Wednesday, December 15, 2010

RockMelt: The ultimate sharing browser

By Elizabeth Krupka
Guest Blogger

Elizabeth Krupka is a social media enthusiasts and an Arts and Entertainment editor at TheLoquitur.com, the award-winning college newspaper of Cabrini College in Radnor, Pa. Follow Liz on Twitter @ElizabethKrupka.




I have had multiple brawls in the newsroom and I will stand by my word, yes Rockmelt is the browser that I use. I’ll even take it a step further; yes I like Rockmelt better than Google Chrome even with extensions (crucify me). If you are as addicted to social media as I am then look no further, and ask for an invite to Rockmelt.



Facebook integration
Rockmelt is always connected to your Facebook. On the left side of the browser you will see a list of your friends who are online and available to chat. Say you want to chat with one of your friends, easy, click the picture and a mini feed of what has been happening on their wall will come up, like mine did with my friend Jamie. So you can creep on their wall while you chat with them. This makes for some pretty interesting conversations.

Applications and Twitter integration
On the right side of the browser, are the applications you have chosen as most important to your life. Sidenote: Rockmelt will also suggest applications that they think you SHOULD be using! This is keeping you super up to date with social media. Say you want to use Twitter. Don’t even think about typing in the URL, don’t be silly; just click the Twitter application button. It shows you a feed of what is happening in your Twitter feed and you can share right from the sidebar! This is an awesome feature, no more top sites, no more bookmarks.



Continuous feed updates
Even when you close the browser the conversations and tweeting that you had open…stay open. Look I’ll tell you right now I am a little scatter brained. I constantly close out of things when I don’t mean to. With Rockmelt if I have my Twitter open and I close the browser, the Twitter sidebar disconnects itself and stays open (and the same rules apply with Facebook chats). This has saved me numerous “I’m sorry’s” “and “Where the heck is that tweet I was trying to read’s.”

Sharability
There are five ways to share your thoughts, tweets, and bookmarks when you open the RockMelt browser. This is what I find most impressive about RockMelt, I’ll do one better for you. All of these share buttons can update your Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn, or Facebook accounts. This is the ultimate sharing browser. I am in an age where I want to be not only the first one to get the news, but I want to be the first one to provide it (call me competitive). The sharing functions on this browser are what keep me absolutely sold on it.



Dispelling rumors
Set aside all of the rumors that you have heard about RockMelt (and they are just that rumors) and try it out. No, it does not make my computer slow and yes, it really is better than Chrome. You will find out that being this socially-interconnected is the way you want to go.

2 comments:

  1. I kind of disagree. I think it's not so great. What would make it better: if the facebook chat didn't pop up in the browser AND on the sidebar at the same time, if the share options included delicious and tumblr, and if the feeds worked like vienna. then it would be great. In its current state it kinda turns into a hassle (at least for me.) Great post though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I haven't used RockMelt yet. I'm kind of afraid of getting to distracted because the features make it so tempting to keep up with most social feeds.

    Does the browser run as fast as Chrome?

    ReplyDelete