Tag Archives: Chrome
Google I/O 2011 – Day 2
The second day of Google’s I/O developer conference seemed to lack in content compared to the first day. It seems as though the first day was geared more towards the direct consumer where the second day was more Developer-centric. However, there were still some items of note that I’d like to mention in this summary.
Google Chrome
Opening up the Keynote was a demonstration of Google Chrome and its upcoming improvements. There is a definite performance boost with more HTML5 and WebGL support. This was demonstrated by running the Fish IE Test on a non-WebGL version of Chrome vs. a WebGL-laden Chrome. This test was created to show off the speed of IE9, and was used yesterday to show off the speed of WebGL with Google Chrome. We see an immediate performance improvement when 1000 fish are rendered at 25 fps. WebGL also opens up the possibility for 3D rendering; we may start to see more graphically-intensive games in Chrome.
Chrome OS
We can’t talk about Google Chrome without also talking about Chrome OS. There are major improvements to the browser’s OS brother and it is starting to look and function more like a real Operating System according to what we are used to. There is now a File Manager so you can browse the local file system, as well as USB flash drives and external hard drives. However, there was no mention on whether or not you could browse network drives.
Native Music and Video playing was added and media will play in a separate window as you continue to browse. This is separate from Google’s Music cloud player that was demonstrated the previous day, and it wasn’t clear if the native music player supported the Google Music Beta or not.
Chrome OS also supports famous web streaming apps out of the box: Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc.
Chromebooks
Google Chromebooks were announced to be released June 15th. Currently, there are two manufacturers that have models being released on that day. Both Samsung and Acer will be offering Wifi only and Wifi + 3G models, with Verizon stepping in as the 3G provider. Both manufacturers are powering their Chromebooks with Intel’s Atom Pine Trail platform with a dual-core N570 processor. They both come with a 16GB SSD mSata hard drive and they both weigh 3.26 Lbs. They both come with an HD webcam: Samsung’s is 1MP, Acer’s is 1.3MP. Samsung is touting a 12.1″ WXGA display with a resolution of 1280×800 and Acer’s has an 11.6″ WXGA screen with 1366×768 resolution. Both models will boot in about 8 seconds and have a battery life of about 6 to 8 hours.
With what they are offering, and with the improvements to the Chrome OS, these Chromebooks appear to be powerhouses for cloud computing. It may be a while before we see this hardware being bogged down.
Chromebooks for Business and Education
Google is offering a subscription model for Businesses and Schools. With a 36-month commitment, businesses can purchase Chromebooks at $28 per month per user, whereas schools can purchase them for only $20 per month per user. This subscription includes full warranty support and free hardware upgrades. Since this if offered by Google and not the Manufacturers, I believe that this subscription model will apply to all future Chromebooks that are released.
Angry Birds
We can’t forget the most important announcement of them all. Angry Birds was released for Chrome and is now available in the Chrome Web Store. It includes a special Chrome level, so if you use Chrome, and you are an angry bird, then you MUST check it out.
Conclusion
The Google I/O conference definitely left me feeling overwhelmed. There is so much to take in, and I probably missed a chrome-load of announcements; I’ll try to make up for that with upcoming posts.
Here are a few other items that were talked about during day 2. Let me know if you’d like to know more about any of them:
- New Google Tasks API
- In-App Payments for Chrome Web Store
- Java Port of ROS
- Google Chrome Box
Google Chrome (BETA) Review, Part 1
I have been feverishly playing with Google Chrome for about six weeks now. One of those weeks I dedicated exclusively to Chrome, where I didn’t use any other browser. In that one week, I not only found out more about Chrome, but now, Chrome and I are BFFs! The only time I use the other browsers is to test web pages Iam developing. Well, and to play on Facebook, since Facebook and Chrome don’t play nice yet (more on that later). So here is a simple, watered down, not-so-short, preview of Chrome and Chromium (it’s open source counterpart). Some of this content may be a bit biased because I’ve been pro-Google since GMail was introduced, and I’m voting for Google 2008.
Okay, on with the review. After each feature review, I will also rate that feature on a scale of 1 to 10…
I have the enthusiast’s remorse
I am an absolute technophile. I love seeing all the new gadgets that come out and what they can do for me. I love to think about how I can then modify those gadgets to do even more for me without me having to pay anything more. I’m a cheapskate, and an enthusiast.
The term “enthusiast” is not one I’ve used all that often to describe myself. If there were a scale to describe how much of an enthusiast a person could be, I’d imagine I’d be rather low on the scale. But the fact is, I’m still ON the scale. There is a very sad down side to being an enthusiast (well, there are probably a few); those same devices that you find you can’t live without aren’t usually everywhere you might need them.
Case in point (and most relatable example I can think of): you have standard, run of the mill broadband internet. It doesn’t need to be the fastest thing on the planet for this example to work, but it’s better than a 256k ISDN. You use it at home to browse, do email, read blogs, whatever. You then go over to your parents/friends house, and while there you try to show them something you found online (like our awesome website here) . . . only they are on dial-up. And slow dial-up at that.
That’s the downside I’m talking about here. To point back to Schmidty’s announcement of Chrome; it’s so fast and nice that it’s all I use . . . except at work where I have to use IE to work with Oracle and I nearly scream every time it takes 5 minutes to load a page simply because the browser is so bloated.
Well, there’s another device that’s in this category; the DVR. Call it a TiVo, an HTPC, a DVR, or whatever else you want, these little babies will change your life. Anyone who owns and regularly uses them will testify to you just how much they will change your life in regards to TV. I’m not trying to make them out to be like a religious experience or anything, but they really are that pivotal.
Your spouse wants to talk to you during the game? Just pause the show. Your show is only on at 1:00 AM? Set it to record! There’s an interesting documentary on squid that you know you’d be interested in but just don’t feel like watching it right now? Record it for later! Kids are killing each other? Dinner is on the table NOW? Don’t like commercials? Guests come over unannounced? You get the idea. Our favorite use is to record a whole bunch of shows the kids like and have them at our fingertips whenever we want to reward them.
Screenshot of Vista Media Center from MSDN blog
The down side is that not everything is hooked into a DVR. We don’t have one in our bedroom, so when I miss something important that was said I can’t jump back to hear it again. If there’s something interesting I want my wife to see, I can’t pause it and wait for her to get in the room. I find myself listening to the radio on my way to work in the morning and habitually reaching for a remote that doesn’t exist to jump back 15 seconds or so to re listen to something that was said! That’s how messed up I’ve become.
If your computer can barely run Windows XP SP2, I don’t want to touch it (sadly, that’s my computer at work). If you have a whole 5 channels on your TV, please don’t ask me if I want to watch anything (everything I’d want to watch is already recorded at home anyway). I know this makes me look like a snob, and to a degree I am one. But the secret fact of the matter is it’s just painful for myself and other enthusiasts at times.
Sure, we’re in a 1st world nation, with access to some of the best technology in the world (not counting cell phones where we seem to be permanently stuck in 2002), but I’m not interested in what technology could do for me five years ago; I’m interested in what it can do for me tomorrow.
Welcome Home Google Chrome
The new Chrome Logo
Our good friends at Google have been working on a browser elegantly named Chrome. This open-sourced browser boasts features that are fairly new to the browser scene. Google’s blog post introducing Chrome emphasizes the importance to starting over new with a web browser because the web has evolved from simple text html pages to rich, interactive applications. In order to better illustrate how the idea came about, and what has gone into creating this application, Google’s Scott McCloud has created a comic book available for reading here.
One of the first features they illustrate is that Chrome separates each browsing tab into its own process. Each process has its own memory and its own copy of the global data structures, thereby making it easier to maintain browsing integrity within each separate tabs, making memory management smoother and quicker, and allowing web applications to run independently from others so one bad javascript won’t crash other tabs. A tab task manager is also available so you can see which sites are using more memory than others. These are only a few benefits to having multiple processes within the browser.
Another feature that they are emphasizing is the user of a Javascript Virtual Machine for faster execution. They call this V8 and they had an entire team in Denmark dedicated to working on it.
The address bar in Chrome, dubbed the Omnibox [Editor's note: sounds ominous], works like a normal address bar, but with the added functionality of the search box on the Google Toolbar, integrating Google Search, browsing history and even page suggestions based on the Ranking system. Also, when you complete a search on sites like Wikipedia, NewEgg, and Amazon, the search boxes from those pages are captured on your local system, so future searches on those sites will take less time, again, much like the Google Toolbar.
A new innovative feature that I am excited about is the New Tab Page. It features thumbnails of your nine most visited pages, and search boxes for the sites on which you use the search feature the most (i.e. Wikipedia, Imdb, YouTube, etc.). And, if Google is true to their pattern, this will be 100% customizable.
There are many new and upcoming features on Google Chrome, and I am looking forward to seeing what it will become. Most everything I do on the internet is tied to my Google account so it only makes sense to have a Google-made browser as well. However, even if you aren’t a Googler, I am sure there will be many reasons for you to install Chrome whether you start at the Beta, or whether you pick it up at a later release, because this browser was built from scratch with the current web in mind.
I will definitely download Chrome and give it the rundown. I invite you to do the same. Come back and leave your comments about what you think about it. The beta version will be available for download tomorrow here: http://gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en.
UPDATE: Google Chrome will not be available for download until 18:00 GMT
UPDATE 2: Google will host a press conference at 18:00 UTC (11:00 am PDT). So does this mean it will not be released at that time? We’ll wait and see I guess.
UPDATE 3: Google Chrome is now available for download at the link above!
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