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When RockMelt launched its new browser in private beta last November, it was greeted with an avalanche of press. RockMelt is a new social browser built around Facebook, realtime feeds, and faster search. The fact that Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is a major backer probably had something to do with the intense interest also.Reviews were mixed and then interest sort of died dow
n. The only way you could try it is if a beta user sent you an invite. Until now. After more than 15 updates and months of testing with “a few hundred thousand active users,” says CEO Eric Vishria, he is ready to open up the browser to anyone who wants to try it. You can download it here at RockMelt’s site.
RockMelt is built on top of Chromium, the same open source browser that is the foundation for Google’s Chrome. It updates at about the same pace, give or take two weeks. One of the biggest criticisms of RockMelt is that it’s Chrome, but with extensions that are forced on you. RockMelt adds a rail on the left with all of your Facebook friends who are online with presence indicators, and another rail on the right with all your RSS feeds, Twitter and Gmail accounts, and custom apps. But you can hide those if you don’t like them and you can also use any of the Chrome Apps available in the Chrome Web Store.
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