thechromesource – Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources

Review: Chrome Canary – More Than One Browser Instance

Posted on 25. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

I had recently written a post at the Chromium-discuss Google Group about a recent problem I was having with Chrome instances.

The pace of Chrome’s development is mind blowing. So when I read the Chromium-dev Group news about Chrome Canary, I was happy that the team is allowing more instances of the browser to be run for those of us who have a keen interest in Chrome.

However, does Chrome really need to have a stable, beta, dev and now Canary release? Under normal browser conditions, it does not. But because the pace of releases are being sped up due to Chrome being implemented as an OS as well as an integral part of Google’s TV initiative, it makes sense.

The real purpose is to put a canary build out that can be frequently updated, and possibly rolled back. The Chromium team realizes that the more eyes that are on their early builds, the faster potential problems can be worked out, thus speeding up the development life cycle. Note that this build is currently only available for Windows users.

When I first installed Chrome Canary, I was surprised to see that I was given a choice for which search engine would be queried when I put a term in the omnibox. Actually since Yahoo how uses Bing for search results there’s really only two options here.

Looking at the versions of these two instances, it appears that for now the two are running the same build so there’s really nothing intriguing to report on about canary for the time being. Although canary will only be used to push the more risky features into the build, we’ll keep updating on any of the most interesting changes.

Review: PageRank – Link Extend Extension

Posted on 20. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

I have searched for some time to find an extension that would give me PageRank information, and the reality is that there are many out there that do not fulfill expectations. The best one I’ve been able to find is the PageRank – Link Extend extension by Linkular.

When you go to a site, such as YouTube, you’ll get a number for its PageRank ranking from the extension icon.

Clicking on the icon when you are at a subpage will give you information about the site. You’ll get page ranking, site ranking and subdomain information as well.

What’s even more useful is that when you perform a search, you can easily see next to each result what the PageRank is.
PageRank is a way to rate linking on sites and is thus an important element of the web. When you have your own site, you become more aware of it, and this tool has been by far the best one out of the many extensions out there that supposedly do this. It does its job, and stays in the background, perfect functionality for an extension.

5 Game Extensions in Chrome to Waste Your Time On

Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Now that it’s no secret that Google secretly invested money in social games maker Zygna, it’s pretty clear Google wants to get into the gaming market. There’s really no reason why they shouldn’t – making games easier to play on a PC than a console is a fantastic idea.

With that in mind, I decided to head over to the Official Chrome Extensions site and try to find some interesting games you can play in the browser right now. This is about as Googley it gets for games right now unless you check out Asteroids from Chrome Experiments. Also, it is expected that the Chrome Web Store will have some in-depth games when it is launched later on this year.

Keep in mind I limited this list to games you can play directly on top of the browser, not extensions that lead you to a gaming website. Hope you enjoy the ones I’ve found!

Mini Putt

There’s nothing like time wasting than spending it playing a little mini golf with this game Mini Putt. While this game feels a little bit like pinball with the speed that you are able to putt the ball, I like being able to try different shots out of the banked corners. I don’t know if this game is going to help my actual putting game, but it sure is fun to “putt” around with when I don’t have anything better to do with my time.

I think that I was spoiled with Snake, since Mini Putt is unable to bring me back to my game once I click out of it. How am I supposed to finish nine holes all at once? That’s asking too much.

McDonald’s Manager Game

It’s pretty clear that the people who developed the McDonald’s Manager Game have a distrusting view of the McDonald’s Corporation, but that’s what makes this game entertaining. In Sims-like fashion, you are put into the role of managing some of the business aspects of the fast food industry, from agriculture operations, marketing and even the day to day hustle of running a single store. Money goes out from business expenditures, and money comes in from customers buying those delicious burgers. It’s pretty fun.

One problem though is that once you start the game, I could not find a way to save it – although I think the point of this extension is just for some good fun from time to time.

King’s Quest

King’s Quest is an old Sierra Entertainment role playing game. You wander around looking for things and actions are based on a list of things that you can do. Although I don’t remember playing King’s Quest before, I remember that Sierra’s games got pretty involved, and I’m sure this game is the same way. I seemed to have a serious issue with constantly falling into the water, as shown above clearly our character in the game never found the time to learn to swim.

This game is a bit buggy, but it’s fun to walk around exploring. I also did not find a way to save – is there a recurring development issue I’m seeing here with these extensions not being able to store game data?

Tetris

Ah yes, the classic Russian puzzle game. They say that Tetris is actually good for your brain, which makes me wonder if that means all other games except for Tetris are slowly killing me, or that simply more professorial type people play Tetris leading to extensive research. That would be a fun academic project. Anyways, this game has been around long enough for everyone to know about it, so there’s really no explaining it.

This version of Tetris, Netris Deluxe, gives you a few customization options, allowing you to enter in your lines and your level. A big bummer with this extension is that you must use the mouse to click on the arrows instead of using a keyboard, which takes some getting used to, and means no turbocharging those blocks to the bottom. If you click out, well, no saved game for you on this one either. Better off using JC-Tetris, although that opens up in a totally different window which is very un-extension like.

Snake

Snake was one of those games that used to come with some older Windows machines. Instead of playing Solitaire or Minesweeper, I used to always enjoy the quick wits of Snake instead which requires you to go after objects that makes the tail of your reptile grow ever longer. This Chrome extension version of the game offers a slow speed easy difficulty and a fast paced hard setting. You just click on the box in the lower right to change the setting.

While this is a more basic version of the game than the original version I remember, it’s still fun. Plus, you can click off the game only to select the extension icon again later to pick up where you left off.

Conclusion

Not being able to save some of these games is a bit frustrating, especially since some of them get pretty involved. I know that many of these games are for fun to show what you can do with a little JavaScript, and hopefully in the future Chrome gaming will become even better. Have you come across a Chrome extension-based game I missed out on? Let me know.

Forecastfox is a Useful Chrome Weather Extension

Posted on 24. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Since the days of the notorious WeatherBug process hog, I have never really been into weather related add-ins, widgets or whatever-you-may-call-them. That’s probably because they have not been useful, end up taking too much of my PC system resources or a combination of the two. So when I installed the Ensolis Forecastfox extension for Chrome browser, I found it quite useful despite my misgivings. In fact, I think I like it.

After installing the extension you’ll need to configure your location by putting in your zipcode at the options menu. This can be done either by right clicking on the Forecastfox tab, opening the forecast and selecting option from the bottom or going through the extensions menu. If you are a frequent traveler, you can set up multiple locations and easily switch locations depending on where you are.

Finding out the current weather is real easy when you have the temperature and conditions displayed in the browser at the top right: 

Click on the Forecastfox extension icon, and you get a quick rundown of the forecast for the next week, with the information being pulled from the Accuweather database. I was surprised how quickly this data was pulled, perhaps Ensolis caches the data as it is updated from Accuweather:

The extension also gives you a nice little red box at the top when there are severe weather warnings, as was the case for me a few days ago when there was a frost advisory in my area.

Forecastfox actually is a Firefox add-in that has been ported over by Ensolis as a Chrome extension. This is not a bad thing: the folks who developed this already had an existing product that they had a good following on (20 million downloads). I think we can expect to see more solid add-ins for Firefox be moved onto the Google browser platform as adoption levels continue to rise.

Try out Forecastfox for a good weather extension in Google Chrome. I promise it’s not like WeatherBug.

Improve Your Workflow with the Split Screen Extension for Chrome

Posted on 07. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

It’s been said that you are able to be up to thirty percent more productive when you have two screens for your workstation. Unfortunately, due to the fact that many people have laptops or are experiencing some sort of expense constraints, often times only one screen is available. While this may not necessarily be the same as an extra screen, some developer out there took this as an opportunity and created the Split Screen Extension for the Chrome browser:

The split screen concept is pretty simple. In the upper right corner where most extensions reside there is a little  monitor icon. Click on it and you get a new tab that loads up two evenly split screens, allowing you to enter the URLs of your choice on each side. It even seems to remember the sites you’ve been to, so it is taking Chrome’s history data into account as well. Nice touch.

It might be a good idea for the developer to have an icon for the split screen tab so it can be recognized, as right now there is only a generic page that identifies the tab. It’s just a suggestion.

There isn’t much more to this extension – right-clicking on the extension icon gives you the option to disable it, uninstall and of course to open another split screen window. I can see several good uses for this extension: making comparisons, copying and pasting, reducing the amount of tabs as well as just being more productive overall by having more than one site open at the same time.

Overall, a useful extension. I recommend trying it in full screen for the best viewing experience. You can check out the Split Screen Extension for yourself right here.

Comodo Dragon Browser Offers a Secure Browsing Experience

Posted on 21. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Comodo, a mid-sized security company based in the United States, has decided to release it’s own version of Chrome browser that puts a particular focus on security aspects. It’s Comodo Dragon Internet Browser, and the purpose, according to the company, is to offer a safer and more protected web browsing experience. Their website notes that there are millions of potential malware and privacy threats that are out there, and that this browser is built to protect from these vulnerabilities.

I went ahead and downloaded Comodo, and while you can tell that the Chrome UI has largely stayed the same, they have added their own skin to Comodo that make it their own. Like Chrome, when you install the browser, it allows you to import your things from whatever browser you have been using, which is helpful.

One of the first things I realized about this browser is that I was unable to install extensions. This would lead me to believe that Comodo Internet Browser is based on an earlier version of Chromium browser that did not support extensions, but I’m not entirely sure of that after reading their technical documents and forum. You are able to install your own theme – but for some reason you’re not be able to install extensions. That could be an issue for some people, especially since you aren’t even able to use Google’s own approved extensions from their official site.

It appears that the main benefit of using Comodo right now is to restrict Google themselves from accessing the information that is normally sent back to them while you surf. Features that are inherent to Chrome browser have been stripped out. This include things such as reporting back to Google’s servers of the version number of the browser, the GoogleUpdate auto-updater, usage statistics and RLZ-tracking, which sends to Google information about where you downloaded Chrome from.

Comodo claims to offer a faster experience than other browsers, but in a test between Chrome 5, Firefox 3.6 and Dragon using Sunspider Javascript benchmarking, they came in second after Chrome 5. Hopefully they can continue to develop their own flavor of Chrome, but I would be hard pressed to expect that they will be able to surpass the most recent Chromium browser source in terms of rendering speeds.

I surfed around with Comodo Dragon, and the experience wasn’t any different from using the latest Chrome version, which is 5 Beta right now. Although Comodo’s website says there are added security features, I could not find any located within the options menu. In fact Chrome 5 has more content setting options than Comodo Dragon, so my guess is that they plan on adding more features with a security focus soon.

You can download Comodo Dragon Internet Explorer right here. Unfortunately, it only runs on Windows for now – from XP and up.

Review: Chrome OS Flow

Posted on 16. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

I’ve finally gotten Chrome OS Flow downloaded, imaged to a USB stick and running on a machine. It took some time, as when I started the download yesterday morning I came back later in the day only to find that less than half of the archive for the build had been downloaded before it petered out. Hexxeh noted this in his Twitter account, so this must be a widespread outage that occurred. Once I finally got the download finished in the wee hours, I couldn’t get it to run on any of my machines – probably because I wasn’t actually awake anymore.

The best part of this new version that I found was that it now can store your wireless settings. That’s helpful, because now you can jump right into whatever you need to do once you get logged in. In the past, you would get some ugly “cannot connect” pages every boot, but once you configure your network from the upper right hand corner for the first time, it is good to go.

For whatever reason, I was only able to use the facepunch/facepunch login to get into Flow. Attempting to use my own Google account would not work. Thanks to a commenter, I found out that a quirk to Flow requires me to login using a wired connection using my account, and then after that it is cached. Still dealing with beta, and that’s how it goes.

Flash is working on this one, and the sound is working too. The power indicator is also functional, although I never really had an issue with it in past builds. I busted out some tunes on Lala, and I was excited. This is starting to look like something I could use on one of my machines on a regular basis. YouTube videos ran fine, and I think Hexxeh had to spend quite a bit of time getting the Nvidia hardware to work correctly for Flow in order to get codecs to run.

I didn’t see any elements of customizable windows for the applications that had been previewed via a screenshot at first just a week ago. Hexxeh tossed a comment on this post saying it does work, by clicking on the Chromium logo in the upper left and it would pop up. It does work now, and you can get access to many web apps that are already out there. I had some problems moving icons around, but I’m still happy with the fact that these pseudo-bookmarks work to get me to places like Facebook, Google Docs and status updates for Flow.

There are added network preferences in the options menu, among a few other tidbits that have been changed. However, I don’t want to write too much, as this is still an early release and these things are subject to change. I know Hexxeh spent a lot of time trying to get this working, and he is planning on using his new auto-update system to work out any bugs and system changes that there may be. So go ahead and download this, try it out. The resources are on Hexxeh’s site, and include a bug tracker, so check it out right here.

UPDATE: I have modified this article based on the comments below. Feel free to offer your own. I have also found that Extensions do not work.

2ND UPDATE: Extensions do work, you have to hit Enter through the menus when asked if you want to install the extension instead of using your mouse. Its kind of quirky, but at least they are working.

Organize Those Chrome Tabs With TabJump

Posted on 31. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Anyone ever get afflicted by tab-madness? This is a problem for those who work strictly in their browser and start off checking email, looking at Twitter updates and before you know it you have 30 tabs open. Here is a typical shot of the top of my browser and the number of tabs I have open:

Now, if you’re using Chrome, that means each tab is running as its own process and is hogging all the resources on your machine. All of a sudden when you go to watch a video or stream some music your PC just cannot handle it. Wonder why? Probably because you have tab-madness.

But this problem can be cured, and there is a cool Chrome extension called TabJump that can offer you help. TabJump sits in the navigation bar as as the green arrow shown here:

When you click on it, a drop down menu appears that organizes your tabs based on whether they have been frequently used, are closely related by topic or even if a tabs has been recently closed and you don’t want to have to go back into your history and try to find it. I don’t know how many times I have closed a tab because of tab-madness only to realize that I should have pinned it/not closed it.

So, pull yourself together and get your tabs in order with TabJump. It’s better than wasting your time going through every single tab looking for that little nugget of information, or having to go back through your history in the past day just to find that new site you just closed and forgot the name of.

Video Review of Chrome OS

Posted on 13. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

This is a fairly entertaining review of Chrome OS that apparently was done a few weeks back. The reviewer doesn’t indicate what build he’s using, but since this is from late December, it must be an older version. Anyways, I found the clip funny based on the vocal tone of the guy, plus his musings on sign in problems and the fact that there is a setting asking about Chrome as the default browser in the OS itself. What, do you wanna install Firefox on this?

There’s and in-depth look at the settings for Chrome, which gives you a pretty good run down on the options that are currently available. Take a look – its worth wasting your time on (if you have some to waste):

First Look: Chrome OS Zero

Posted on 12. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Well, I’ve had the chance to load up the old USB drive with Zero and take it for a spin. In fact, I’m writing this post with Zero right now. I have to say that there is a lot more polish to this version compared to previous builds. In the past I noticed that there seemed to be slight glitches here and there within the interface, especially in the navigational bar at the top. However, these types of issues are to be expected since this was a part of a very early version of the operating system – although they now appear to be gone.

The load time for Zero is very fast – seven seconds to login at my count. Once logged in with the facepunch/facepunch combo, I quickly connected to my wireless internet. I was able to surf around with ease, and felt like I could really get used to this on a day-to-day basis. One problem is taking screenshots and the handling of image files, however.

In the top right, it appears that the options menu to the far right where you can see your machine’s battery status and wireless connection has been removed, and that’s probably because you can access the OS’s preferences from the wrench icon – this was probably changed to reflect how the Chrome browser is set up.

Extensions are a big deal to Chromium, and anyone who uses the Chrome browser would agree with this fact. That’s why the have been added to this version of Chrome OS.  Of course, being the intrepid blogger I attempted to take screenshots of Zero with the Aviary extension tool which allows you to take screens in the Chrome browser.  Unfortunately I received a rather polite error stating that Flash was just not going to cooperate with me.

I’m not sure what the issue is with Flash yet, but I’ve posed my question at the Chromium Group to see if I get an answer. I did a quick search over there and it looks like there is an issue with it. Since Flash has been reported as a potential security risk perhaps early builds are going to go without it until regular users start adopting the OS.

I’m not sure how how automatic updates work in Zero, but according to Hexxeh’s site this is a new feature in this build. I think it’s a great idea since that will be how all updates are delivered in the future for Chromium.

Review: The Cloud Player

Posted on 04. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

I came across this cool application while I was taking a look at Jolicloud. It’s called The Cloud Player,  and it’s definitely something that could be really useful for for netbooks and smartbooks in the future. Built with Google’s App Engine, the app looks almost like iTunes in your browser window. In fact, I’m pretty sure emulating iTunes was the goal here. You can search for tracks in the upper right hand corner, and on the left hand side there are some icons that separate music by genre.

The most popular track of the day can be found listed at the top of the window, which is useful. I found a couple of cool tracks this way when I was playing around with it. Playlists and other customizations can be saved in The Cloud Player, as you are able to sign in with you Google account. You can even share as well as collaborate on playlists if you want to. The coolest thing about The Cloud Player is that it is ready to play music whenever you are – simply go to the website and it’s ready to play some music. I thought that they sound quality was quite good, with very little time needed to buffer and better sounding than competitors like Pandora or Jango.

The downside? The music is all from independent artists. I know for some that is not a dealbreaker, but I had never heard of any of the artists on The Cloud Player. I also notice that the tracks that were available tended to lean heavily towards the electronica genre, which isn’t a problem for me but may be an issue for some.

Regardless, with slick interface and some cool collaborative features, The Cloud Player is worth checking out. It may end up being big for all we know.

Review: Jolicloud Netbook OS

Posted on 03. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

We’ll be taking a look in a series of features the different operating systems that are going to be competing with Chrome OS in an effort to evaluate how Google stacks up against the competition.

Jolicloud is another operating system that is focused on the netbook market. Called an Internet OS on their official website, it’s based on the Linux kernel, and is backed by venture capital from Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners. Right now Jolicloud is free, and I am not sure how they expect to make a profit when there are many others that are also offering free netbook operating systems, but who knows? They must have some sort of plan since they were able to obtain outside funding for the project. Since they plan on replacing regular software with web-based alternatives, perhaps they will be able to generate revenue that way.

The OS can be downloaded from the Jolicloud download page and there is an easy tool that can also be downloaded from their site that creates an image of the ISO onto a USB drive. The instructions are on the download page.

Although this can depend on hardware configuration, for me Jolicloud booted up pretty slow, slower than the current version of Chrome OS at 20 seconds. I noticed that there was no login to the OS, and the boot sequence just brought me to the main home for the OS.

The home screen for Jolicloud is all black and there are two side columns . On the left there are icons for both installed applications as well as preferences while the left is filled various shortcuts that are related to the file structure. The middle loads depending on which menu choice is toggled in the two side columns. I like the interface, and although the black background is starkly different from anything that I have seen before, I find it interesting. I was able to find options that change the color scheme to my liking, but even when I did so I realized that there is a deliberate theme that revolves around the color black for Jolicloud.

Just like in Chrome, quick configuration settings can be found on the upper right hand side. One thing I noticed right away was a dialog box asking me to “connect to the Jolicloud”. I clicked on the box and was taken to a screen to register. After validation with an email address I was taken into “the cloud” so to speak. Once you are connected there is a small Jolicloud logo that stays in the upper right configuration area to signify that you are logged in.

There was software already installed on startup, and instead of Jolicloud having its own browser Firefox was one of the applications that was on my home screen. There are other pre-installed apps such as Pidgin, which allows you to connect to several different IM services was well as Transmission BitTorrent Client.

In the Jolicloud interface you are able to download applications and there is a tab for social networking functions. In the application area, I found that there were quite a few options, more than I expected. I was even able to download and install the Chrome browser, which was a quick process. The different types of applications included games, music management and photo editing tools. Even the suite of Google Applications were available to install and use on Jolicloud.

Switching between tasks in Jolicloud is done in the upper left hand corner. There are icons that are docked in this area, and it is easy to get back to the home screen as there is a blue house icon that is pinned to the very upper right of the screen. You can also use the tried and true Alt+Tab as well. Although Jolicloud is in beta, it feels really polished, and it almost seems like something that one who is fed up with using Windows XP on their netbook may want to consider using.

The main focus for Jolicloud is, of course, on the cloud. But this can be a bit confusing for users with the “connect to Jolicloud” dialog that pops up at initial start up. Even so, you really only have to be logged in to Jolicloud if you want to download new applications or use their special social networking software.

Just because Jolicloud is focused on cloud computing doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to be connected to the internet to use the OS. You would be able to listen to music, view pictures or watch movies that are downloaded to the machine. Installed applications that don’t require the internet could also be used.  The file explorer functions that are located on the right hand column of the home screen makes clear that users will be able to have some functionality with this operating system even if users do not have network connectivity.

Although Jolicloud has only been in development since late 2008 , it seems like there is something good going on here. We’ll see if these folks are able to get this operating system into some netbooks in the near future.

Although it seems counterintuitive, the ability to use a netbook while not connected to the internet would be a good feature, since the way Chrome OS is suppose to be used as we understand it right now it is just a paperweight without the internet. Jolicloud tries this with their cloud portion of the OS sectioned off into a separate login. However, while I understand what they are trying to achieve with this concept, it would be easier (and more secure) to just have a machine login that is cached.

Pros: Finished feel, ability to change browsers, good choice of applications.

Cons: Jolicloud concept may be confusing to new users,  no machine login, slow boot time.

Review: Moblin Netbook OS

Posted on 29. Dec, 2009 by Daniel Cawrey.

We’ll be taking a look in a series of features the different operating systems that are going to be competing with Chrome OS in an effort to evaluate how Google stacks up against the competition.

Moblin is a netbook-centric operating system that is based on the Linux open source kernel.  It is spearheaded by Intel in a drive to have it used on hardware that features its Atom processors, which are for netbooks and other devices that they are calling Mobile Internet Devices (MID). It appears that the idea is to have Moblin used not only in netbooks but also devices used as entertainment hubs embedded in vehicles or other equipment that is networked.

Because of the backing of corporate interests that along with Intel also includes Novell, Moblin is certainly a conduit to compete with the already prevalent ARM processors, which are used in almost every mobile device and are expected to be used by the manufacturers that end up making Chrome OS netbooks.

I downloaded a copy of Moblin, which is still in beta from the official web site to check out its interface and how it stacks up against Chrome OS.

Just like the versions of Chrome OS that are floating around, you can image Moblin onto a USB drive and run it on your PC. When I booted Moblin, it brought up a menu asking me if I want to start the OS. While it was quick at 13 seconds, it wasn’t as fast as Chrome OS. I also noticed a popping sound coming from my speakers that I thought was the OS loading sound drivers, but it continued to happen when I used sound while in Moblin.

There is no login required for Moblin, and when it loads into its home screen called myzone. I had to admit that it looked a little childish like this was only something for kids to use. Navigation is controlled by a bar at the top of the screen that disappears depending on cursor position outside of the homepage screen. The interface doesn’t use a windowing system, you can come and go from the navigation bar for things that you can do.

Every time I started up Moblin, I had to manually connect to my wireless network. I know it’s in beta, but that’s not a positive for a netbook operating system.

Unlike Chrome OS the browser is not the main component here, the navigation bar is. Configuration options such as power settings are in the upper left hand corner like Chromium. One thing that was annoying was that clock was not in view unless I activated the navigation bar by moving the cursor to the top. At this point I realized that this nav bar appearing and disappearing would be a problem, especially while using the internet. Below you can see what I’m referring to. If you are browsing the internet and want to move the cursor to the browser toolbar, the navigation bar incidentally will come up from time to time:

The graphical interface in Moblin seems active, jumpy and energetic. Actually, it seemed overly energetic to me – when I was toggling between tasks simply too much was going on in terms of animations. Actions seem to happen a little too fast, almost as if Moblin is in a hurry. It seems strange to say this, but try it and I think you’ll get the same sense.

It’s pretty clear that Moblin is not focusing much on cloud computing. There is an extensive media and application component to the OS. There are apps that are already installed including a a terminal program and a few games. There is an application installer program which allows you to download and run programs. I was able to download and install Firefox for Moblin, and there were a nice selection of open source apps such as GIMP for image editing and Songbird for organizing and playing music. You are also able to save files.

There are interesting social networking components in Moblin as well. One of the features of the navigation bar is a status icon where you can easily update your goings-on. Another interesting concept that has been included here is called Empathy, which can connect to your AIM and Google Talk accounts along with a feature that picks up and lists other Moblin users around you along with their information and current status. Location social networking? I think I like that idea.

Pros:

• More polished feel than Chrome OS. Of course, this is in a later stage of development.
• Good social networking features.
• I like the application component of the OS – easy to install apps and it looks like there is going to be a good variety of options from developers

Cons:

• My speakers kept popping when playing sounds. This was just annoying.
• Wifi does not connect automatically. Grrr.
• GUI animations are really jumpy. Also the navigation bar hindering internet navigation. And the clock being hidden.

Now Available – Chrome Extensions From Google

Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by Daniel Cawrey.

Google Extensions

The Chrome Extensions site went live today, and although you could previously get a few extensions here and there from developers, it’s pretty cool to see that Google has got a place now where these are all under on roof. About time time! It appears that there are a variety of offerings available from developers, the most popular being the Gmail checker.

It make me wonder how many of these extensions you could add before creating a lot of bloat in your browser, which has been known to happen in Firefox. Nevertheless, some of these extensions will prove to be useful such as the Google Translate extension which is able to convert pages into another language with one click. It may not be completely accurate, but it’s probably be enough to do the trick.

Sadly, when I fired up my Chrome OS build, the extensions web site said I didn’t have the right Chrome browser version. I downloaded the setup file for the Chrome Beta that works with extensions, but when I tried to run it Chrome OS did nothing. So no extensions can be downloaded from here for Chrome OS yet.

The extensions site is located here. You need to download the Chrome browser beta to get extensions if you don’t already have it.