thechromesource – Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources

This is not a shocker to me that Google has finally started their own Apps Marketplace for businesses. There is a lot of money to make, and today at their Campfire Developer Conference they have finally thrown their support towards the enterprise market. It’s no surprise to those who follow this blog that I’ve said recently that they would do this, but the exceptional element is that they are doing just that today.

Here’s the video:

I hope many who are reading this understdand how much independent develpers stand to make off of a marketplace like this as long as the apps meet Google’s requirements.

I’m sure Microsoft should be releasing a PR statement soon.

Check out the Apps Marketplace here.

Check out all of the Campfire members here.

The Developer Program site is right here.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is working with DISH Network in testing a variation of their search algorithm that is customized specifically for TV. Since the WSJ site is for subscribers only, we have analyzed AppScout’s article for this post.

I’m currently a DISH customer, and I must say that the ability to find programs that you want to watch is ridiculously hard. Sure, it’s easy if you know the name of the show you are looking for, but finding one in terms of content or detailed subject matter is just not very easy. This seems to be a common theme for cable/satellite operators, as I’ve been told by someone who is a customer of AT&T’s more advanced UVerse system there is no drilled-down search capabilities in their system either.

The problem with traditional satellite and cable TV search functionality is that there really is no way to do any type of contextual search. Sure, one can look for a show title or a genre, but there isn’t really a way to drill down to actors, studios and specific content of a program. For those of us who are used to using internet search engines to find things easily, this presents a problem to the more traditional environment of television.

That’s why I think Google testing this could potentially be a win for TV. Many people are switching their video tastes to YouTube or Hulu, so these operators need to do something drastic to continue to attract younger customers. Plus, DISH Network is not one of the top tier providers. So, much like T-Mobile starting out early providing Android devices which resulted in them getting the first crack at the Nexus One smartphone, this could benefit DISH as a content provider.

What DISH Network should really do is drop their proprietary set-top box operating system and use a customized version of Chrome OS. Why not? It would probably be a faster experience, and the architecture would provide better user interaction and interoperability with the web. The problem has been that cable and satellite companies have wanted to keep these two realms apart, but expect to see them converge more often then not in the future.

It was reported late last week in a blurb that Google security Engineer Will Drewry had some pretty good dirt to dish about Chrome OS and its plan for the business market with a business machine due in 2011. Up until this time, there wasn’t much being said regarding Google’s plans for enterprise other than the fact that Docs is available and there are companies actively integrating it into offices around the world. But at the World Mobile Congress last week CEO Eric Schmidt was asked during his presentation what the future revenue growth areas for the company were going to be.

Without hesitation, he said the enterprise market.

For the time being, Google is only making a slow amount of headway in providing software solutions for businesses. But the early adopters that have made the switch from Microsoft’s Office over to Google Apps are seeing benefits. Google has been amenable to companies about making changes to the software, often times even on the fly. And at $50 per user, even a larger organization like Genentech has decided to make the switch. Even the popular Linux operating system, Ubuntu, comes with Google Apps as standard instead of OpenOffice.

But Google for the enterprise market is still an early adoption technology. It has the potential to take off but expect to see companies that like to take risks to get involved first. Also, small and mid-size companies would be able to see a switch have a more immediate impact over conglomerates.

Integration companies that consult with businesses on technology such as Google Apps find that a Chrome OS for business would prove to be a solid IT decisions. Jim McNelis, CEO of Dito LLC, which provides Google business solutions and migrations from Microsoft and Lotus products was upbeat when asked about an operating system that is specific for corporate use.

“I think it’s great. Chrome OS will increase the adoption of Google Apps across the board by providing a robust platform built for Google’s web applications”, said McNelis. He also expects an offline solution for situations where network connectivity is absent. “Presumably, there will be native Google Apps and complete offline sync, not to mention other tight integrations yet unseen.”

Native Google Apps? I’m getting the sense that much like Microsoft’s mutli-tiered operating system solutions (Windows Starter, Professional, etc) Google will have different flavors of Chrome OS that all could possibly have different hardware specifications. The reason I think this is that a netbook for surfing a web that is ever more interactive has different technical requirements than a tablet or a managed thin client strictly for business use.

Regardless of strategy, Google knows that captivating the corporate market is going to prove profitable. Many business users simply do not have a need for Windows, and administrators pretty much always have to lock down features on the system in order to keep the computing environment from becoming compromised.

Instead of fitting a square peg in a round hole Chrome OS can step in, be compliant with security policies and ready to deploy, most likely at a competitive price when comparing other enterprise options.

And just like the popular app markets for mobile phones, the most profitable applications will be developed for the business user. Why? Because in business, if an app is useful there is a profit incentive to pay good money for it. If it help peoples be more productive or effective on the job there are big bucks that will be paid out by companies.

You can take a look at Techrepublic’s top 10 business apps for the mobile market right here to get an idea what types are popular and how much they go for.

So it does exist. I had heard that there was going to be a Chrome OS tablet at the Mobile World Congress, and sure enough we finally see in a somewhat lengthy video the folks from Freescale showing off their prototype with a 7″ screen. This was the same model that was shown at CES running Android. The cost? Around $200, running on hardware in the form factor of their model known as the i.MX51. The video shows some locally cached video playback in HTML5:

This is just an observation, but it seems to me that other tablets are going to have a hard time competing against a tablet product that is only a couple of hundred dollars. But let’s face it: this is just a tablet, and there is only so much you can do with them. I’m not even sure how comfortable one would even be to use. Of course I have to admit I have never actually used one.

But in the demo you see that the Freescale product manager is using a mouse and a keyboard. Probably because the touch capabilities and interface for Chrome OS on tablets is not nearly complete. Earlier today I wrote about the business Chrome OS coming out and I explored the concept of Google having several different versions of their operating system. I feel like this demo gives more proof to that concept. The device itself is capable of touch, as they also showed a tablet running some variation of Linux that had capacitive input.

But for a couple of bills and with an ARM processor, how could you go wrong? It even appears to have a camera. That explains the large bezel.

Shout out to Armdevices.net.

I came across this Google video today and found it useful. Cookies are an important element in the overall web browsing experience as they allow you to have settings saved on your favorite websites by storing some of your preferences. Plus, this video actually shows you how to create exceptions for cookies on particular sites if you were inclined to do so. To get a broad sense about cookies and how to manage them in Chrome browser, check out this clip:

It’s done pretty quickly in the example provided here, but you can get to your cookies settings by going to the Options menu and then from the Under the Hood Tab you can select the Content Settings button at the top.

There used to be a lot of concern over cookies and what kind of information is actually stored, but the reality is that since sites are no longer static pages having cookies is helpful. Cookies are almost necessary now so that you can avoid performing repetitive tasks on the web. There still are some privacy concerns, but most websites that are reputable have strong privacy policies and are in business to provide the end user with a good web experience.

Google has some pretty strongly worded privacy statements as well, however I think some of that is a direct response to the media’s reaction in regards to how much they actually know about internet users. Paying attention to their actions as opposed to their words is a key factor in this realm. Here’ s to hoping that they remain committed to doing the right thing as they continue to become ever more omnipresent.

MacWorld is reporting that the Parallels software, which allows Apple users to have Windows or Linux run in a virtualized environment, will support Chrome OS. At CeBIT this week in Germany they have been even showing off a machine that is running their latest version, Parallels 5 with Chrome OS. I haven’t been able to find a video but when I do I will post it here.

This is news but at the same time it isn’t. That’s because its already a known commodity that Parallels works with Chrome OS on a Mac, as instructions but the website Cult of Mac showed in mid-January how to run Chrome OS successfully in Parallels. But with that being said, since this is something that the company can show off at CeBIT, making it known that they officially stand behind supporting Chrome OS, there is a bit of significance here.

Still, one must keep in mind that the portable computer products with which Google is planning to put Chrome OS on doesn’t directly compete with Apple. That’s because devices like the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone do not support Parallels other than the less-powerful Parallels Mobile Remote free application from the App Store. So unless Apple is planning on putting out a netbook or smartbook with Mac OS X on it, this seems like more of a tool for those application developers who use Mac hardware with OS X rather than the typical user.

A few months back I did a review of Jolicloud, which is a competing netbook OS that uses the Linux kernel and is made possible by venture capital-backed funding. There was some news related to the newest version of Jolicloud that while the default browser for the OS is still Firefox, webapps for its “cloud” portion of the platform will run with underlying Google Chrome architecture. This will be a change coming in its new beta version that is due out later this month.

As mentioned in my review, Jolicloud is a different animal when compared to Chrome OS. It has a mix of installed applications and webapps that will satisify both early adopters and regular computer users. However, I found that the “connect to the cloud” notifications when I first booted the system up would be confusing for regular users. I will have to take a look at the new version, but in the previous one it seemed to me that they only reason I needed to actually login to Jolicloud’s servers was to download and install new applications – of which I had to make a choice from their app directory.

But I like this concept of Chrome being the underlying engine for running applications that are web based. This shows that Chrome is really more than just a web browser even right now. A great example of this is Chrome Frame which can be paired with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to run more intensive applications than the standalone IE can handle.

The developer channel of Chrome has been updated today and the geolocation API is now built in. This allows developers to now work on apps and extensions that can take into account a user’s geographic coordinates. I’m not sure specifically what type of applications would incorporate this feature, but I could imagine this bringing a new tool in terms of localized social networking that could be pretty useful.

To use the geolocation feature, you must have the Google Chrome developer channel release of Chrome (version 5.0.342.1) and you must run a commnad line switch of “–enable-geolocation” when executing the chrome.exe application.

The release notes referenced that you could test this by going to http://maps.google.com and it would recognize that the feature was turned on. However, I could not get it to work at that URL. Instead I found another link in the notes to go to http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/m which must be the UK URL for the mobile maps app. When I went to this site, I was prompted with this messgae in Chrome:

I clicked the “Allow” button, and up popped my location. If you have ever used the Google Maps application on your smartphone, it is exactly like that, with the major difference being that you computer has much more processing power with which to build some useful tools and games around.

This has to be done every time you start Chrome if want this experimental API to be turned on. There are probably going to be some interesting apps that will be developed for this, and it is clear that this is a move further towards mobile computing for Chromium. Having this on the browser is only a start for where this is going in an operating system architecture. With that being said, what kind of apps do you envision there being with the geolocation API?

It hasn’t been surprising that there aren’t too many Chrome OS products on display at Germany’s CeBIT conference, which is the largest computer manufacturer meet in the world. While I had heard rumors of Chrome OS ARM devices popping up there, nothing of interest has shown up yet. The best bet is that the largely Taiwanese manufactures of netbooks such as Acer, Asus and MSI are planning to reveal some interesting things on their home turf at Taipei’s Computex, set for the first week of June.

So while we sit through this lull before the exciting developments come to fruition, there are some really cheap gadgets that are coming out of CeBIT. And both of these prototypes could possibly be loaded with Chrome OS. It’s hard to tell because the Chromium projects site doesn’t offer me too much information on minimum requirements.

The first is a tablet, set at a price point of $100. It’s the 7″ Hivision Speedpad and it comes with a ARM 11 chip by Samsung, 2GB of storage and 256 MB of RAM. Did I mention it’s loaded with Android? Based on these specs, it may be difficult to run Chrome OS on this machine, but with ever falling component prices it may not be a far flung reality:

And then there’s the $85 netbook, or perhaps best described as “mini-netbook”. Made be Coby, its dubbed the NBPC722. It has a Marvell ARM, has a 7″ display and is running Windows CE. I couldn’t get any info as of yet on storage or memory, but I’m betting because it’s running Windows CE, these specs are pretty dimunitive:

Conclusion? Expect to see more devices like this coming in the next few months. While these two are running operating systems befit for a mobile phone or the distant past, I see them simply as placeholders for a time that will soon come where we see a browser-based OS being the standard for these devices. This is because that is the core function these products will provide for users.

What would you do with one of these?

Best known as the hacker that is able to consistently deliver results in the Pwn2Own contest which awards contestants for successfully exploiting OS vulnerabilities, Charlie Miller gave an interview recently and shared his thoughs about the most secure computing platform for users. While he was unable to comment on Chrome OS (he said he didn’t have enough info yet) his thoughts and the best browser and OS were of interest.

“Chrome or IE8 on Windows 7 with no Flash installed. There probably isn’t enough difference between the browsers to get worked up about”, Miller told oneitsecurity. And while we agree with his point, it stands out that he would find that IE8 is comparable to Chrome in any way other than security. Chrome offers a better UI, is faster and has far better web compliance scores.

He discussed the potential of hacking Linux, saying that it would be relatively easy to pull off. But the low adoption rate of Linux as inhibited any motivation for researchers to try to point out flaws that are inherent to the system. Chrome OS is based off of a flavor of Linux so it will be interesting to see how it evolves from the perspective of security.

Miller is clearly not impressed by Flash, and that’s no surprise. With Pwn2Own’s 2010 contest coming up, the focus this year is going to be on exploiting mobile phones. That would probably be made easier if some of these platforms like the iPhone actually had Flash, so expect Android to be a big target with a lot of entrants trying to win the big prize by hacking that platform. The total prize allocation for the contest is set at $100,000.

I get asked fairly often questions pertaining to Chrome OS. Actually this may surprise you, but I enjoy talking about it. I know for many this whole Chrome OS thing is a bit confusing. So let me take this post to make clear what is going on. One of the big issues I hear about is the difference between Chrome OS and Chrome OS Flow. For those who have not been paying attention here is the real lowdown.

Google is planning on releasing an official Chrome operating system towards the end of 2010. This will be a portable computerof some sort, like a tablet or netbook that is branded as a Google product that comes loaded with Chrome OS. For the time being, all we have is what is known as Google’s open source Chromium OS project. You can visit the official site here, it has documentation and videos discussing ideas and possible specs for both the hardware and software.

Chrome OS Flow was developed by a UK student named Hexxeh. He took the open source Chromium OS code found on the Chromium project resources site and created his own packaged “build” to work with most netbook hardware that you can put on a USB stick or load as a VM image. Flow is a good representation of what the commerical Chrome OS will be like, and that is why there is some talk about it. If you’re interested in trying it out, I suggest you head over to his site.

There are others who have created their own builds, most notably a 64-bit version and one that has been created by the Dell Linux team. But so far Flow appears to be the best representation of what to expect later on this year.

Any other questions? Comment or contact me.

In an effort get as many people as possible starting to use their new integrated translation feature that is already a part of Chrome 5, Google has announced Chrome 4.1 Beta. Chrome 4 is a more stable release than Chrome 5, which is a version better suited for developers who are working on extensions and other miscellansoues features of he browser.

As previously mentioned here, future versions of Chrome will not require you t have to download a separate Google Translate extension, rather, when you are at a site that is not in your normal language for browsing you will be prompted for a translation. Check out the official video of the feature:

Additionally, there are some enhanced privacy features in 4.1. When pressing the Content Settings button under the Privacy header you get a good deal of options on how you would like Chrome to handle cookies for various sites. You can check out 4.1 here, by downloading the Beta Channel release. If you are already in the Beta Channel, you don’t have to do anything, as Chrome will update itself.

It’s been said off and on that with the Chromium projects, Google may potentially target the desktop operating system market at some point. While they have become ever pervasive both with the web and in technology overall, I find the idea of them attempting to do something like this unrealistic. They have a lot of better opportunities to have competitive advantage elsewhere is the view that I have.

Bill Mullins of the blog Tech Thoughts has graciously allowed me to guest write a piece that further examines this topic, which you can check out right here. I hope you like it. Seriously, I do.

Many who use Chrome Browser do not even realize that in itself it has a Task Manager, much like the one that the future Chrome operating system will eventually use. But why would a browser have a Task Manager? Well, Chrome operates a bit differently that other browsers. Instead of occupying one process that takes a huge amount of system memory, Chrome separates tabs as single processes. This is different, yet has some ingenuity to it.

One of the reasons for this is because of security. Being able to lock down each tab as a single process ensures that malware or spyware does not have as much capability to infect the entire browser or system. Another reason is stability. Many of you have probably experienced a crash in Chrome, but that crash only affected a certain tab because it is set up as its own “sandboxed” process.

I could go on with the virtues of this, but let’s just take a look at Task Manager. While in Chrome, go ahead and hit Shift+Esc and you’ll see something like this:

I’ve expanded this out just to show everything here. It’s easy to tell that I like to have a lot of tabs open; the reality is that I do the majority of my work within the browser environment – so you can understand why I may be interested in Chrome OS. Anyways you can see here that every window I have open is in is own separate process. Should you have the desire, or are dealing with a buggy/unresponsive tab, you can kill it by highlighting one of the tabs and hitting “End Process”.

Even as a browser, Chrome is like an operating system in and of itself. If you look on the bottom left hand side you can see that I have highlighted the “Stats for nerds” link. When you click on this, you get a tab that expands upon the initial window:

Note how from here you can get detailed names for each process, whether they are a tab or and extension and the process ID. On the right hand side there are corresponding columns that give you memory information:

You can see what amount of memory a tab is using on its own, as well as what is shared, and the entire total. You can also see what kind of virtual memory a process is using. This has been well thought out with developers in mind and the fact that this is in the browser shows that the Google folks have been prepping this for the operating system environment for some time. Also, being able to drill down like this offers an element of information and security that no other browser has to offer.

One interesting thing I would like to note is the amount of memory that Flash requires to run. Sure, its being used in some of the pages I have open (YouTube), but you can see now that Google wants to go the operating system route why they want to move to open standards to replace Flash:

Compare that with the other processes I have running above and it’s clear – Flash is a resource hog. And with more media and interactivity on the way, expect to see more third party plugins as well as some Chrome extensions get scrutinized. With this task manager it is much easier to break down particular processes in a browser as opposed to the way other browsers simply lump everything into on giant memory allocation on a system.

So bust out the task manager when you get a chance. You might learn something interesting about the memory that pages you go to on a day to day basis require from your system. That goes the same for plugins and extensions as well.

In a bid to potentially undermine one of the main strengths of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, Chrome’s own version of the add-on is growing at a pretty good clip. That’s because the official Chrome Extensions count now is over three thousand different ones that you can install. This is pretty significant not just because it threatens Firefox’s dominance, but also the speed at which extensions developed for Chrome has grown in the past few months.

It was only in December that the extensions site was opened up for what was then Chrome 4 Beta, starting initially with a nascent 300 that were available, developed by both internal Googlers and outside developers.

Extensions are an easy way to customize Chrome. As an example, there are some good Twitter extensions as well as others that can help you keep your tabs organized or have a list of daily tasks to do right within the browser. This is all in an ongoing effort to make a majority of personal computing tasks located within the browser environment. I’ve previously written about some of the most interesting ones that I have found, but with so many coming out every day, there are probably some new ones that I need to check out.

With that being said, there are also some that don’t work very well, and can cause your browser to crash or just be plain annoying. Good thing its easy to uninstall them in that case. But at least with Chrome, extensions have some security features built in and need to be signed off by Google before they are allowed to be a part of their official directory.

It looks like in the future, Chrome users will not need to have a Translate Extension in order to read sites that are in a foreign language. That’s because with Chrome 5, which is currently in beta, it is built into the latest developer version. I personally had installed the Google Translate feature from Google’s Extension site when I first downloaded Chrome 5, so I didn’t even realize this until I came across the info myself.

Now, when you are at a site that is in a different language than yours, Chrome 5 automatically detects that and asks you if you want to translate the page. It takes a few seconds, then you will be able to read the page in your language. Sometimes the translation isn’t perfect but I have yet to find a time when I cannot understand what I am reading.

Mind you it can only do text, not images or any craziness that may be embedded in Flash.

This feature acts exactly like the Translate Extension so much so that it make me wonder what else Google is planning on integrating into Chrome for future versions. This one was a good idea, as Translate isn’t really something that you notice until you are on a site you cannot read because it isn’t in your own language. One other thing: there doesn’t appear to be a way to turn Translate off as of yet but you can set a site to not notify for translation from the options menu located on the right hand side:

In a nutshell Translate is a useful, transparent feature that has been baked into this version of Chrome. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we keep seeing Google add more of their applications and services directly into the browser if they feel it is of utmost use and convenience.

While this may make it into a future Chrome 4 update, to use this now you must be on the current Dev Channel. This is the most recent Chrome version that is available and is ahead of the monthly beta updates that Google pushes out. You can download Chrome 5 Dev for all platforms right here.

Ok, so I’m not a Mac user. But I know there are some of you out there reading that are. So when I get asked how to create a USB image for Mac I’m at a loss of words. Fortunately there are directions, and even better, there is a video for those non-Mac users like me who look at the written instructions and have no idea what is going on. So here you go, I hope this helps out the Apple users:

So, how does Flow run on a Mac? I’m curious.

UPDATE: Hexxeh, the creator of Flow, has said that it probably will not work on Macs, anyone out there get this running?

There has been a lot of speculation that there will be a Chrome OS netbook that will be available from Acer in the middle of this year, which would only be about four months away. I’m not sure where this kind of information is coming from, but I think that this was something that was leaked by an insider to keep Acer’s name in the news about Chrome OS. Ther reality is that yes, we will probably see something from Acer in mid-2010, but it won’t be something that we as consumers will be able to buy yet.

That’s because one of the biggest computer shows, Computex, will be convientley showing off the wares of many manufacturers in early June. Doesn’t that sound like mid-2010 to you? Plus, Computex is held in Taipei, Tawian. That means that major companies such as Asus, MSI and of Acer will be there, and they will probably be showing finished products that run on Chromium builds.

Also, in late May, Google will hold its developer conference, dubbed Google I/O. A look at the sessions that will be held has some Chrome OS topics  scheduled. There may be some news that comes out of the conference, most likely of which will be an announcement of a uniform programming language for use across Google’s platforms to help streamline development when the operating system is actually released. This will most likely be of Google’s own experimental language, called Go.

Look, anyone that has taken a look at the latest builds of Chromium by running Hexxeh’s Flow would know that while the OS is progressing, there is still some development that still needs to be completed before Google is going to give the green light for manufacturers to sell devices with this platform. While I’m sure they want to get something out that competes with Apple’s iPad soon, rushing the development cycle for this is not going to create a lasting impression on users if the product is not ready.

So if you’re in such a hurry, Acer, why don’t you advertise the fact that you have the Windows 7/Android AOD250 netbook on the market? Sure, it’s not a tablet. But it’s probably a more polished product that what Chrome OS can offer consumers over the next six months:

So expect to see some interesting hardware developments by June, but don’t expect to see something that you can actually purchase until the beginning of the fourth quarter.

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Sure, it seems kind of strange that Google has decided they want to be able to buy and sell energy on the open market. They quietly filed an application just before Christmas with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in order to do so and were approved. Fact is, the ability to trade energy is done in a heavily regulated market, and if you think your power company isn’t doing it as well, you’re wrong.

The most efficient way to manage electricity is through an energy market. This market is regulated by the government as well as a regional market maker, depending on the geography where you need or have power for the market. They act as the middleman and set the standards by which energy can be transacted. Google only wants to have the flexbility to purchase more when they need it at better prices than they can get as a regular commercial customer.

Remember, commercial power costs more than it does for regular residential users, and that small percentage difference means a lot when you’re running massive data centers that process millions of search queries. That’s not to mention the plethora of newfangled applications that Google seemly releases every week which adds even more load to their servers.

This is just another way for the company to better manage its resources. In a story on 60 Minutes over the weekend, it was revealed that Google was the first commerical customer of the something called the Bloom Box, which can efficiently generate off-grid energy using a unique fuel-cell method by combining oxygen and fuel in a unit that can be placed right outside of a building much like an air conditioning system. And Google has purposely tried to build data centers close to cheap energy resources such as near hydroelectric dams in Oregon – because they have to pay for all of that energy anyways – and it has also been said that they are very careful about the efficiency of these resources.

So don’t take Google’s decision to do this as just another reason that they want to take over the world. If you think this is concerning, check out how much they pay for bandwidth. You’ll be more surprised by that.