thechromesource – Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources

Webapps Vs. Native Apps – A Battle of Control?

Posted on 08. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Yesterday’s launch of the new YouTube Mobile site (just go to m.youtube.com) further reiterates something that has been in my thoughts ever since the explosive growth in mobile apps started. This has really led to another way for large technology companies to wall off their users, much like Microsoft has done over the years. Even though it’s great that you can have a mobile application for virtually anything that you want in your pocket, there are some inherent limitations to these native applications.

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid makes a good point in his look at YouTube Mobile that the video quality is fantastic – better, he says than the native application that came with Apple’s iOS for the iPhone and iPad. That may have something to do with the fact that the webapp is built in HTML5 and optimized for the current wireless networks that devices use.

“Video on the HTML5 app looked much better, and was snappier to boot”, remarks Kincaid in his write-up.

All the more proof that giving browsers the ability to use the web as a platform to utilize applications is the future of computing, whether it be via a smartphone or a laptop. The idea of Chrome OS or other web operating system simply doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

One of the reasons that web applications have a clear benefit over native ones is interoperability. On the web, diverse applications are able to access and communicate data between one another in order to provide a seamless ecosystem. Think about Twitter, where users allow web applications such as HootSuite access to their accounts to better understand the underlying data. Or, as Kincaid remarks, the simplistic convenience of auto-fill in the YouTube Mobile app.

But what’s wrong with the way things are done now? We’ve seen both Apple and Google take take direct control of users’ devices. Even Amazon has removed books from its Kindle e-reader, citing copyright problems with a publisher. With the new browser technologies like HTML5, a third party cannot take away something that is on the web; and no developer or group of developers is dependent on an outside partner for its applications.

Sure, there are motives behind the decisions above in the face of security and potential lawsuits. Possible hurdles abound with what could happen in a world where applications are easily installed with one click. But Microsoft led a tech space for years that allowed people to put whatever they want on their computers, and despite their flagging performance, they’ve been around for over thirty years.

Viacom Loses to YouTube: Good for User Content

Posted on 23. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Viacom sued YouTube for $1 billion dollars back in 2007 over copyrighted content that was hosted on the video sharing site. Today, it was announced that Viacom has lost their suit against YouTube. A primary reason for this was that the content on YouTube has been declared as protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

This is a big deal, since it allows for people on the web to be able to share things that in the past could have proved to violate possible copyright laws. The problem up until now is that bloggers, user-generated content sites and social media mavens were in a gray area in regards to the legality of sharing certain things with other people on the internet. With this precedent today, we now have something to rely on that cements the web as a place to share thoughts and ideas about anything, as long as it is not outright stealing.

This also helps out in terms of cloud computing, as not only users were at risk previously, but also the datacenters that hold information. These massive structures full of servers are generally operated by large companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple – and I would assume that in the future possible legal disputes about user information stored in the cloud (whatever it may be) would have certain protections as well.

Content sharing and social media, along with cloud computing are starting to come out of the “Wild West” era, so to speak and it is further apparent that there is legitimacy for those who are involved in this space.

Google VP: Chrome OS Release in Q4

Posted on 01. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Speaking today at the Computex Cloud Computing forum, Google VP of product management Sundar Pichai said that Chrome OS will be on the market in the fourth quarter of 2010. The Cloud Computing Forum is featuring executives from Google, ARM and Quanta Computers.

Computex has been mostly focused on Microsoft products that are on display.

When asked about the Chrome vs. Android debate, Mr. Pichai said that providing open source platforms will allow the market to make the best determination about what operating system will work best in the mass market. It’s pretty clear that Android has really taken off, it will be interesting to see how Chrome OS will develop.

thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/21/10

Posted on 21. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

The Google-AdMob deal has been approved by the FTC, citing competition with Apple’s iAd platform in the mobile market.

Lilliputing has a review of the Compaq Airlife 100, a netbook that ships with the Android operating system.

Left out of a lot of I/O coverage was Google’s release of its Prediction API, which analyzes historical data to predict future outcomes.

Will Google and Rupert Murdoch eventually work together on a pay model for publishers on the internet?

Is Google’s decision to open source On2’s VP8 video codec with the WebM initiative going to create a big mess?

Gaming Could be a Possible Growth Area for Google

Posted on 17. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Last week, TechCrunch deftly pointed out that Google is on the hunt for someone to fill the role of Product Management Leader, Games. Currently, Google really does have too much going in the gaming market. It did, however, recently purchase LabPixies which creates widget-like games for the iGoogle portal as well as making games for Apple products, Android systems and social networking sites.

So the gaming arena could in fact be another engine of growth for Google, one that diversifies the company from advertising and its stated goal of profiting from enterprise cloud applications. If they move aggressively in this space, they may find themselves at an advantage when you consider that the console industry is now experiencing an overall decline in sales. More often than ever, multipurpose devices such as the iPad and smartphones allow people more flexibility to play video games without having to pay a lot of money for gaming titles. This is also true when you consider how successful some companies have become offering games on social networks.

Even some internal Google employees have ported a first person game like Quake II to the browser as one of their projects. Games are now capable of being ported over to HTML5 and run in the current generation of browsers, such as the Asteroids port that is available at the Chrome Experiments site.

Even OnLive, which plans on streaming games to your PC or television, will be launching this summer, allowing gamers to play their favorite titles from top publishers in an entirely new way. Although the bandwidth requirements may be quite high, OnLive is dubbing their service as “the future of gaming” which is most likely true.

Bottom line? There is a lot of room for Google to grow in gaming since their footprint right now is nascent. I would not be surprised if they would go with the now-classic free model that is supported by advertising, expertise that a mobile ad company like AdMob can lend to Google’s wealth of knowledge from utilizing AdWords on web sites and Apps like Gmail. That is, if the Federal Trade Comission ever approves the Google-AdMob deal.

Is Google’s Battle Against Apple Turning Towards Hardware?

Posted on 25. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

New Chrome Ads Highlight Extensions, Translate

Posted on 21. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

These videos continue to be enjoyable, simply because they are all so different and while Chrome is the singular product promoted, there really is no underlying theme that ties them together other than the similar motif. I think this is a smart move, as consumers are pretty sophisticated about products theses days.

It’s no wonder that people have to be when you think about how many marketing messages a person is exposed to day in and day  out. At the same time, the presentation here is simplistic, not trying to alienate those who may not be into the technical side of computers:

Here is a previous ad that the same agency, BBH, did a while back:

Check out this clip on how they made the ad above. It’s pretty cool how they are using their creativity to make these effects instead of just using a PC. It really stretches your abilities while at the same time enables one to make something truly unique:

Understanding Agnilux, Google’s Latest Purchase

Posted on 21. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Who, or what, is Agnilux?

This is a serious question seeing as how Google has decided to purchase the company. Everyone knows that Google doesn’t just buy companies for sheer fun. There is very little known about Agnilux, but according to some sources they employ people previously in the server business, although they also have employees who were in TV. That’s interesting since Google has traditionally built their own servers using stock parts. As any network engineer would know, this is a bit surprising as most Fortune 500 companies buy their servers from companies like HP or Dell.

But not Google. They have been known for setting up their own hardware architecture, and many times CEO Eric Schmidt has talked about the fact that Google uses servers that are based on common PC hardware. Imagine the fact that they are able to do this, since they own and operate one of the largest network-capable services in the world. In essence they own the most proprietary network configuration out there today, but I’m sure they would prefer if you didn’t know that.

Mark Hayter, the chief operating officer at Agnilux, came from P.A. Semi (Palo Alto Semiconductor Company), which is a company that was purchased by Apple in 2008. This most likely indicates that P.A. Semi had some technology that was used in the iPad.

Ah yes, the iPad. Now can you see where I am going with this. Interestingly, Google has proclaimed that they only want to be the “pipes” for content, but at the same time, their actions here are speaking louder than words. Maybe it is a strategic move to thwart a purchase from Apple. But an acquisition like this has to make one think that Google knows in order to stay competitive that they will have to engage those who pursue innovative hardware solutions, much like they have been doing for quite some time.

Video: Spotlight on WebKit

Posted on 15. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Check out this clip about WebKit, which has recently been in the news:

Why Paid News Online Will Not Work

Posted on 20. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch is not a happy man when he looks at the barren landscape of print media. In fact, he is of the idea that people who want to read news online as opposed to the newspaper or a magazine should have to pay for it. This makes him feel that the less than free model that Google promotes is a freeloading conduit to all that is wrong with the non-paying Internet. So much so, that he has on several occasions threatened to sue them.

This is problematic for several reasons. The first is that those of us who have been using the internet since the nineties have grown accustomed to free content online. Because of this I think that many of us out there are hard pressed to believe that a paid content model is really going to work. But there is also another reason: eyeballs.

Eyeballs are what the advertising business is all about. And just because the content on the internet is free doesn’t mean that those eyeballs are not looking. The reality is that the money made in any type of media is eyeballs – and how many of them are looking at ads.

Let’s face it: a subscription to the Wall Street Journal print edition with home delivery six days a week is only ten dollars a month. That’s roughly 41 cents per issue. How can Murdoch’s News Corporation, which is the Journal’s corporate parent, make money from printing words onto pages of paper and then delivering it to my house six days a week? From eyeballs. This is a graph shown recently by Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian:

Therefore, eyeballs are subsidizing the cost of doing business in print media. It also subsidizes magazines and television. Although newspaper circulation has gone down recently, which is reflected in this graph and shows the numbers have been going down steadily over the years, revenue from ads in more popular mediums has continued to increase.

It’s the revenue numbers that send Murdoch’s blood pressure out of control because those eyeballs still exist, but they are increasingly realizing that they can get general news from the internet. Plus a lot of the time it is more convenient than print because people can quickly read what they want instead of leafing through a bunch of pages.

Take a look at another graph that was shown by Varian:

The first thing that you’ll probably notice is the sea change in spending on cable advertising. But look at the Internet advertising. While nonexistent in 1995, it has indeed grown. Yet for all the posturing about paid content on the internet, the reality based on these figures is that the true age of advertising on the internet perhaps has not yet arrived when you compare it with the other mediums and the ad spending done on those.

So let’s get back to eyeballs. In terms of the digital age, we are now dealing with a huge segmentation of the market for goods and services. Remember, at one time cable was a paid service and didn’t have many ads, if any at all. Now that the cable companies and advertisers realize this is a highly targeted segment compared to broadcast networks, the dollars spent there have skyrocketed.

I know that my site targets those who are developers and early technology adopters. That will not always be the case as Google’s technologies mature into the business market, but that’s the way it is as of right now.

Sites like ReadWriteWeb captivate folks that are into the new frontiers that the web can offer. Both sites need to pay the bills, and so we know what types of people will look at the site and advertise products that readers may be interested in. The catch? You have to look at these ads and read about our sponsors, but you get free information in exchange. I know that ReadWriteWeb also offers highly specialized content for a fee as well, and I will get to that in just a bit.

How do you segment a newspaper like USA Today? You’re basically getting the eyeballs of a huge sample of people, many who will not understand some of the products or services that are being advertised to them. At the same time, the Wall Street Journal is trying to change its reader demographic, becoming more of a general newspaper than a business one. It makes sense that they are trying to change since anyone can get stock information online these days that is more accurate, but how does their ad sales department deal with that?

It will be an interesting experiment for paid content on the internet. For very specialized and thoroughly researched information that cannot be found anywhere else, people will pay fees. But that’s with the understanding that advertisers simply cannot be a part of the equation, or that said information is of a great deal of value, more so than general news. That’s because news simply has already reached a point of no return in terms of direct monetization, and there’s probably no going back.

“Goojje” Google Clone Set to Receive Venture Capital

Posted on 13. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

The Shenzhen Daily is reporting about a Chinese copycat search site that has a logo which looks way too much like Google and is set to get venture capital funding. Goojje is expecting an investment in the range of 10 million yuan, which equates to about $1.4 million dollars. Huang Jiongxuan, the founder of the company, has announced this information, but refuses to tell the Daily where the money is actually coming from.

It is only by fortunate circumstance that this writer actually lived in Shenzhen for a period of time, and the fact that Goojje is located in the Nanshan district or even Shenzhen at all (its mostly a manufacturing hub) suggests that money is most likely coming from Hong Kong. Take a look at this map to see how close this area is to HK, which is one of the largest financial centers in Asia.

Huang Jiongxuan, the founder, goes on to talk to the Shenzhen daily about moving Goojje’s offices into Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park, which according to its website houses many large Chinese technology companies as well as universities.

“We found an office there and are now preparing for the relocation. The company will mainly focus on developing its search engine, particularly on searching for special content,” said Huang when talking about moving to the park.

In February of this year, Google sent Goojje a cease and desist letter for using a logo that is pretty similar to their own. According to the UK news outlet The Guardian, Goojje appeared as a result of Google announcing that they will be leaving the Chinese market because of concerns about censorship laws that exist in China.

I’m not sure if the goal of Goojje is to just appear as if they were Google in anticipation of the search engine giant leaving China, but they do have some sort of technology that indexes websites. I did a quick search of this site by entering “thechromesource” in the search bar and it found the site, the Twitter profile and a slew of pages published by others that link to it as the first results.

It was reported yesterday that Google is really close to shuttering Google.cn. Neither the company nor China is expected to budge on the issue of censorship.

“If [Google] takes steps that violate Chinese laws, that would be unfriendly, that would be irresponsible, and they would have to bear the consequences”, said Li Yizhong, who is China’s minister for industry and information technology.

It’s been reported that Google probably makes several hundred million dollars with their business in China. A lot of internal deliberations have gone on in Mountain View about what to do. The reality seems to be, however, that if Google gives up on China there’s probably no going back to a country that has more internet users than anywhere else in the world. Plus, Google plays second fiddle in China to Baidu, which has the majority market share of searches in China.

Now it appears that there are alternatives to Google.cn, and people are willing to spend money developing that vacancy that Google will leave as it reported has around a seventeen percent market share.

Google Announces Apps Marketplace Store for Business

Posted on 09. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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.

Video: $200 Chrome OS Tablet by Freescale

Posted on 08. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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.

Video: Managing Cookies in Chrome Browser

Posted on 07. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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.

How to Use Geolocation in Chrome Browser

Posted on 04. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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?

The Difference Between Chrome OS and Chrome OS Flow

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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.

Google Announces Chrome 4.1 With Translation, Enhanced Privacy

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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 the browser.

As previously mentioned here, future versions of Chrome will not require you to 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.

Tech Thoughts: Why Google Will Avoid the Desktop OS

Posted on 01. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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.

Chrome Extensions Passes 3,000 Threshold

Posted on 27. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

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.