I read an article on PC World titled Building a Better Browser: Flock Has Landed.

Flock is a web browser. As of this post its latest version is 0.4.8. I bring it up for two reasons, the same two reasons why PC World did an article on it: its attention to bookmarks and blogging. Regarding bookmarks, it integrates with del.icio.us. That earns it points in my book. Regarding blogging, it works with Movable Type, TypePad, Blogger, and my choice, WordPress.

Flock also integrates with Flickr, which I do not have an account with but which several of my friends do.

The fact that Flock integrates with all these various online services makes me wonder if its owner/developer is working at all with anyone, or if it is merely writing hacks to take advantage of these services. For example, if you want to use the Flock browser’s bookmarks system, you must go to del.icio.us and get an account. This leaves me just slightly wary — particularly when it comes to my blog. Currently my blog has a password unique to all my other passwords, and it’s only written down in a php script that exists on my hosted server … if I type it into a settings dialog in my browser, does the potential exist for a malicious website to view that data? The risk must be higher than in my current setup.

To shift gears for a second (even though I discovered this while reading the afore-linked PC World article), Amazon.com’s A9 Toolbar features networked bookmarks. Just like the Yahoo! toolbar, which I no longer use.

When is Google going to enrich its bookmarks system and when it is going to integrate its bookmarks system with the Google Toolbar? Or with the Google Sidebar?