Tag Archives: Chrome browser
thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/17/10
Posted on 17. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
0 Comments
There is a way to do encrypted searches from both Chrome browser and Firefox; here’s how.
Adobe’s PDF format will be integrated into Chrome browser, just like Flash already has been.
Google Docs collaboration has been made easier with some new features, no doubt just in time to compete with Microsoft.
The Chrome browser dev channel has been updated. Looks like it is mainly user interface issues.
It’s not looking good for Microsoft in terms of competing with Google Apps.
How About Some Chrome Browser on Your PSP?
Posted on 15. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 7 Comments
Yeah, I didn’t really believe the title of this YouTube video until I actually saw it myself. But it appears that some enterprising person was capable of tossing a little Chrome browser action on their Sony Playstation Portable. Nice work.
Instructions:
PSP Google Chrome browser + how to install
DOWNLOAD :
http://lolq.eu/s/psp_chrome/
HOW TO INSTALL:
Connect your psp to your computer
Copy the ‘pspchrome’ folder in x/psp/common/ on your memorystick
Disconect your psp from your computer
Go to the psp web browser, write in the address bar ” file:/psp/common/pspchrome/index.html ”
Then pspchrome will open, choose the language, and it will start.
You may now set it as your home page or mark it in your bookmarks
thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/11/10
Posted on 11. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Extension syncing – which will allow individual extensions to share data with one another - appears to be coming to Chrome browser.
The plans that Google had to launch a desktop application to compete with Skype may be shelved indefinitely.
The FCC is promising increased regulatory scrutiny for both Apple as well as Google.
Is there merit to the claim that Google Apps lacks the requisite security needed to be used in the enterprise?
Potential Chrome OS competitor HyperSpace, whose operating system boots in ten seconds, has been purchased by HP.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/26/10
Posted on 26. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Google’s Chrome OS user interface design team developer Glen Murphy talks to Lifehacker Australia in a brief Q&A session.
Early adopters are increasingly making a move from using Firefox to Chrome browser, according to an analysis by ReadWriteWeb.
It seems pretty clear that the Chrome Web Store will have applications that run code using Native Client.
An anonymous CEO from a public company tells Business Insider that Microsoft’s Outlook mail client will never be able to compete with Gmail.
Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra talks to TechCrunch about location based services and Google’s plans in the tablet market.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/22/10
Posted on 22. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Google is expecting outside developers to grow business in a synergistic way, with both sides benefiting from the partnership.
Here’s a breakdown of the competition for interactive TV that Google faces with their own service coming out in the fall on DISH Network.
As expected, Google has locked down searches with Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption.
There are a lot more issues involved now that Google is a full fledged tech company with search no longer the central element of their business.
The beta (Chrome 5) and development (Chrome 6) versions of the Chrome browser were updated this week.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/20/10
Posted on 20. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Android 2.2 has been announced with Adobe Flash integrated in the browser, new developer tools and new ways to connect to your PC.
Here is the official blog post on Google TV, complete with a video overview of the new technology.
Everyone at Google I/O got one of Sprint’s HTC Evo smartphones, which is loaded with features and runs on 4G.
According to a chart shown at Day One of Google I/O, the number of Chrome browser users is now at 70 million.
The Consumer Watchdog group has launched Inside Google “to educate the public and opinion leaders about Google’s dangerous dominance”.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/11/10
Posted on 11. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Does Google’s new Search interface mean that they are starting to move their core business into an application?
The Ubuntu Light netbook operating system only takes seven seconds to boot. Sounds like a Chrome OS competitor.
Stability features make up the revisions going into the 5.0.375.38 Beta release of Chrome browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.
There are going to be venture capitalists at Google’s I/O conference, and those who code are even going to speak.
Google is looking to hire someone with the job title “Head of Social” to put a face on its social initiatives – some of which have had backlash.
What It’s Like to be a Successful Google Apps Software Company
Posted on 08. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
MindMeister is a company that provides a special tool for organizations called “mind mapping”. Being a software as a service company, it was logical for them to be included when the Google enterprise Apps Marketplace when it was launched last March. In this interview, I talk with MindMeister COO Michael Hollauf and CTO Till Vollmer about their software, the recent changes Google has made to Apps as well as what it’s like working with the search engine giant.
Can you tell me a little bit about MindMeister?
Michael: We’ve been online for about 3 years now. About a month ago, finally, we launched on Google Apps Marketplace. This came out of a relationship with Google. It started pretty early on, almost three years ago now. We realized the product we have fits nicely with what Google has.
It’s a nice add-on for their Apps. I’m explaining more our relationship with Google. Since our integration, we are doing more things integrated with the Docs. We have a regular relationship with them. It seems they’re really pushing Apps now with the introduction of the Marketplace and the enhancements to Google Docs.
Would you say your product is similar to something you would do in Visio or is it something out on its own?
Michael: Yes, it’s certainly something that’s on its own. Visio is something that can draw everything. You can draw pictures, flow charts. I think we’re a subset. We focus on a subset of what Visio does. We are very good at that. Our software basically gives it all, focuses very quickly and doesn’t worry about the drawings, it just brings in all of your structures.
So, I think someone that uses our mind mapping product wouldn’t be very happy with Visio. More similar to drawing in a PowerPoint presentation, something like that. It’s a similar space though. We often get requests for things like flow charts and so on. It’s all graphical, visual presentation. They have something in Docs which is now called Google Drawings with a separate bar.
Is this just something that is part of the Apps marketplace? I assume that your pricing model is set up so it’s a monthly user fee or something? Anything of that nature?
Michael: Yes, it’s a monthly user fee. It’s a monthly fee per user or teams of users so you can have two people up to however many you want. You can pay by the month or can pay by the year. The way it works in Google Apps is they don’t have a billing infrastructure. So the way we do it, we let users sign up for free without even entering their credit cards. They just go to MindMeister in Apps and get a 30 day free trial.
If you want to upgrade, you can pay and purchase. That’s going to be the way it works until we launch billing. According to Google, it should be in a couple of months when the users will only use their credit card once – when they sign up to Google Apps. Then they will be able to do everything at the Apps Marketplace: just add the app.
Better for us and better for users. They don’t want to enter their credit cards more than they have to.
I think that’s a fantastic idea. What are they getting out of setting up all of this entire infrastructure? Is it just that they’re getting the value of added features to Apps?
Michael: Yes, now that’s the only thing they are getting, but with the billing, they are going to take twenty percent I think it is.
Twenty percent of everything then?
Michael: Yes.
I ask these things because Eric Schmidt keeps talking about how a lot of revenue is going to start to come from this. There really hasn’t been an explanation, but that right there, when you’re dealing with percentage of fees per month that really adds up. What they’re trying to do is get away from just advertising because you really have to diversify when you’re a company that large.
Michael: They still do 97% (something like that) or 95% just with advertising. So, they are searching for other ways for (revenue).
A few weeks ago there was an announcement that went out relating to some changes they’re doing (which included no longer supporting Gears).Is it just Docs? Maybe you guys could talk a little about that.
Michael: It was just Docs with their announcement. We’ve had to find all sorts of explanations and guidelines for our users (about Gears). It works fine for older ones; it’s just not supporting the new ones. Now I think of all of the programs and suppliers will have to do the same thing. A lot of people use it and I think if everyone is persistent, it will send out messages that it (will not be) working anymore.
It seems a little strange to me because you’d think they’d have a solution ready to go.
Michael: Our users I think, it used to work better (same with all browsers, even Firefox). It doesn’t support it anymore and you can’t even install it anymore. There are other features as well.
Till: Obviously the drawing is one of the things that are new. There are a couple of changes to things, and the API as well. The big thing was the drawing actually.
Michael: I think there is one thing talked about that real time is not being liberated enough. With this EtherPad, a document could be worked on (with others) at the same time. You could do things in real time. Like when you typed in the character, it would show up on the other person’s screen like in the same second. The real time collaboration, I think that’s what’s built into Docs now.
Well, that’s great. Could you tell me the name of that company again? I’ve never heard of this before.
Michael: Etherpad. I think it was two or three Google employees a year ago when they started that company.
It sounds like they’re trying to make collaboration better but at the same time, the offline access (via Gears) thing is a little distressing especially when you’re thinking about moving everything to the cloud, it seems there’s going to be some sort of solution through HTML5, right?
Michael: There’s an issue, yeah. I mean real time, I didn’t see anything about that in HTML5. Is it http or something? Or some offline mode supported in HTML5?
So, they’re going to use HTML5 for that? I don’t think they have a choice, if you lose that functionality it just seems like a really bad idea. I think the cloud is a great thing but, what happens when you make these kind of changes? And I just don’t know what kind of solution it’s going to be that all these companies now have to make all of these changes?
Michael: That’s because all of us use these, really out of necessity. This is something that could happen with Flash, I don’t know. Now we have to wait. It’s not a great situation but the market shows it’s a young market and technology is new. Otherwise, this is “growing pains”, I would say.
It’s just to be so disruptive in so many areas that they’re starting to do these types of things, to be honest with you. It’s just I hear a lot about all of the benefits but I think what most people are concerned about where this is going. The idea I think, when they started this was to compete with Microsoft but now it doesn’t seem like that what they want to do. Instead, it’s to be a compliment to that. Although I do think their solution is better.
Michael: I think in our discussions they never admit Microsoft is an issue for them. They’re more like “we’re trying to offer the best experiences and solutions to our users and if that hurts our competition, so be it”. I think it’s more not having to really talk about their competitors and so on. At least I think with Google Apps, that they’re trying to be the “next generation Office Suite”.
I think they’ll have a lot more to offer than Microsoft because of what they’re doing with you guys and all the other developers out there, that they have good ideas to make products better.
Michael: Great people are on it and (there is) a lot of enthusiasm. I haven’t really looked into Microsoft recently and what the rumors are about an online version of this. And because, sooner or later, they’ll have to go this way. All I’ve seen so far is some online office thing that allows you to share some uploaded documents with others but that’s all there is, right?
What about the people who are concerned about making the jump to the cloud?
Till: There are certain levels of security of course in (our) product. One thing is the channel hosting of the solutions in the computer to the data center and everything has access controls, cameras, access cards and all these kinds of things. Everything is redundant, their internet access of course, and the server part and all these kinds of things. So that’s the secure environment.
On the other hand of course, we offer for our premium customers encryption, so that the communication that is between the server and client is encrypted because a lot of people are working are just going there and connecting to their services and are often transmitting their plain passwords and this is not clear to all of them. That’s why we use SSL for the premium customers to not show their passwords somewhere or their passwords don’t get sniffed.
And on the application level, we have certain guard mechanisms where we protect certain actions people can do like password resetting, map access and personal data access. Just two hours ago a customer called me up and said, “I want to use your product, I was thinking about an in-house destination.” I said, “we have a service solution, there is no in-house solution”. They asked, “what about security?”
I think that it’s a good point that they ask this question. The answer is very simple. I say, “Do you have a laptop?” They usually say, ” Yes I have a laptop.” I ask, “Do you have all of your personal data and all that stuff on your laptop?” They say, “Yes.” So I ask, “What happens if someone just grabs it and runs?” They say, “Yes you’re right.” This isn’t going to happen with software as a solution because it’s much harder to hack into a T3 data center or get physical access into a data center than just grabbing your laptop.
Could give me an idea of who are your demographics when you’re talking about customers and who are the people that come to talk to you about these types of things? If you could just give me an idea of what type of people we’re talking about – who are becoming your customers?
Till: When we started off, we were a European company and we had just implemented the English language and we always wanted to address the whole world market. It was always our goal when we started. We had about 30% US customers and, actually it’s the same number I think today and maybe even more.
Actually, now we support nine languages, including Japanese and Russian and with customers from about 140 countries working on MindMiester now, about a half million or so of them. We have five hundred thousand users and we have individuals and freelancers as well as a very large base of real business customers like SAP for example or Symantec. We even have Microsoft as a customer. Microsoft China, actually at an innovation center there.
It’s basically around the world from individuals to businesses. We have a lot of universities and schools. This is in a lot of countries in terms of schools and universities in Shanghai or in Hong Kong or (even) in the US. So, that’s also the interesting thing. If you’re starting a business on the Internet there really is no real border anymore. It’s all about localizing the content and the user interface.
MindMeister is a software as a service. So we’re talking about something that runs in the browser. What tools have you used to create this, what technology are you running this on?
Till: So, basically we are using Ruby on Rails. We are using MySQL right now. We are using Apache for example, Linux as our platform. I think that’s it from the technology web we are using.
So do you recommend that your users have Chrome or Firefox? Or what is it about the browser that’s changing that? That’s going to help you guys? We touched on HTML5 and how you guys are working on it. Could talk a little bit about that?
Till: We made recommendations, we put out these for our users only. If they have to, we’ll continue to support IE6 for a little longer. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, these are all great and open really fast.
How many people are you in total?
Michael: Ten to twelve right now, with a couple of freelancers, not a huge company.
Is the plan then to just focus on this is another thing. Other companies I’ve talked with are working on several different apps. Are you just going to focus on this?
Michael: For the time being, yes. We have discussions all the time. To the extent that they could go further? No concrete plans as of yet. The market is good for that. We’re in a really good position. I have so many ideas for this. I do want to start something else with that small group of people.
I have just one more question. Since the Marketplace has gone live, has it been a good tool in getting new customers? Has it been a marketing vehicle for you guys? Have you seen a good influx of customers who’ve come through Google to connect with you guys?
Michael: Definitely, yes. So, I think it’s worth the effort to integrate to get a lot of exposure. Of course, you get new customers out of it, for us I think it’s a good thing. And, so, Google hasn’t really started to promote the whole thing. I had a call yesterday with them and they told us they would start promoting apps more aggressively.
Even so, they haven’t really started marketing. We already see the results. We’ll see what happens if they really start pushing (Apps) through their distribution channels and through the marketing, etc.
Thanks to Michael and Till for taking the time to talk to me. You can sign up for a free basic membership of MindMeister to check out their mind mapping product.
Chrome 5 – Bigger, Badder and Faster
Posted on 05. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
No doubt that it has been big news about all of the new features included in the new release of Chrome 5, which is a beta yet should be going stable quite soon. Some of the biggest features include integrated Flash, a revamped V8 JavaScript engine and geolocation. Also: an overhauled HTML based bookmarks manager, an extension-capable Incognito Mode and the ability (finally) to organize your extensions the way you want them.
Let’s also not forget the fact that although Chrome has been known for its speed, this element has been amped up even more for the newest realease. Look at how much faster Chrome has gotten since its inception in 2008.
With all of the new elements in Chrome browser, one has to start to wonder what Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple will do with their respective browsers. Quite frankly, I’m not sure that these other companies are going to be able to keep up with all that Google is doing to build the best browser available, especially since it is available for all of the major operating systems. This coupled with the fact that Chrome also has its own open source community, Chromium, certainly lends itself even more credit.
Let’s also not forget slick marketing. The ads that have been released touting Chrome are thoughtful and very original. Who else is trying to sell you their browser technology this way, or even at all?
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/5/10
Posted on 05. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
They are keeping at it marketing the speed with which Google’s Chrome browser can render pages, especially for Chrome 5.
Google plans on launching its own e-book store, according to the Wall Street Journal.
There’s a new look to Google Search that has been introduced, and the company is telling people that there are even smarter changes to come.
The Mobile user interface has also had a design refresh.
For the year, Google has acquired ten companies, spending more than $250 million to do so.
A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source
Posted on 01. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 8 Comments
Dear Adobe Flash:
We’ve had some great times together. Awesome videos, time-wasting games and websites with a ton of bright colors, which I have fully enjoyed. I’ve even spent some time learning how to program you. It’s been a great relationship. But something has changed, dearest Flash. The problem is not really you, it’s more me. And perhaps the rest of the web. You see, I really don’t know how to break this to you, but things change. People change. More importantly, technology changes.
Since you’re already offered up for free and huge amounts of people readily enjoy your technology, I just no longer understand why you are not open source. Sure, you can offer up mega-expensive tools to create for yourself if you want, but if you really desire to be a part of the new rules of internet architecture you’re going to need to do yourself a favor and open yourself up to the world.
This doesn’t really have to do with Apple’s relationship with you, because once you make Steve Jobs angry, it’s over. It more has to do with the odd juxtaposition of you paired with Google’s applications in Chrome browser and Chrome OS. The idea that Google has for these platforms is to be an open source alternative to what Apple and Microsoft offer in terms of architecture, but in their battle with these two, they have decide to include you as a closed-source participant in this rivalry. Even Android is expected to enter into the fray sometime in 2010.
Your biggest competition in this regard, HTML5, is available for anyone to use. Even Microsoft’s Silverlight is working towards having their technology as an open source platform, a baffling revelation to me since you should be trying to improve yourself before its too late and you have faded into something that we think of as once relevant.
Sure, maybe you don’t care what people think about you. But there are really no drawbacks to taking the plunge. Do you really feel that you have the resources to consistently protect yourself from malicious security attacks? We know you’ve had some problems with this in the past, and it’s only a matter of time before another “issue” comes up again. The only way Google feels comfortable going forward with you is if they integrate your technology into theirs so that the vulnerabilities you have can be patched as soon as they arise.
Well, at least with all the news coming out about you, I’m sure you’re at least thinking about it.
UPDATE: Please take the time to sign an online petition to open source Flash. It will take you thirty seconds. Thanks.
Apple’s iWork Site Requires “Newer Browser”
Posted on 22. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
I thought this was pretty entertaining, so hopefully you do too. On his OneMind blog, Dan Shafer posted a screenshot of the iWork website requiring a “Newer Browser” when using the Chrome browser:
I tried this myself and the page loaded up fine, although when I tried to login I could not; this is probably because I don’t use iWork to share documents. That’s what this website appears to do. Also I use Chrome browser for Windows, perhaps this is operating system specific.
Anyways, is Chrome not “new” enough? I mean, it came out in 2008. I’m just saying.
