thechromesource – Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Forum

thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/13/10

Posted on 13. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

The Chromium Blog has a sneak peak at how their Native Client software development kit will allow for development of Chrome applications.

ARMDevices speculates that the Native Client SDK will allow complex web applications to run on ARM processors.

ReadWriteWeb has an article out that is about Mozilla’s plug-in checker, which now works with all browsers.

It’s clear that Google Apps plans to offer more than just the document and spreadsheet package common with productivity suites.

Those behind the Linux-based Ubuntu OS are contemplating switching from Firefox as the default browser over to Chromium.

Sub-$100 Netbook Maker Switches from Linux to Android

Posted on 11. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments

In a press release that went out a few hours ago a company called Cherrypal has announced that it will be offering a 7″ product for only one hundred dollars. What is even more interesting is that the netbook, called the Cherrypal Asia, will be using Android 1.6 which is a switch from a version of Linux or Windows CE that the past product line used. Here is a picture of the model:

All jokes about the massive bezel aside (you can get a 10″ for $148) this shows how Android is quickly becoming the operating system of choice in the mobile market. And although you cannot access the Android Market without a smartphone for now, there have been ways to get around that tiny little annoyance.

Featuring an ARM A9 processor, 256 MB of RAM and 2GB of storage, the Cherrypal Asia isn’t exactly a screamer. But with 3 USB ports and a regular keyboard, it would be a great product for kids or developing countries. We’ll see how well this product can do.

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.

Where to Download Chrome OS

Posted on 07. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

thechromesource Daily: Links for 4/29/10

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

The Graphic Mac has an article that runs down the various browsers available for Mac, saying they all suck expect for Chrome.

Synaptics has issued a press release for its Guesture Suite multi-touch features that will be coming for Linux and Chrome OS.

One of our partnership blogs, ChromeOS-Blog.com, has posted up a new “spring release” of Chrome OS for download.

The Google Apps Engine Blog has an interview with Jay Kyburz, who developed the web-based strategy game Neptune’s Pride.

Google has purchased Labpixies, which is an app publisher that primarily develops personalizations for iGoogle.

The Google Code Blog has case study guest post talking about what HTML5 can do for the development of mobile applications.

Eric Schmidt: Chrome OS is About Breaking Down Walls

Posted on 17. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments

We’ve heard a lot lately about Apple and its “walled garden” approach to its computer platforms. When you think about this approach, however, this is the same thing that Microsoft has been doing for years. While they do not have hardware specifications set in stone like Apple, the ability to run applications is based on some set rules in a closed source platform. While Linux and its many open source variations have been around for years attempting to change this ideal, they have not been successful in terms of wide spread adoption.

Enter Google. During a talk at  Google Atmosphere , the idea of the “walled garden” approach comes into play because before search became so ubiquitous, we didn’t worry so much about whether something was closed- or open-sourced. Now that we use the internet for a wider variety of things that are integral to our lives, taking a different approach to this is clearly Google’s strategy:

By the way, Google Atmosphere was a cloud computing event held earlier this week.

So with that in mind, there is still this fact that Google wants to open up all these data sources to make infrastructure easier for us, they are going to need to effectively control hardware in order to get the right amount of performance. Schmidt details the fact that they don’t want to build Chrome OS or Android machines themselves, they simply want to have the correct software platform the can enable better collaboration.

Instead of it just being Google creating these collaboration tools, they will open up the market to create them as well. Two examples of that right now are the Android Market and Google Apps Store for enterprise. Interestingly, with thin clients that are connected to the cloud it’s possible that the distinction between these two could begin to blur since you could theoretically have different profiles for separate purposes.

If you’ve got a spare forty minutes, check out the clip above. Schmidt talks about trying to create a new platform, about creating a new industry model. It’s been pretty exciting to monitor all of this because we just don’t know what’s going to happen quite yet. Information keeps coming out bit by bit and the overall potential of where we are going is simply immense.

The Mobile Keyboard Solution – Folding it Out, In

Posted on 01. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

One of the biggest challenges faced as devices get smaller and smaller is that the traditional keyboard still requires a certain footprint in order to be useable. This fact is even more evident when you look at tablets and phones which don’t have a keyboard at all – they require you to use an on-screen touch interface in order to write. For many, this trend could be problematic since there is an enjoyable degree of tactile feedback that comes with using a traditional keyboard.

That’s why when I came across this post from Wired I knew I had to write about it. Sure it’s only a mock-up, but this is the best way that I have seen so far on solving the keyboard problem, which is to fold it:

Designer Yang Yongchang has put up some images and a small write-up on how his device, the iWeb 2.0, would work. I really like the idea, and although I’m sure this has been tried in design labs before if it could be pulled off by being usable there would be appeal for this. Two things come to mind, however. A folding keyboard would have many parts making it expensive and possibly fragile. Another problem could be that although the pictures look good, it needs to be comfortably useable to a vast amount of people in order for something like this to sell.

With the mobile device market creating new genres of gadgets such as the tablet and especially the smartbook which will blend together elements of a netbook with a smartphone – the keyboard problem becomes magnified. Whether it runs Android, Chrome OS, Linux or some variety of Windows a smartbook is going to need to have a real keyboard.

I know that in the mobile phone market the trend is to shy away from manufacturing smartphones with full-on keyboard. The Nexus One has done so, along with other Android devices. The Motorola Droid, however, does come with a keyboard. I suppose it is all in terms of a person’s taste, but for those who like to write having a keyboard is really helpful. Especially if you’re clumsy with a touchscreen.

New Version of Jolicloud Uses Chrome for Webapps

Posted on 05. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

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.

Charlie Miller: Most Secure Browser is Chrome, IE8

Posted on 04. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments

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.

Dell Chrome OS Build Has Been Updated

Posted on 18. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

The Linux team at Dell has been periodically releasing builds that are focused on testing what Chrome OS can do for their line of Mini netbooks. A few days ago, they put out a build based on the latest Chromium Project version from February 11. Also in this is support for the latest Broadcom drivers, however there is a user that has reported that they are having issues with wi-fi with their Mini 9 netbook.

Regardless, this has been tested by Dell for the Mini 9, Mini 10, 10v and Latitude 2100. It’s pretty cool to see them doing this, and prior to releasing these builds I had not idea that they had dedicated support for the Linux platform. In the public eye, Dell is showing us that they are preparing for a time when they will sell commercial products that are loaded with Chrome, and there are several benefits for them to do this.

This is especially true in terms of being competitive on cost for netbooks and eventually tablets or other gadgets as well. With every computer manufacturer moving into smaller devices, expect to see a mobile computing market have an array of devices that people can choose from.

You can get more information here:

• README: http://linux.dell.com/files/cto/README-Feb11.txt (please read this FIRST)

• Image: http://linux.dell.com/files/cto/ChromiumOS_Mini10v_Feb11.img.gz

DISCLAIMER: This image is totally UNSUPPORTED with no WARRANTY – USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Video: Comparing Boot Times Between Different OSs

Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments

So you want to see how fast an operating system can load? Here is a video that compares Windows 7, Ubuntu Netbook Remix and one of the early public releases of Chromium. All set to sophisticated music. Makes you want to sail a yacht or something classy like that. Anyways, check it out, you’ll be surprised to see how Netbook Remix performs compared to Windows 7:

It’s not a shock that Windows 7 comes in dead last, but I would have expected Ubuntu to boot up much faster than than that. Let’s hope that newer versions of this Linux netbook OS are able to compete with other operating systems that plan on booting in under ten seconds.

Also, I’d like to point out this isn’t any sort of measurable test – for one thing, Chrome OS is supposed to boot much faster than this when running hardware specifications that are built for it. Although those specs are expected to be closely related to what Netbook Remix usually runs, they are surely not the same required for Windows 7, even the Starter Edition. Plus, this guy seems pretty enamored with Chrome by the way he spends so much time browsing with it during the video. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Ubuntu Now Calls Google Docs the Standard

Posted on 07. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments

Ever used OpenOffice? I remember submitting a document once using the open format, only to find that the person I sent it to could not open it in Microsoft Word. That pretty much killed the deal for me, but a surprising development for users of Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly known as Ubuntu Netbook Remix) is that no longer is OpenOffice their defacto productivity suite, as the powers-that be for the Linux OS built with netbooks in mind is replacing it with Google Docs.

There’s no question about Google Docs’ importance in the software scene. They have captured a pretty big audience, even getting play as not only Google’s own corporate standard for a Microsoft Office replacement, but they have also gotten Genetech on board and almost all of the 16,000 people who work there use the Premium Edition of Google Docs for all of their work. This is interesting to note since for the Premium Edition Google charges a $50 licensing fee for each user.

Microsoft must be feeling a little weak in the knees over this. There was once a time where if you used one Microsoft solution, the common thinking was that you would use many other offerings that they had. Now that Google plans on releasing their own operating system, further promoted by Google Chrome’s emergence in the browser market, anything that they can offer in terms of applications has the potential to be successful. Just as long as they offer a solution that is just as good as their competitors, mind you.

You can check out Google Docs right here.