Some new stuff from Canary build this morning above on left (compared to stable on right). Notice the Apps shortcut icon which can be removed by unchecking the “Show Apps shortcut” icon (below) in the dropdown menu.
This is interesting especially as Google appears to be ready to push an Apps button to its iconic search page. Will Chrome apps finally get their day in the sun? Read more
Google launched a new “Go Google” campaign today to flaunt its array of cloud-based services, and now the Google Docs team is doing the same by rounding up a host of improvements it made to Google Docs in April with the announcement of 450 new fonts and 60 new templates.
“Today, we added over 450 new fonts to Google documents to make it easier for you to add a little something extra to whatever you create,” explained Software Engineer Isabella Ip on the Official Google Docs Blog.
To select the new fonts, click on the font menu, and then select “Add fonts” at the bottom. This will open a menu to all the Google Web Fonts available. Users can narrow their search for the perfect font by alphabetical order, date added, and “trending.” Once a font is selected, users are free to implement them in Google Docs, especially in one of the service’s 60 new templates that were unveiled today.
Curious to see how Windows Phone feels, but don’t have a device around to do so? Us neither. But Microsoft has just released a new HTML 5 website that allows iPhone and Android users to get a taste of the Windows Phone 7 (Mango 7.5) operating system. The trial requires no downloads or registration, and you can try it out by just going to the webpage http://aka.ms/wpdemo on your Android device.
While it doesn’t use any of the data on your phone like your contacts, the demo does give you a pretty comprehensive look at all of Windows Phone’s features. Microsoft uses a blue dot to guide you around the operating system, and obviously some features like voice recognition just don’t work in the browser. Drat, that’s something we really wanted to try.
Will this draw users over to the Windows Phone platform? Probably not, but it’s always cool to see what the competition is up to.
What if Microsoft didn’t decide to dump a boatload of cash on top of Nokia to take their OS and Nokia went Android? It appears that there might have been a skunkworks project in place to get the Android OS on Nokia’s devices if the images from Engadget and Weibo are any indication.
Either that, or some cheeky Nokia employee decided to put Android on their N9. Whichever reality you believe, it wold have been nice to have an N9 Android device, even if it looks like an oversized iPod nano.
A closeup below: Read more
More trouble in Microsoft land as Bloomberg reports that Microsoft device manufacturers are complaining about the software giant’s meddling in their affairs:
Microsoft Corp. is putting “troublesome” restrictions on makers of processors used to run the coming Windows tablet-computer operating system, Acer Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer J.T. Wang said.
“They’re really controlling the whole thing, the whole process,” Wang said at the Computex trade show in Taipei without identifying the restrictions. Chip suppliers and PC makers “all feel it’s very troublesome,” he said.
Can you even imagine a PC manufacturer standing up to Microsoft publicly in a pre-iPad world? While Acer is moving to Google for many of their tablet products, and even ChromeOS for one of their notebooks, Acer is still one of the three biggest Windows PC manufacturers on the planet and of course is expected to make Windows 8 slates… Read more
