From the WordPress.com website, you can now get a FREE WordPress.com account just by donwloading and installing Flock. Yes, no need for the WordPress Golden Ticket.
JAngelo reviewed Flock earlier in his blog (The Flock has Landed) and posted his observations:
- Interface is very much like Firefox, only with some superficial enhancements. Firefox users should be comfortable with the interface, which includes the keyboard and context menu shortcuts.
- It has a built-in RSS reader (or at least it’s supposed to–it doesn’t work well with my installation), very much like Safari. It’s not an RSS aggregator, though, as it will only switch to viewing the RSS feed of the page you’re currently reading. But very useful, nonetheless, if you prefer reading content only (off with those ads! 😉 )
- It has built-in use of the del.icio.us API. So you can share your bookmarks across the web out-of-the-box.
- It incorporates the APIs (XML-RPC or Atom or whatever else) of several blogging software so you can blog directly from the browser.
- Drag-and-drop multimedia capabilities
- Textarea is automatically converted into a rich-text editor. Add this to the drag-and-drop capability, and you have interesting blogpost editing capabilities.
- It seems slow on my machine.
Once you launch Flock, the default page with direct you to a list of online blogging tools/services where you can signup. The blog page also has Blogger and TypePad included in the list but the free WordPress.com account is one to be had.
Though the free sign-up page can be found at www.wordpress.com/flock, if you open it up on FireFox or any other browser, you are redirected to the WordPress.com homepage.