FlockPod is the world’s first social interaction pod - a small place on any Web page where people get together and interact on-the-spot, while staying on the page.

The central idea of FlockPod is to provide a space on any web page to collaborate and interact right on-the-spot, to share ideas, opinions, experiences, anecdotes or sometimes even to question, reason or debate.

On-the-spot interaction. Guided interaction. Relevance-based display. Those are the three big things with FlockPod.

First, your social interactions are on-the-spot, where the content is, right inside the content, in-situ. You do not wander around by following outbound links. Stay within the content and interact.

Second, the interactions are guided by templates. You will not feel lost in a long threaded discussion, or a blog which rambles on, or a wiki that links in a thousand different ways. You will enjoy a structured interaction, such as a debate with well-defined perspectives and points to support each perspective, for instance.

Third, relevant information automatically bubbles up in FlockPod. This means, the power of social ranking and relevance calculation at your fingertips.

(What’s more, FlockPod can move across URLs. But we will come to that later in this FAQ.)

FlockPod is easily embeddable in any web-page you want and allows peer wisdom contribution on the associated page without affecting its original content. You don’t have to leave the content page and go to another social networking site to discuss it with others; instead this collaboration tool fits right where you need it on the page.

It helps by making your page visit more visual, concise, and collaborative and points to the most relevant data in given context. It presents data that you’re interested in, pulls in new relevant information and organizes everything in a neat little widget you can view in the web application.

Yes. FlockPod supports a free version which is restricted to 5 users in a pod. Also, for organization level free trial we have a 10 Pods 50 Users subscription which you can request by signing up at - free trial subscription. For detailed instructions of how to setup a free trial, click here.

No. FlockPod does not need to be installed, it shows up on a web page in your browser.

People whom visit your Web page will see an icon and click on it. This will bring up FlockPod. They will interact within FlockPod, and tuck it away when they don’t need it anymore.

FlockPod is supported by most of the browsers like Mozilla Firefox / Safari / Maxthon / Internet Explorer.

A group of people which share the same FlockPod is identified by a unique name called FlockPod name.

Yes, definitely.

Once you login to FlockPod, there is an option "Switch Pods", where it displays list of FlockPods for which you are a member of.

You need to login only once to a FlockPod in a given session. You can then easily switch between all your pods till that browser is open. Once you close down the browser window you are automatically logged out.

Yes, you can easily switch between FlockPods. In the FlockPod toolbar at your right in the FlockPod, there is an option, "Switch Pods", which gives you a list of FlockPods where you are a member. You can then select any of your FlockPod to switch to it.

FlockSign is a small icon which appears within a page which supports FlockPod. People click on a FlockSign to open the FlockPod.

We will provide you a line of code when you register with FlockPod. To insert a FlockSign on a page you simply have to add that line of code to your page.

A Flocktivity is a way of interacting with peer members. A debate, a poll, or FAQ are all examples of Flocktivities.

FlockPod currently support 5 different Flocktivities - Debate, Spot Poll, Link Sets, FAQ and TagCloud. Whenever a new flocktivity is supported by FlockPod, all the changes will be automatically updated in your FlockPod and respective icons will be added to your FlockPod toolbar.

To create a new Flocktivity, click on “Create new” button in your FlockPod.

It is the control panel for all the Flocktivities you can perform in a FlockPod. Through this panel you can also change FlockPod settings and manage your profile.

Absolutely. Infact, we hope you will create number of flocktivities to use all the features FlockPod to its maximum for your benefit.

FlockPod currently support 5 different Flocktivities - Debate, Spot Poll, Link Sets, FAQ and TagCloud.

Nothing! Whenever there is a new flocktivity inserted by FlockPod, all your FlockPods would be updated automatically when you login.

We provide you a small code which you can use to embed FlockPod in your webpage. To insert a FlockSign on a page you simply have to add that code to your page.

People click on a FlockSign to open the FlockPod.

All the members of a group having access to that FlockPod will see them.

Yes. You can delete a flocktivity if you have created it or you are the Manager of that Pod.

You can export the content of a flocktivity to a text file, which you can freely share.

Yes.

Each Flocktivity will provide a method for ranking. Debates, for instance, provide a way to give thumbs-up or down to each point contributed by others.

Your review points are valuable for us as well as other Pod Flockers. FlockPod uses these points, processes them with a relevancy calculator, and uses the results to show most relevant content first.

All the users who are part of the same group share a FlockPod. Hence, all the content within a FlockPod is visible to all the Pod Flockers of that group.

Yes. If you have added code for multiple FlockPods you can use multiple FlockPods at the same time on a page.

Yes. You need to make a small change in the code which you inserted in Webpage by which users to your FlockPod will not have to login to enter your FlockPod. However, in this case, all users who login to your Pod will be identified with the same username.

There will be no change in the pricing for already registered subscriptions of FlockPod when a new flocktivity or a feature is inserted in FlockPod.

A Subscription allows a certain number of users to keep using FlockPod services for a certain duration. There is a payment you make to buy a FlockPod Subscription. There are various subscription plans available to meet your needs. You can choose the one you want depending on the number of days you wish to avail the service, the number of users you need to support, and so on. With the subscription plans, you get free upgrades, and access to the ever-growing services available on the online site. And we’re committed to adding cool new stuff all the time to FlockPod.

To subscribe to FlockPod, you need to have a FlockPod account.
This account is absolutely free. To create a FlockPod account click here.

Once you have activated your account, login to admin tool.

Use following menu option to subscribe to FlockPod: Admin --> New subscription

Yes, the subscription fee includes access to basic support and all upgrades, updates and patches.

Once maximum subscribed users are added to a subscription, Admin cannot add more users to a subscription. Admin can then either remove previous users to add new users or contact sales@flockpod.com to enhance that subscription to a higher level of users.

In the future, the ability to add new pods from within the admin console will be made available through the website. Till then, you can contact sales@flockpod.com to increase the Pods.

Before the subscription is over you can harness data out of FlockPod and store it in a text format or print it for your future reference. We will maintain the data at our database for 15 days from the end of your subscription period. During this period you can either renew the subscription or contact support@flockpod.com for harnessed content. After that we will completely remove the content from our database.

3 months

No.

Non-commercial organizations such as universities and charities are eligible for our non-commercial discounts of 25% on licensing. For more information, please contact us.

Admin can add or remove users from a subscription any time till the subscription is active.

Well, the FlockPod will no longer activate. But you’re not going to be locked out of your data or anything…you just won’t be able to retrieve the content until you re-activate. After your subscription expires, you can harness the data by writing to support@flockpod.com.

Through the User Profile icon upload a picture for your avatar. It lets you customize your FlockPod player.

If you see a FlockSign placed on the page, there is a FlockPod you can bring up.

Once logged in, FlockPod Player displays all the flocktivities which are supported by the flock player. Click on any of the flocktivity to start using FlockPod.

It takes just a few seconds before all the users are notified of the information entered by you.

Yes, definitely. You can save as well as print the transcript of a Flocktivity. For example, in Debate/Discussion you can save/take print of the points of a complete debate or a specific argument of a debate instead of complete debate.

We have designed FlockPod with a highly scalable architecture.

As of now, we have not set a limit to the number of users an organization can register.

Yes. One organization can register multiple groups. This will help each group to maintain its privacy.

Subscription will get over after the duration for which the admin had registered initially. For Free flock Pods, there is no unsubscribe facility.

Access to FlockPod services is User ID and Password protected. All data transmissions are encrypted. Our servers are secure and no outside party can capture the database.

You cannot. This is a security feature.

No, if you sign out of your FlockPod account when you are done. In some cases, you may also have some temporary security cookies, so you should close the browser as well.

We take privacy very seriously. We do not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any of your personal information, unless required to by law. We hate spam even more than you do.

NO. We hate spam as much as you do and will never be party to it.

Please give us any feedback or bug reports at feeback@flockpod.com. Your input is greatly appreciated.

NO. We hate spam as much as you do and will never be party to it.

We appreciate your ideas and suggestions. Do write us at feedback@flockpod.com

Yes. Please send me email to feedback@flockpod.com

Since FlockPod uses Flash, depending on your internet browser settings, you might have to change some settings.

Install the latest version of Flash Player on your machine. Click on www.adobe.com to install the latest Flash Player. Follow the instructions on the web site to install the Player. After the installation is complete, you will have to configure the Security Settings so as to enable your system to display FlockPod on your screen. Follow these simple steps to do so:

1. Open http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager04.html link in Internet Explorer.
2. Select the "Always Allow" option on the Global Security Settings panel.

FlockPod is provided to you as a SaaS, Software as a Service. Hence, you might need to change Internet Explorer Settings to use FlockPod. There are 2 things you can try to resolve this problem –

1. At the Status Bar of Internet Explorer, you may see a “Privacy Report” button (An eye with a red color block in it).

Double-click on the icon

It would show you flockpod.com website URL in a list

Select the URL, and right click on it

Select “Always Accept cookies from this site.” option

Click on Close button

Refresh the page to allow settings to be used by internet explorer

Click on FlockSign and login again with your credentials

2. Add FlockPod.com to your trusted sites list. To do this follow below steps –

Click on Tools – Internet Options – Security – Trusted Sites - Sites

Add http://www.flockpod.com to “Add this website to the zone:” and click on “Add” button

Uncheck “Require server verification (https:)” for all sites in this zone” checkbox

Click "OK" button

Mozilla/Firefox/Flock browsers do not allow saving files to hard disk by default. We need to make some settings on browser to enable this feature. Steps to do that are –

1. Open a new tab in the browser from where you want to save the file (Firefox or Flock)

2. Type 'about:config' in the address bar

3. In the preference name list, select the 'signed.applets.codebase_principal_support' option (You can use the filter option provided on the page to search the option or you can browse through the list.)

4. Double Click the option to enable the setting.(Make it true)

5. Once you have done these settings, while saving the file, you will get an alert to confirm to allow saving files. Select the 'Allow' option for save dialog to appear

Currently, “Save” option is not supported on Safari.

This problem is faced by many people using Flash Player 9 in IE browsers. Adobe has suggested a solution to it by changing a registry entry of Flash Player. To view the forum which gives the details click here.
We have created a reg file which would make the required changes. Click here to download the registry file.

Currently, we do not support media files like audio/video.