Applied Style.

These days, I'll admit keeping track of all my social networks and Web fetishes is a challenge. On my laptop alone, I daily access Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Skype, GoogleTalk and about 20 RSS feeds, news sites and fashion blogs. I keep up with Pitchfork and street-style sites weekly. I have four personalized radio stations on Slacker. I have a little-used Twitter account. And an old Friendster account. And an old Livejournal.

I'm clearly not alone here. The number of Internet-connectedness possibilities is pretty staggering, and I don't think a person has little reason to suspect joining even one social network or RSS feed will somehow take over life. I think it can, so when a friend recently asked me, quite seriously, if he should join Facebook, I had to put aside my FB photo albums and Scrabble boards and plants and think about it for a minute.

Of course, the answer is that Facebook is fun. A lot of social networks are (at least in the beginning). And there is, I think, something to be said for feeling plugged in to your interests and your circle of friends at any given time.

And now, the people at Flock think so, too--and they're trying to make keeping track of social networks and Internet favorites easier, breezier and, actually, kind of like Cover Girl, now that I say that.

The just-released Flock Gloss edition was made for a girl like me; it offers a clean, Mozilla-Firefox-based browser with built-in fashion favorites, such as InStyle and PopSugar feeds. Flock's whole idea (it comes in a standard, fashion-free format, as well as Eco, Digg, Yahoo! and Photobucket editions) is to make a busy Internet life simpler by allowing users to log into all their social networks, blogs and e-mail accounts from a single interface. The Flock "homepage" is in essence a little feed itself, divided into columns for feeds and other subscriptions, as well as social networks.

The Gloss edition is a bright, girly pink, and its 20-or-so automatic favorites are some of mine; happily, I discovered I can delete some of the ones I don't like to replace them with my blogroll, and they're all easily categorized within the system. Flock also allows bloggers to create and post blogs within the browser without having to log into that blog's own interface (Blogger, Wordpress, et al), and similarly allows users to check e-mail without going that host site, either.

While it's handy having everything at my fingertips, I will say in spite of Flock's series of one-minute-or-less video tutorials (appropriately on the YouTube network), the browser is slightly less user-friendly than most. It has a series of "buttons" along the top tool bar designed to make visiting favorite sites super-easy, but along with the feeds, my Facebook updates and e-mail, it can be a bit much. I also haven't figured out how to add my secondary e-mail account (and I may not be able to, as it seems Flock doesn't get along with Hotmail) and other networks to the browser, but I suppose that's part of the fun of a new toy, no?

Check out Flock Gloss (and just plain Flock, which I suppose I should mention is award-winning) at http://www.flock.com/.

Much easier for me to understand is the still-new ModePass, a sort of MySpace for fashionistas. The France-based operation, http://www.modepass.com/, allows savvy dressers to create a profile for stylish photos; users can also browse and post article content to the site. Perhaps most fun, members can choose favorite photos from other users, favorite articles and "style icons" from the community to display on their profiles. Profiles also include the standard jazz: blog info, personal stats and interests and comment/messaging capabilities.

The site is multilingual and doesn't have a translation option (at least not one I can find), but it doesn't really matter--photos are what count here, as well as sartorial creativity. You can browse top (i.e. most popular) members, but you can also select some randomly selected profiles to check out from the site's "Members" area.

The best part of ModePass, for me, is that quite a few of the gals behind my favorite fashion blogs have ModePass accounts, so rather than check everything in my Google Reader, I can check in with ModePass for most of them and separately visit the rest. I've also stumbled across new lovely personal lookbooks, which ends up ultimately making ModePass dangerous. I've gotten lost on it for hours.

Damn. Just when I thought I'd finally made steps to reducing my Internet footprint.

Oh, well. There's always time to waste somehow.