It all started on a typical Monday morning when my web browser of choice, Chrome, just stopped working for me.

A quick google search lead nowhere – only that others experienced similar problems over the past year, but no help or advice. I deleted, reinstalled, upgraded, downgraded, and nothing – Chrome was not happy. So I reluctantly looked elsewhere for something new.

About the same time I was checking out our monthly stats on Edublogs.org in our Google Analytics account and came across this stat:

126 different browsers

What?! We had users using 126 different browsers visiting Edublogs.org over the past 30 days!

Nearly half where using Internet Explorer, followed by Firefox, Safari, and then Chrome.  Who knew (not me!), but there are also browsers such as Konqueror and Sea Monkey, and we had a couple hundred visits from the PlayStation Browser and the Nook eReader.

Coincidentally, at the same time I was also catching up on my favorite tech-geek podcast, CNET’s Buzz Out Loud. They were going on and on about a new web browser called RockMelt.

rockmeltIt is currently in invitation-only Beta mode (while they test and work out all the bugs), but I put in for an invitation and a few days later was happily using RockMelt.

The best feature about RockMelt is that within no time, I have set up all of my favorite blogs in the sidebar where it alerts me to new posts immediately. I am no longer dependent on Google Reader, which I for one am very happy about. Not because Google Reader isn’t good at what it does, but if I go a couple of days between checking in, I’ll never catch up! This real-time display of blogs lets me keep up in a non-intrusive way.

I can especially see teachers and students that want an easy way to follow blogs in their classes to find this feature useful and fun!

Oh, and RockMelt is built on Chrome, but it isn’t having the same problems I was having before.

You must have a facebook account to use RockMelt as facebook is highly integrated into the browsing experience. There’s a pretty good twitter feature built in too, but still no option to publish tweets directly from the app. (edit: Oops, actually there is – see the comments below!)

To see more about what it can do, you might like this video here.

If you’re interested, be one of the first three to leave a comment below and I’ll send you one of the invitations I have left. Or, you can sign up for your own on RockMelt.com.

This week in the Edublog world

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Featured Edublog of the Week

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The Plugged In Portable

Grade 6 class blog with loads of resources!

St. Thomas, Ontario

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

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Wednesday the 24th @ 9:30am PSTAll About Edublogs Campus

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Join us in our fortnightly unconference sessions. Bring along the burning issues and hot topics YOU would like to discuss. The topic is chosen by poll at the start of the session.

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Recent Posts You Might Have Missed

Summing it up

What’s your browser of choice? In your school or place of work do they let you use more than one?

With the use of add-ons and extensions Firefox and Chrome are certainly growing in popularity, and it will be interesting to see if any of the others can make a lasting impact.

Have a good rest of the week!

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