Rockmelt Blog

Along with the launch of our new iPad App, we’re excited to finally unveil our new logo!

Why We Voted our Old Logo Off the Island

As keepers of the brand, we saw the logo as an expression of all the good qualities of melted rock. It’s hard to deny the energy and power of lava, but as the new App started to take shape, we realized that our existing logo felt incongruous.

It’s been great, but we’re just…headed in two different directions.

To our long list of launch deliverables, we added “Logo Redesign.”

Man and Woman Up

The reaction from the team was “HELL YEAH!” Because as aggravating as a logo design and approval process can be, there are few projects that are as exciting as reinventing yourself. And because we’re composed of people that seem to have no fear of working with and between tech giants (Google, Apple, Facebook), there is rarely
a project we would shy away from. We enlisted some help, and 75 logo iterations later, we finally landed something that we felt expressed our company and product well.

How We Got Here

It was really important that the logo express what we believe in. We brainstormed. We talked about personality traits. We talked about our beliefs. And though we had never really verbalized it before, we realized that Rockmelt believes in celebrating the Web. Everyone here joined because they believe in the goodness of the Web: endless content, freedom of navigation, rich media, and social.

We explored all kinds of icon-based solutions, but the solution that felt the best was typographic. The final design started conceptually as a mobius strip, to represent the endless path you could take through the Internet. (Yes, we know a mobius strip is supposed to be connected, but that was gonna be really hard to pull off unless we changed our name to Bockmelt.) We were also very inspired by the geometric feel of Andy Gilmore’s work.

Look ma, we colored within the lines!

For the color, we picture this logo being able to change — to be as
flexible as the Web itself. But we started with orange as a call back to
our heritage: Lava. Hot. Kinetic. Full of potential.

As for the team, we’re excited about our new App and new look. We’re ready for the critique that may come our way. But that won’t stop us from lobbying for a logo shaped cake at our next office party — or maybe an ice sculpture.

Or, maybe we should first start with our signage…

Oct 10

Introducing Rockmelt for iPad - A Fast and Fun Way to Explore the Web

We love the web. The web is unparalleled in the depth and richness of content it offers. No app comes close. You can find stuff that makes you laugh or wonder. You can find cute stuff and weird stuff. You can spend a few seconds finding the answer to a specific question or hours exploring whatever interests you.

We love the iPad. The beautiful display, the feel of it in our hands, and all the incredible things it enables us to do. We love how it makes computing more accessible to more people. The iPad entertains and informs; it helps us communicate and learn.

And we love our friends. The web has gotten so big, we depend on our friends to help us sift through it. We love our friends who send us links to funny or cute stuff. We love that one friend who always finds the weirdest stuff out there. We love sending stuff to them, and we love that they send great stuff to us.

At Rockmelt, for a while now we’ve been thinking about how to combine these loves - the web, the iPad and our friends - how could we make exploring the web even better on the iPad?

We knew it had to be fast. Way faster than opening an empty window, pulling up the keyboard, entering a URL and then getting content. It needed to start with great content, tailored to you, ready to go.
It had to be built for iPad. To us, that meant beautiful and built for touch. It had to take advantage of the display and the processor and fast Wifi and LTE. Intuitive and easy…
It had to have access to the whole web, not some curated subset, but the whole thing. We wanted to enhance the serendipitous discovery that makes the web so awesome. One discovery leads to another and then another.
It had to make sharing great web content easier and faster than ever before. We wanted to take our friends with us as we explored, sharing the great stuff we found with them, and letting them help us discover great stuff in the same way.
And, most importantly, it had to be fun.

Jul 12

Jan 23

What’s in Your App Edge? Geek Edition

If you are using RockMelt, click on the apps below and install them from the App Center:

Jan 18

Social Reading - Now on your Facebook Timeline

Happy new year, RockMelters! We’re starting the New Year with some exciting Social Reading news.

Starting today, sharing and discovering new articles from your Social Reading-supported apps will be easier than ever. When Social Reading is turned on, the articles you read can be added to your Timeline and will allow you and your friends to more quickly find and connect around the hottest news.

Social Reading launched in November and we’re already seeing some incredible usage, with RockMelters sharing an article with friends every second! With this update, you’ll discover even more awesome content you may have missed on your own.

As always, you have full control over the sites you want to share Social Reading activity from and those you don’t. You can also remove or hide stories from your Timeline and control how news appears on your Timeline from your private Activity Log. Plus, Social Reading is only available for a handpicked set of sites. Check out our Social Reading help page for more info.

We can’t wait to see what you think. Happy 2012 and happy browsing!

How to Upgrade

Your RockMelt will automatically upgrade over the next 24 hours so stay tuned! From that point on, you’ll be able to add the Social Reading experience to your Timeline.

p.s. A bunch of you have already told us how much you love the Social Omnibox. If you haven’t quite familiarized yourself with it yet, just know that — in addition to the social features — you can type in keywords and search directly from the Social Omnibox. Easy, right?

Dec 21

Welcome to RockMelt Beta 5 - Social Omnibox, App Center, and much more

Just in time for the holidays, RockMelt Beta 5 is here! We wanted to give you a present to finish 2011 with a bang, so we’ve been working non-stop to get RockMelt Beta 5 ready.

Since you spend seven hours a day using RockMelt, Beta 5 was built to let you do all the things you love even faster and easier: staying in touch with friends, getting new updates from your favorite sites, and discovering sweet new content.

Social Omnibox

The omnibox has been completely re-designed to help you find what you’re looking for even faster.

A big reason why chat is one of our most popular features — RockMelters now have seven chat conversations each day, up from three conversations six months ago — is because it’s so simple and accessible. With the new Facebook timelines rolling out, we wanted to make staying in touch with friends just as simple. So we built your friends into the omnibox. Now, when you enter a friend’s name into the Social Omnibox, you can navigate directly to their timeline or start a conversation.

But the Social Omnibox isn’t just for friends. If you type in the name of an app, you’ll also see options to open or add apps. For convenience, you can use your keyboard’s arrow keys to pick and choose which action you’d like to take.

The NEW New Tab

The brand new New Tab page (yes, double the NEW, just for you) lets you stay in touch with friends quickly. Pop open a new tab and you’ll see your friends’ pictures, have quick access to their profiles and even birthday reminders. Now, you won’t have any excuse not to wish them a Happy Birthday!

Plus, we’ve added a ticker of your friends’ recent Social Reading activity in the top-right corner so you’ll never miss great new content. With a new “read” being shared among friends every second, Social Reading is a big hit. But more importantly, it’s clear from your feedback that you love to discover the latest news (or cat videos) through your friends serendipitously. That’s why we built the Social Reading ticker right into New Tab page.

Expandable, Scrollable App Edge

The App Edge is one of our favorite features because it makes reading news fun and easy (especially with Social Reading). It’s clear that you love the App Edge too: on average, RockMelters have 12 apps and click on them 26 times a day!

That’s why we’ve made the App Edge better than ever. Now, the App Edge supports scrolling so you can add as many apps as you want and still navigate the Edge with ease. Don’t forget you can reorder the app icons by dragging and dropping them along the edge. Plus, it can now be expanded for easier app management.

App Center

Because you love the App Edge so much, we wanted to make it easier to discover cool new apps and add apps from your favorite sites. That’s why we built the new App Center.

The App Center is a one-stop shop for everything apps. To open the App Center, click the + button at the top of your App Edge. Then, simply click on the icons of the sites in the App Center to start getting instant news from them in your App Edge.

EZ Text Sharing

Sharing text can now be done faster than ever. Select the text you want to share and right click to choose “Share text.” The text and link to the current page will automatically be included in a new Share window. Works like magic. No better! Works like computer science!

How to Upgrade to Beta 5

Your RockMelt will automatically upgrade over the next few days but you can upgrade immediately to RockMelt Beta 5 now by going to RockMelt menu > About RockMelt.

Nov 30

Why PIPA and SOPA are a Very Bad Idea – And What You Can Do About It

Today RockMelt is joining Facebook, Google, Twitter, Mozilla, and every other company against censorship on the Internet by voicing our opposition to PIPA and SOPA.

If you value freedom of expression on the Internet, please take a few seconds to tell Congress to vote no on PIPA and SOPA.

In case you haven’t heard, PIPA (PROTECT Intellectual Property Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) are bills working their way through the US Senate and House of Representatives, respectively. They both propose giving the government the power to censor web sites in much the same way that China, North Korea, and Iran censor web sites today.

What? How can this be, you ask. This is America, land of free speech and due process, which are both kind of fundamental to the whole American dream thing. And yet, it’s true. If PIPA/SOPA pass in anything resembling their current form, it will have a chilling effect on Internet free speech. Here’s why:

1. The bills hold websites accountable for content posted by their users

The bills essentially do away with the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the current US law protecting copyrighted material on the Internet. Under the DMCA safe harbor, sites like YouTube and Facebook are not responsible for the content posted by their users as long as they take down copyrighted material when they are made aware of it. As it stands today, if someone posts on YouTube a bootleg copy of Rob Schneider’s 1999 opus “Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo,” YouTube cannot be put out of business as long as it has a reasonable process for taking down the infringing content. Passing PIPA and SOPA will change this.

2. PIPA and SOPA would let the government compel other companies to stop doing business with or linking to offending sites

The bills would allow the government to order ISPs to shut down web sites like YouTube and Facebook that it finds have violated copyright laws by distributing or allowing their users to distribute protected content illegally. For sites outside the US jurisdiction, the bills allow the government to force DNS providers to stop resolving offending domain names, force search providers to stop returning links to offending sites, and force advertisers to sever relationships with offending businesses.

3. The bills fail to consider the true costs of compliance

Specifically, the bills fail to consider: the technical feasibility of compliance, the burden that compliance would place on companies, the potential damage done by errant takedown orders, and the impact that these acts might have on the underpinnings of the Internet itself. For example, if offending sites are removed from search engines, the DNS, and other directories, it would create “black holes” in the Internet.

No one is arguing in favor of copyright infringement. Such actions are clearly illegal and wrong. But the DMCA and other copyright laws provide ample protection and remedies designed to compensate copyright holders and bring copyright violators to justice. Chilling free speech on the Internet, imposing undue economic and technical burdens on non-infringing companies, inviting international tit-for-tat web site blocking, and involving the technologies and systems underlying everyone’s Internet experience in a legal tug-of-war to eradicate copyright infringement is a Bad Idea.

Nov 03

It’s Here! RockMelt Beta 4: The Ultimate Reading Experience

RockMelt Beta 4 includes Social Reading which is our most exciting feature to date. By showing you what friends are reading and helping you discover cool content, Social Reading keeps you on top of the hottest news. Social Reading saves you time by making it easy to find relevant and interesting content.

Social Reading 101

When you click on an app that supports Social Reading, the first thing you’ll notice is the new highlighted section at the top. There, you can see articles that are popular and trending with all RockMelt readers, as well as what’s hot with your own RockMelt friends.

Want to see what your friends have read recently? Just click on their picture for a list of recent reads.

If Social Reading is on, you can help your friends discover cool content just by clicking on articles inside the app and on the site itself (see below for a list of supported sites).

Not interested in sharing what you’re reading? Simply turn off Social Reading in one click. As always, RockMelt puts you in control. You decide if and when you want your reading activity shared with your friends.

Apps that Support Social Reading

Social Reading is available for some of the most popular sites on the web, including:

Want Social Reading for an app that currently doesn’t have it? Let us know by sending an email to questions-at-rockmelt.com.

How to Upgrade to Beta 4

Your RockMelt will automatically upgrade over the next few days. To upgrade to Beta 4 now, click on About RockMelt under the RockMelt menu.

Oct 28

Gmail Notifier App Updated - Now Supporting Multiple Accounts and Email Labels

One of our favorite apps, the Gmail Notifier App, has always let you quickly see the number of unread emails you have and share links over email. We’ve now updated it to be more flexible than ever by adding support for multiple accounts and individual email labels.

New Features

How to add the Gmail Notifier App

To add the Gmail Notifier App to RockMelt, just click the button below. If you already have the app installed, yours will update automatically in the next few hours, but you can also click the button below to update it now.

Oct 27

Trick or Treat? We’ve Got Treats - Delicious Halloween Themes

Candy. Costumes. Jack-o’-lanterns. This year, we’re adding one more item to the Halloween list: Halloween themes for RockMelt.

These themes will spook up your browser and get you in the Halloween spirit. Have a favorite below? Like holiday themes? Let us know!

How to Install Themes

To theme your browser, just click on the Install Theme button under the screenshots below. Change your mind? No problem. Go to RockMelt menu > Options / Preferences > Personal Stuff tab > Themes, and click “Reset to default theme” to remove themes.