中国人的期待压力，「该道歉的是我们！」不过不少赞助商准备撤广告，网民质疑刘翔是「保护日后的商业利益」。

「完蛋了，退出比赛了！」、「完了，没想到这结果！」十八日近午时分当刘翔退赛成定局后，上海、广东友人第一时间纷传简讯，都不敢相信这事实。

雅典奥运后，倾全国之力，就是为了看刘翔的金牌，四面八方来自各省的观众聚鸟巢，也是想看刘翔再创奇迹。但没想到刘翔在枪响前转身进休息室，现场宣布消息后甚至引来鸟巢观众席上的哭泣声。

无法接受的网民说，「一个『举国体制』下培养出来的运动员，天天锦衣玉食、无数专家围着保护的运动员，在奥运会上说自己受伤退出比赛，实在让人诧异。」

「那么多中国运动员，有谁在比赛前突然说自己受伤的？感觉有猫腻（内幕），是不是怕失败，故意这样？」另一网民说，「我之前感觉他可能不会有好成绩，没想到居然退赛。一百一十米很近的距离，为什么不能坚持跑下来，起码给大家一个交代。这四年他都做了些什么，他太愧对大家了。」

「正因这么多人捧他，才会有今天逃赛的决定」，一网民说，「他分明就是太怕得不到金牌，昨天还在练习，如果今天就这么一瘸一拐走到终点，全国人民都会给他最热烈的掌声！」

有些网民举姚明脚伤为例，同样是两个受人爱戴的运动员，怎就差那么多！「真是个懦夫！怪不得赛前受访时，总说奥运就是场游戏，说什么我已是奥运会冠军了，说人家萝卜丝（罗伯斯）状态很好，唉，真没料到他会这样。」

《人民网》对五万民众调查，持「理解，伤病无法抗拒」意见者占四八．三％，持「不解，退赛太意外」意见者占四四．三％，显示民众意见两极。

「有哪个运动员能承担这么大的期望？中国和世界都将刘翔推到一个无比锋利的刀尖上！太难了。」支持刘翔的网民说，「这是刘翔最艰难的抉择，他心里比谁都难过。大家给应他更多的理解宽容和鼓励，他仍是我们的国宝。」

尽管如此，刘翔退赛仍有人联想是否涉商业利益。一位网民说，退赛总比受伤，更能保护刘翔的商业利润。「刘翔是个巨大利益场，这次退赛对他损失事小，未来只要他还有炒作价值，一定还会炒作。」

刘翔退赛后，据称各赞助商已提紧急因应，联想集团表示，仍在研究是否继续赞助刘翔；安利集团称，跟刘翔合同期满后是否续签仍待定；奥康集团也召开紧急会议，商讨调整奥运广告。刘翔涉及的广告商品一旦下架，赞助商估计损失超过十亿人民币。

A Country Feels a Hurdler’s Pain

Pasta Chang — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:20:08 +0800

National mourning began as Liu Xiang rubbed his left leg, signaling the source of his pain, telling 1.3 billion Chinese citizens that he would not be crossing even one hurdle this day.

The sadness radiated outward to fans and officials and journalists, who immediately wept at the downfall of their national hero. All over China, people felt the collective sting of failure, concentrated in one athlete, which is always a risky business.

The spectators wanted no more of the morning heats at the National Stadium. They staggered out of the stadium as if in shock after witnessing a car crash.

Liu’s body had failed, which, in the eyes of many Chinese people, meant they had failed, too.

A visitor to China wanted to hug the horrified fans and say:

It’s all right. Your athletes are leading the Olympics in gold medals by a huge margin. Your young people are the sweetest, most prepared volunteers any Olympics has ever seen. Your government has organized an efficient Olympic Games.

Such words would not have given solace to fans like the 27-year-old man who gave his family name as Chu: “This is such a disgrace for China,” he said, adding, “He must have been through a lot of pressure from the press. Both the media and Liu Xiang himself should take the responsibility.”

Feng Gang, 33, who came with four friends from the city of Chongqing to see Liu compete, called of Chongqing to see Liu compete, called the injury “a pity,” but added: “In the end, it really matters only to himself. We are just the audience. I am sure he is the one that regrets this the most, not anyone else. We feel disappointed, of course, but we still like him as a person.”

It is always dangerous to put faith in one person, be it dictator or elected official, singer or actor. Everybody is flawed, particularly athletes, whose Achilles’ tendons or hamstrings can go at any time.

China had personified its hopes for the 2008 Summer Games in Liu, a 25-year-old hurdler, who by definition was fragile. All athletes are fragile. Witness the way Yao Ming hobbled off the court while playing for faraway Houston last winter. Witness the way Mickey Mantle, the great Yankees hitter, blew a hamstring running to first base one night in the early ’60’s — like a deer being shot in mid-stride, somebody wrote.

But Liu is different. He is even more central to the Chinese persona than Yao, who at 7 feet, 6 inches is beyond imagination. Liu was the outer possibility of the Chinese psyche, the chance that a 6-foot, 2-inch hurdler could compete with athletes from around the world.

That prospect intrigued Liu. Chinese athletes are trained to keep a low profile, and not get grandiose, but Liu once speculated on the impact of his world record of 12.91 seconds in the Athens Games in 2004, when he was four years younger.

“It is kind of a miracle,” Liu said. “It is unbelievable — a Chinese, an Asian, has won this event. It is a proud moment not only for China but for Asia and all people who share the same yellow skin color.”

Please note these are not the ravings of a Western journalist. These are the words of Liu — reasonable enough, since he had just become the first Chinese male ever to win a gold medal in Olympic track and field.

“Please pay attention to Chinese track and field,” he said. “I think we Chinese can unleash a yellow tornado on the world.”

This was not some foolish boast of racial superiority, just an assertion of standing tall against the world. Liu was suggesting that a Chinese man could reach the level of Rafael Nadal of tennis or Kobe Bryant of basketball or Ronaldinho of football or Catherine Ndereba of Kenya, who sprang from other continents.

Liu touched a nerve in the Chinese people. Huge corporations that are lighting up the Beijing night with their neon advertisements put their money on him. Not allowed to have a driver’s license, Liu endorses Cadillac. He was the new Chinese man, their Tiger, their Federer, their Jordan, their Beckham.

With Liu as the example, China upgraded its sports system after 2004, bringing more prospects into isolated training camps. “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,” was one transient slogan of Chairman Mao. China dreamed of a hundred Lius.

Many other great athletes have aged between Olympics, lost their muscle tone. Sometime this spring, Liu stopped competing, went behind the screen. On June 12, Dayron Robles from Cuba, one of the last national true believers, set a world record of 12.87 seconds.

It happens that fast in sports. China was caught with its gigantic investment in Liu. Tickets for Thursday’s hurdles final were going at 10 or 20 times the original price.

That final will take place as scheduled, but the market price has fallen a trifle. Welcome to the capitalism of scalping. More important, China is left without the athlete who was expected to take on the world,

It’s all right. The new hotels are comfortable. The new subway lines are splendid. Your children are talented. Traffic is moving. The air is not as bad as we feared. Yao has advanced to the next round. The gold medals continue. It’s all right.

CNN对刘翔退出比赛的的报道

Pasta Chang — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:27:42 +0800

CNN对刘翔退出比赛的报道

好看薄-超酷的图片展示和分享空间

Pasta Chang — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:40:29 +0800

我们都曾经是Flickr或者Picassa的忠实用户, 每次旅游回来也都勤勤恳恳的把所有的照片传到网上, 然后把链接发给自己的亲友. 但是不仅他们看这些照片时兴趣索然, 甚至连我们自己都想不起来照片背后发生的事情了,这些照片就放在那里再也没有人翻阅过. 现有照片共享模式的问题到底出在哪儿呢?

我们发现照片作为一种媒介, 最重要的功能在于保存记忆. 只有给照片配上解释才能准确的表达出那些在照片中无法捕捉到的细节. 好看簿存在的意义就在于帮助我们的用户”留存记忆”. 对于打字不方便的用户, 我们还提供了在线录音的功能,用户无需安装任何软件就可以把自己对于照片的解释录下来,让远方的亲友能够听见你的声音.

好看簿是一个帮助您用照片记录生活的图片博客。

上传便利	大部分网站对照片尺寸都有200k的限制，并且对图片格式有严格要求。好看簿最大单张可达4M，支持市面上常见的30多种文件格式。
图文并茂	在论坛或者文字博客中插入图片是地球上最令人头疼的事情。在好看簿，你可以非常方便的实现图文并茂的内容，再不用一张接一张的插入图片了。
鼓励外链	我们鼓励您将好看簿上的照片及其描述在其他网站使用。为此我们还提供了支持论坛，文字博客和播放器的多种外链形式供您选择。

好看簿可以做什么？

写游记, 描述自己喜爱的建筑或者记录观鸟收获.
珍藏孩子出生，成长，上学的幸福过程.
秀秀自己的涂鸦, 漫画, 刚刚读过的书或者喜爱的电影.
分享生活中的点滴, 阳台上的花或者自己的宠物.
制作教程, 使用指南，导入PPT幻灯片.

好看簿不是…

传统相册

好看簿更加注重照片的“记录性”和“故事性”。
毕竟，照片的价值在于分享照片背后的故事。

文字博客

一图胜百语，照片更形象，更亲切。
随着数码相机和拍照手机的普及，用照片分享生活，更快，更直接，也更方便。

论坛社群

好看簿是你的网上家园。每个人都有完全属于自己的个人空间。
在这里，你可以尽情展示自己，没有版主，你是这个世界的主人。

WP-Post-Banners-优秀的图片展示插件

Pasta Chang — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:51:02 +0800

WP-Post-Banners is a standalone script / wordpress plugin that can mine your Wordpress posts or any other data and look for images suiting a given dimension and generates ‘featured’ section for your site using the found items.

The featured section, includes a resized image (banner) with the label, description and link of the related post or data.

Currently it supports a Wordpress plugin mode (with widget support) and a standalone mode. It’s very easy to integrate it to your Wordpress installation or any other blog / cms / forum software even in your static data site.

Right now it supports two output styles; simple banners and slideshow mode.

Simple Banners Mode

In this mode, all suitable items are vertically positioned. Check here to see a simple banners demo.

To use this mode, just call the function getpostbanners()

  <?php if (function_exists('get_post_banners')): ?>
  <?php get_post_banners(300,150); ?>
  <?php endif; ?>

getpostbanners() accepts 4 arguments;

Banner image width
Maximum banner image height (means actual rendered banners may be lesser than this value)
(Optional) Maximum number of banners to be rendered
(Optional) Filter - valid under wordpress and filters the posts returned by wordpress. For more information about avaible filtering options check here.

So let’s examine this call;

  <?php if (function_exists('get_post_banners')): ?>
  <?php get_post_banners(300,100,10,'numberposts=10&orderby=rand'); ?>
  <?php endif; ?>

This code will at maximum render 10 banners and wordpress returns us 10 posts to examine. And orderby=rand makes wordpress to select random posts and return us.

Slideshow Mode

In slideshow mode, all suitable items are shown as slideshow. Check here to see a slideshow demo.

WP-Post-Banners 0.5 preview - Slideshow feature from raistlinthewiz on Vimeo.

To use this mode just call the function get_slideshow()

  <?php if (function_exists('get_slideshow')): ?>
  <?php get_slideshow(300,150); ?>
  <?php endif; ?>

getslideshow() accepts 4 arguments which are exactly the same with getpost_banners arguments.

Image width
Maximum image height (means actual rendered images may be lesser than this value)
(Optional) Maximum number of banners to be rendered
(Optional) Filter - valid under wordpress and filters the posts returned by wordpress. For more information about avaible filtering options check here.

Widget Mode

The plugin supports running as Widget for Wordpress. Todo so just browse to your Wordpress installations administator section and then Design - Widgets section. There you can add Post Banners (Simple Banners) or Post Banners Slideshow widgets to your theme.

Check here to see a widget demo.

You can set these options for widgets:

Widget title: Give it a title
Image Width: Set the banner width
Image Height: Set the maximum banner height
Max Items: (Optional) Set maximum amount of items
Post Filter: (Optional) Set post filter.

Stand Alone Mode

With the release of 0.5 version you can just run the WP-Post-Banners as a standalone script. You can use it your own static site by supplying data manually or even use it in any other blog / CMS / forum software by just writing the data pump function.

Check here to see a stand-alone demo.

First lets see manuall data pumping;

1) Include engine.php in your site

  include 'engine.php';

2) Initiate the engine class

      $e=new engine();
      $e->layer("STAND_ALONE");

3) Set configuration; width, height and maximum items

  $e->width="300";
  $e->height="220";
  $e->max_items=2;

4) Start pumping the content

  $p=new post_item(); // new content item
  $p->img="<img src='http://www.huseyinuslu.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/iloled-300x200.png'>"; // image
  $p->label="Sample Post I"; // label
  $p->content="post description here"; // description
  $p->link="http://www.huseyinuslu.net/wp-post-banners"; // related url
  $e->add_item($p); // add the item

5) Let the wp-post-banners do the magic and render.

To render in Simple Banners mode use render()echo $e->render();
To render slideshow use render_slideshow()echo $e->render_slideshow();

6) Free the resources used

  $e=null; // release resources

Within the distributed files, there’s an example script ’standalone.php’.

Porting plugin to other Blog / CMS / Forum Software

By reading the standalone instructions and following sample data pumper for Wordpress you can just port the plugin to any other blog / cms / forum software with coding a few lines.

To do so, take this Wordpress pumper code as a basis for your work and don’t forget to contact plugin author about your work so that he can include it with main distribution.

  function get_slideshow($width,$height,$max=999,$filter='')
  {
        $e=new engine();
        $e->layer("WORDPRESS"); // when porting you'd like to use STAND_ALONE mode or code your own layer
        $e->width=$width;
        $e->height=$height;
        $e->max_items=$max;
        $posts=get_posts($filter); 

        foreach($posts as $post)
        {
              setup_postdata($post);
              $p=new post_item();
              $p->img=$post->post_content;
              $p->content=$post->post_content;
              $p->link=get_permalink($post->ID);
              $p->label=$post->post_title;
              $e->add_item($p);
        }           

        echo $e->render_slideshow($width,$height); 

        $e=null; // release resources

}

Examples Live Demo

Plugin is already running at my main blog page.

To see example code & live demos please browse check here.

Installing

Wordpress

Upload plugin to wp-content/plugins/
On your Wordpress administrator section, browse to your Settings - Post-Banners. You have to do this in order plugin to work properly!!
Add widget or direct function calls (See above)

Standalone / Other Software

Upload to correct path of your software and include the ‘engine.php’
See the Stand Alone Mode & Porting Instructions

Requirements

php4 or php5
wordpress (optional - can be run on standalone mode)
libGD - (php’s included gd library is okay)

Download

Latest : Download the latest version from wordpress.org plugin page

FAQ

Plugin’s homepage

Examples & Live Demos

Wordpress Repository for plugin

“Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /…/wp-content/plugins/wp-post-banners/engine.php on line 33”

WP-Post-Banners version 0.50 and below was coded for php5 and when you try to run it under php4 you’ll get this error. With version 0.51, php4 is supported. So either use plugin version 0.51 or upgrade to php5.

Sites Using

Please contact me about your wp-post-banners example so that i can list it here.

Credits

Author: Huseyin Uslu, http://www.huseyinuslu.net

Components

BoxOver: Oliver Bryant, http://boxover.swazz.org
JonDesign’s Smooth Gallery: Jonathan Schemoul, http://smoothgallery.jondesign.net
MooTools, Valerio Proietti, http://mad4milk.net

Wordpress文章插件大全

Pasta Chang — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:44:50 +0800

1.Expanding Text plugin for WordPress

This WordPress plugin allows you to create sections of text in your post or page which expand/collapse when clicked on. You simply wrap the special tags around your text, and set the ‘expand link’ (the link visitors click on to show the text). If your visitors do not have javascript enabled, the ‘expand link’ is not shown, and the text is displayed normally.

Expanding Text plugin for WordPress

Pasta Chang — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:40:19 +0800

Download

Latest Release (For WordPress 2.0 through 2.6)

Installing

Download the above file, rename it from .txt to .php, and upload it to your plugins directory.
Enable the plugin.
Optional: Add the CSS to your theme’s style sheet to make it look nice (see the customization section below).

Usage

To make your text expand/collapse, use the following format in your post or page:

Important: Make sure you add this using the html/code editor in WordPress, not the visual editor. In new versions of WordPress, just click the ‘html’ button above the edit box. If you use the visual editor it will not work, as the actual code you entered will be seen on the page, instead of being processed by the script.

<DDET (expand link text)>
(Text to expand)
</DDET>

Example:

<DDET Click to expand!>
Here is your text!
</DDET>

You can add as many sections of expanding text as you like.

Demo

Here you can see the plugin in action:

Click to expand!

Customization

To style the expanding text boxes, you must add the .ddet_div class to your theme’s style sheet. Here is an example:

.ddet_div {
  margin: 8px 0 0 12px;
  padding: 8px;
  background: #F4F4F4;
  border: 1px solid #DDDDDD;
}

Homepage: http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/expanding-text-plugin-for-wordpress/

8 Cool Tools for a Different Photo Viewing Experience

Pasta Chang — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:36:03 +0800

• PicLens
• Imagery
• Zleek
• Interestingness
• WebMynd
• Compfight
• Blackr
• Photoree

8 Cool Tools for a Different Photo Viewing Experience【Mashable】

19 Most Essential Open Source Applications That You Probably Want To Know

Pasta Chang — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:22:21 +0800

Today, we are listing here 19 Most Essential and useful open source applications that you probably want to know to use in your daily life. Most of them are top of the list projects that have an open source industry leading popularity and many of them are not listed here but over all the list has variety of projects for every one of you. Just take a look at them and share your thoughts here.

You are welcome to share if you know about any other open source project which our readers may like.

Maybe if you are interested in to take a look at
23 Free And Online Web Based Applications Specially If You Are Designer Or Developer
21 Online Free Web Based Applications That You Probably Would Love To Use Every Day!

I will appreciate if you can spread the word via Digg , Stumble or other social media websites, Thank you

WordPress - Blog Tool and Weblog Platform

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

ModSecurity - Open Source Web Application Firewall

ModSecurity is a web application firewall that can work either embedded or as a reverse proxy. It provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and allows for HTTP traffic monitoring, logging and real-time analysis. It is also an open source project that aims to make the web application firewall technology available to everyone.

SteelBlue Open Source Web Application Server

SteelBlue is an open-source Web application server environment in which Web-database applications can be developed completely in an extended HTML language. Similar to ColdFusion and Story Server, session and user-associated data as well as SQL commands can be directly embedded into the HTML page. Therefore, no CGI programming experience is required to develop applications with SteelBlue, only knowledge of SQL and HTML.

Dolphin :: Smart Community Builder

YouTube, MySpace, Odeo, Flickr, Match and Facebook - all in one, customizable and under your full control. You’re limited only by your imagination - not by software. Dolphin Smart Community Builder is a universal, free, open source software that allows you to build any kind of online community. With a huge variety of features & options, you can quickly develop your very unique and successful website.

PURE Unobtrusive Rendering Engine For HTML

PURE is an Open Source JavaScript Template Engine for HTML. Truly unobtrusive, it leaves your HTML untouched. It is cross-browser (IE 6.0+, FF 2+, Safari 2.0+, Opera 9.0+).

Bugzilla - Mozilla’s bug tracking system

Bugzilla is a bug tracking system designed to help teams manage software development. Hundreds of organizations across the globe are using this powerful tool to get organized and communicate effectively.

Mindquarry DO - Free Open Source Software Download for Team Collaboration

Mindquarry DO is an Open Source collaborative software platform for file sharing, task management, team collaboration and Wiki editing that is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Mindquarry runs as a web application with an optional desktop client for Windows, Linux and Mac OS that allows for desktop synchronization and offline work. As a result, you are able to connect with team members and share information from wherever you are, effectively improving team-work and increasing productivity within your team.

EPIWARE - A Open Source Document Management System

Epiware GPL project and document management, for those that like to be on the cutting edge of development. Take control of your information and content today.

jobberBase - The Open Source Job Board Software

jobberBase is a great open source job board software for anyone. You can get online your job posting website with jobberBase. It’s easy to install and configure to start your job board.

Flex SDK

Flex is a highly productive, open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops and operating systems.

Open source Ticket Request System

OTRS is an Open source Ticket Request System (also well known as trouble ticket system) with many features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails. The system is built to allow your support, sales, pre-sales, billing, internal IT, helpdesk, etc. department to react quickly to inbound inquiries. Do you receive many e-mails and want to answer them with a team of agents? You’re going to love the OTRS!

phpMyVisites Free Web Statistics And Analytics

phpMyVisites is a free and powerful open source (GNU/GPL) software for websites statistics and audience measurements. phpMyVisites gives a lot of information on websites visitors, visited pages, software/hardware utilization, etc… The GUI Interface is fun and practical. The installation is entirely automated and very simple.

LimeSurvey - The Leading Open Source Survey Tool

LimeSurvey (formerly PHPSurveyor) is an Open Source PHP web application to develop, publish and collect responses to online & offline surveys.

dotproject - Open Source Project and Task Management Software

The original theme flagged dotProject as an open source alternative to Microsoft products and other expensive, commercial applications. Right from the start, dotProject had, as it’s core aims a number of simple requirements which are Clean, simple and consistent user interface; Project Management functionality - not another CMS, groupware environment or all things to all people collaboration tool, but a project management environment; Open source and free usage.

The Freeway Project

Freeway is the most advanced Open Source eCommerce platform and Freeway offers selling methods only previously available in enterprise class or niche bespoke systems. Without having to purchase a commercial system and then paying a developer to build a custom installation, Freeway does what you need out of the box. Of course Freeway is great for selling products but it also sells events AND services AND subscriptions. From appointments and time based bookings to event ticketing and subscriptions Freeway is the eCommerce platform.

AtMail Open - Redefining Open Source Webmail

AtMail is an open source webmail client written in PHP. We aim to provide a elegant Ajax webmail client for existing IMAP mailservers, with less bloat and a focus on an intuitive, simple user interface.

OpenOffice - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

OpenOffice is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Open Workbench - Open Source Project Management and Project Scheduling for Windows

Open Workbench is an open source Windows-based desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality and is free to distribute throughout the enterprise.

The SeaMonkey Project

The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to develop the SeaMonkey all-in-one internet application suite (see below). Such a software suite was previously made popular by Netscape and Mozilla, and the SeaMonkey project continues to develop and deliver high-quality updates to this concept. Containing an Internet browser, email & newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools, SeaMonkey is sure to appeal to advanced users, web developers and corporate users.

Flock-互联网时代的浏览器！

Pasta Chang — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:47:17 +0800

尽

管分页浏览的出现让人们可以在同一窗口打开多个网页，不过，在互联网上“多管齐下”可能令你劳神费心。如果网页中包含着需要经常查看、而且迅速更新的内容，比如查看社交网站上朋友们的状态，或者接收新闻源的最新消息，那么你就必须在不同页面间来回切换。

在以互联网为基础的社交网络上与他人共享信息会将你带入数字博弈的另一层次。从一个网站抓取一张图片或一段文字，然后发给另一个网站社群内的朋友、或者张贴到自己的博客上可能会让你感到不便。

我最近一直在测试一款鲜为人知、却试图解决这类问题的浏览器。该浏览器名为Flock，自称是“社交网页浏览器”。我发现它运行得还不错，不过并不适合所有人，而且它还有一些重大的缺点。

Flock是一款基于火狐(Firefox)──性能卓越的火狐浏览器专为社交网络用户和博主加入了某些特殊功能──的浏览器。它可通过flock.com网站免费下载，其针对Windows、苹果(Mac)和Linux系统的版本基本相同。

Flock在浏览器左侧特别设置了垂直的“边栏”。在这里，不管你正在用主窗口浏览哪个网页，都可以随时看到社交网络、照片网站和新闻源的最新情况。

比如说，有了Flock, 你不用从刊有这篇专栏文章的主窗口切换出去，就可以看到Facebook上新的交友请求，或者有朋友在Flickr上贴了新照片。

不过，等等，还不止这些。只需轻点鼠标，浏览器上方就会出现一个横向的“媒体栏”，里面有朋友在社交网站或图片网站上全部照片或视频的缩略图。同样，你也无需切换主窗口。

你还可以在这两个特殊的边栏上进行操作。比如，你可以直接将网页上的图像和文字拖入边栏，和列表上的朋友们分享。而且，媒体栏上的所有照片都可以用电子邮件迅速邮寄或者粘贴到博客中。

Flock还有个“网络剪贴板”，它允许用户通过拖拽保存主页面上看到的任何文字、图像和网络链接。而一旦存入剪贴板，这些内容将永久保留，除非你把它们删掉。

Flock有自己内置的博客编辑器，允许用户快速编写、编辑并发布含有网络上有趣信息的博客日志。该浏览器还创建了一个特殊的名为My World的个人网页，其中整合了你的社交网络更新信息、新闻源和照片。

我觉得Flock功能强大，使用起来也很有趣。我利用自己在Facebook、Flickr、Picasa、YouTube以及我喜爱的新闻源上的账户测试了Flock特殊的边栏设置。我还使用了该浏览器的其他功能，比如在不登录Gmail和雅虎(Yahoo)主页面的情况下查看我在这两个网站上的邮箱。此外，我还通过Flock在我的一个测试博客上发表了帖子。所有这些操作都很顺利。

我在测试中使用了Flock的最新版本2.0，它是基于火狐新的3.0浏览器构建的。尽管这一最新版本仍处在测试状态，我发现它运行得相当稳定。

不过Flock并不适合所有人，而且它还有一些严重的缺陷。首先，如果你想在不改变主浏览窗口大小的情况下正常显示Flock的边栏和媒体栏，那么你就需要有个相当大的或者是清晰度非常高的显示器，否则主窗口就会缩小到你经常需要拖拽滚动条的程度。即便你有个大的或者高清晰的屏幕，你能看到的工具栏连接和浏览器页面也要比平时少。

此外，Flock眼花缭乱的界面有可能令人心烦意乱。许多东西在同时进行，因此很难关注到重点：那就你正在浏览的主窗口网页。

另外，尽管Flock确实帮你省去了在浏览器各个分页面间来回点击的麻烦，不过它不能完全让你摆脱用鼠标点来点去的命运。Flock边栏一次只能显示一类信息──社交网络和照片共享网站在一起，新闻源其次，剪贴板第三，而网络书签第四。所以你必须经常点击边栏上的控制按钮来查看所有项目，或者时常光临主窗口上的My World页面。

最后，Flock仅仅和某几家社交、照片共享和博客网站合作。尽管支持大多数的主要站点，但它也忽略了一些重要网站。比如，MySpace尚未在列──Flock预计下个月将加入这一站点。Hotmail、Windows Live Spaces和SmugMug也难觅其踪。此外，Flock还不支持即时通讯服务。

Flock出色地完成了为自己设定的任务，不过我只会将这款浏览器推荐给那些经常使用社交网站、又极度缺乏耐心的人们。对我们大多数人来说，Flock都算是“大材小用”了