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June 27, 2006

Meebo Extension for Flock

Michael Arrington

35 comments »

A UK developer who goes by “Tones” has created a Flock-specific extension that puts Meebo, and therefore Yahoo, AIM, Gtalk and MSN IM, directly into a sidebar in the Flock browser (the extension also works for Firefox). Since Flock and Meebo are two startups I use, this looked interesting.

I’ve downloaded the extension and tried it out. It works as promised, although it requires constant re-sizing of the IM windows to make it work right. Until the kinks are worked out (possibly via Meebo’s support of the project, which I encourage), I don’t recommend using it.

But I do support the idea behind this entirely. IM should (optionally) be pulled right into the browser, where most of the action on a computer today occurs anyway. There should be no need to use a separate set of clients on the desktop for IM, or even go to Meebo’s website. Just as Flock has built a photo uploader directly into the browser (for flickr and photobucket), they should integrate IM functionality directly into it as well.

More TechCrunch posts on Flock are here and Meebo are here.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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  2. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Flock用のMeeboエクステンション

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  3. E L S U A ~ A KM Blog » Blog Archive » Meebo Extension for Flock

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  5. InfoWorld » Meebio Extension allows IM within Browser

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    June 29th, 2006 at 5:46 am

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    July 26th, 2006 at 5:12 pm

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Comments

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  1. Simran

    June 28th, 2006 at 12:08 am

    Awesome! This is something really useful. Now Flock is really the ultimate all-in-one browser. Flickr/Photobucket support - check. Blogging support - check. RSS reader - check. del.icio.us integration - check. The only thing remaining, according to me, is Google support. I wish I could install the Google Notebook and Browser Sync extensions in Flock.

    I bookmarked this on Digg, it’s a natural frontpagr:

    http://digg.com/software/Meebo_Extension_for_Flock

  2. Michael Arrington

    June 28th, 2006 at 12:13 am

    Ah, my Indian reader(s) are online. :-)

  3. Alek

    June 28th, 2006 at 12:37 am

    Isn’t that a little backwards? The idea of Meebo is to be web-based and available everywhere. If it’s embedded in an application, it’s just a crappy version of Trillian/Adium.

  4. Ashish C.

    June 28th, 2006 at 1:11 am

    This is the best thing to happen since Opera! Well technically to a cybercafe owner like me.

    Downloading different clients was a pain, plus multi-chat clients weren’t easy for the general public. Got to try this thing out. Woohoo! Thanks!

  5. Michael Arrington

    June 28th, 2006 at 1:20 am

    Ashish - what I want is to remove the need to even download a single multi-chat client, and have all of this built into the browser.

  6. tones

    June 28th, 2006 at 1:57 am

    Gosh, thank you for assessing my little extension! Am new to development and you rightly point out the existance of ‘kinks’. To be honest hadn’t really expected it to be useful given the lack of auto-login, window resizing and session shutdown problems.

    As meebo is an AJAX site, logic dictates to me that it should be possible to add javascript to the extension to handle the above problems (?), but have been going round it circles trying to solve it

    Think there may be a whole lot of people out there happy if meebo/someone wanted to help me iron out the kinks.

  7. Justin Lee

    June 28th, 2006 at 2:05 am

    Hey Mike,

    I think the problem in loading up too many javascript stuff onto mozilla is that it slows down the computer.. meebo, gmail, ff extensions and too much ajax can be a drag on computers with less ram

    until the day javascript interpretation can be speeded up, i think i’d still use GAIM because it runs much lighter and faster

    Justin

  8. Michael Arrington

    June 28th, 2006 at 2:17 am

    Hey Justin,

    Why does it have to be via javascript? There’s lots of room in the browser app besides the web page/window.

  9. guest

    June 28th, 2006 at 2:39 am

    maybe one day browser should simply be split-windows - thus users could load their fav website whichever it is on the side-window while browsing around the web web web .

  10. RBA

    June 28th, 2006 at 2:44 am

    Mike your comment reminded me of CoolTalk. Not quite an IM client (if you remember, it was low quality VoIP, and a bit ahead of its time), and not quite built into the browser, but it did get installed when you installed good old Netscape… Anyway, just thinking about good old times :-)

  11. Michael Arrington

    June 28th, 2006 at 3:02 am

    Tones - thanks for commenting on your project. I encourage you to evolve it!

  12. Michael Arrington

    June 28th, 2006 at 3:03 am

    RBA - Netscape…that’s a Digg clone, right? :-)

  13. Larry

    June 28th, 2006 at 4:23 am

    I don’t understand what’s so hot about this extension… it’s just a sidebar that loads a website. There have been plenty of extensions and bookmarklets that do the same thing but with other sites/pages.

  14. Leandro Ardissone

    June 28th, 2006 at 4:46 am

    This should be great if it were ported to Firefox too.

  15. luca filigheddu

    June 28th, 2006 at 5:02 am

    You can install a VoIP extension for Flock as well.
    You can download it from here:
    http://lucafiligheddu.blogspot.....41395.html

  16. Ryan

    June 28th, 2006 at 5:29 am

    I remember features like this being integrated into the Netscape browser (who uses that bloatware any more?) and being very indifferent to it until I was in a closed computing encironment, like a school or netcafe. That is the great thing abou Meebo. This extension could be tied up on a USB key and take my IM client with me anywhere in the world, on almost any computer.

    Tones, if you remember the days of Flock 0.4, they didn’t have auto-login for delicious bookmarks at first. Keep up the good work.

  17. Simran

    June 28th, 2006 at 5:48 am

    Ah, my Indian reader(s) are online.

    ‘course I am, Mike. Would have replied earlier, but we’ve got a second Mac in the house. Was busy setting it up.

  18. Nathaniel

    June 28th, 2006 at 6:08 am

    I’ve had this extension loaded up all morning and I’ve noticed that it’s been dragging down my processor. With the extension running, I’m hitting 70-80% of my 1.5G processor; without it, I jump back down to 30-40% (running email client, iTunes, and Excel).

    I love the idea of combining IM into Flock due to it’s focus on social interaction. Let’s hope some scripters (and possibly Meebo?) can help the original developer flesh out this extension into a necessary browser feature.

    Just my two cents. :D

  19. Frank Cefalu

    June 28th, 2006 at 6:50 am

    Damnit!! I want Trillian intergrated already!!=(

    Personally I like Having stuff intergrated but I usually accidently close windows and having an important conversation with a client shouldn’t be done on Meebo. Flock seems to be picking up plenty of speed though. Hey Mike why dont you guys start developing your own browser. You have the user base to make it fly!

  20. William G

    June 28th, 2006 at 7:48 am

    This should benefit both of the people that use Flock (Chris Messina and Tara “My Cankles Are So Hungry” Whateverherlastnameis).

  21. Jay Adair

    June 28th, 2006 at 9:10 am

    Nice application, still waiting to use Flock, but can’t because of the broken bookmarks.

  22. RBA

    June 28th, 2006 at 5:43 pm

    #12, Mike… Er… Well, it is now :-) It started as a piece of software that paved the road for the net revolution, then it became an ugly portal, then a ridiculous ISP, and now a Digg clone… Geez…

  23. andr3

    June 28th, 2006 at 7:19 pm

    Am I the only one thinking that the Flock team, tones and the meebo dudes should sit together and discuss the integration of meebo with Flock?

    What if Flock included tones’ extension by default in the next version and ask the user whether it should be activated or not? With increased support by the folks at meebo (if needed) this could turn out to be yet another advantage for Flock. No?

    And @JustinLee (#7):
    I understand your concern, but isn’t this the same code that would’ve run inside a tab if the user had meebo opened in a window? I don’t see how it would downgrade performance, but I could be wrong.

    Mike, since extensions are basically XUL and javascript(right?), that’s why Justin was concerned with the ammount of JS code being processed by the browser at any given time. (I think)

  24. Brittany

    November 7th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

    you guys need a life !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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