Google Chrome

Samsung’s Chromebooks are receiving a slight price drop today, as noted by TechCrunch. The Wi-Fi and 3G versions of the Chromebook originally both sold for $429 and $499 — respectively. Samsung’s new prices of the Chromebooks are now listed on Amazon as $399 for the Wi-Fi model and $449 for the 3G model. The price drop is a two week back-to-school promotional. You also might like to know that offline mode is coming soon. Get yours hands on it while you can!

Google’s put in motion an Apple-like plan calling for Chromebooks in education, traditionally a strong market for Apple’s Macintosh computers. The company announced on its official Enterprise blog back-to-school deals with three schools that will begin using Chromebooks when students return over the coming weeks. First up, the Fessenden School in West Newton, MA, an independent K-9 institution which will add two carts of Chromebooks that will also be available for use in the library.

Grace Lutheran School, a small private school in Oshkosh, central Wisconsin, will be sharing Chromebooks throughout the day in classrooms among 5th through 8th grade students. And finally, Merton Community School District, also in Wisconsin, will give 110 sixth graders Chromebooks to keep and use until they graduate from eighth grade. At $20 per user per month, users get a Chromebook, a web-based management console for IT and 24/7 support from Google. The company says it’s seeing “a lot of interest from K-12 institutions” from their Chromebook for Education initiative.

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Several new enhancements have surfaced in the latest developer version of Google’s Chrome browser. As previously announced, the software now respects Apple’s multitouch gesturing philosophy in OS X Lion. This means you can flick your finger left or right on your Magic Mouse (or two fingers on a trackpad) to advance and go back in your history. Unfortunately, the browser doesn’t yet support double-tap or pinch to smoothly zoom in and out of web pages iPhone-style, like Safari on Lion. Another handy treat: You can now rest assured that accidentally hitting the Command + Q combo won’t quit Chrome because a subtle overlay appears telling you to hold down the combo briefly in order to quit.

In addition, Chrome now supports Lion’s Full-Screen feature through the standard full-screen button found in the upper right corner of the window. The latest nightly build across all platforms also sports the brand new Omnibar history syncing feature which comes on top of the previously available syncing capabilities for Chrome extensions, passwords, bookmarks, web apps, autofill items, browser settings and themes. A multi-profile feature has also seen some work in the visual department, even though it is not yet available in nightly Chrome builds for OS X. If you wish to try out those experimental features, we recommend installing the Google Chrome Canary build. This particular version, unlike other Chrome channels, runs without a hiccup alongside your existing stable Chrome installation.

Cross-posted on 9to5Mac.com

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Google engineer Ido Green just made comment on This week in Google that offline mode for Gmail and Calendar are on their way by the end of the summer. There was talk of these features at this year’s Google I/O, but it’s nice to know offline mode is still on track. Besides Gmail and Calendar, Green also said there are a few more offline features coming.

When we think of Google and browsers we usually think of the latest Chrome build, the fastest real world use desktop browser around. While the browser currently shipping on Android is nothing to sneeze at, Google’s real innovation in the browser space is arguably happening with Chrome. That’s why it’s surprising we haven’t heard more about a potential port of Chrome to Android, a project the Android team is now actively working on with the open source WebKit community.

Googler Andrei Popescu, along with a couple others working on the project, took to WeKit-Dev group today (via TechCrunch) to announce their focus on the port:

We would like to give an update about WebKit on Android. A while ago, we started the effort to upstream the Android port of WebKit. For a variety of reasons, this work took longer than anticipated and was never finished. We realize that the incomplete Android port that exists today in WebKit ToT has caused quite a bit of confusion and inconvenience to the project as a whole and we are very sorry for that.

In case you’re confused, the browser currently running on Android was originally based on the WeKit layout engine and Chrome’s V8 Javascript engine, but also varies from the desktop version of Chrome enough that two separate teams work on the two browsers.

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Apple and Google are clearly the two front-runners competing for market share in the mobile world, which is why it’s no surprise we think of iOS and Android when we think of apps. With the growth of the smartphone industry also came the resurgence of native apps (thanks largely in part to Apple’s App Store which still dominates the space). However, Mozilla hopes that web apps will soon mature to provide a comparable experience for end users and an even better alternative for developers.

“We are aiming at providing all the necessary APIs to build a basic HTML5 phone experience within the next 3-6 months”

While Chrome OS has shown promise, it isn’t the only browser-based platform planning on entering the web app space… If Mozilla has its way, developers can use the results of their new WebAPI project to build an “HTML5 phone experience” that’s compatible across all operating systems (whether it’s Android, iOS, Windows Phone, etc).

A report from CNET claims Mozilla has plans for the APIs to “interact with a phone’s dialler, address book, contacts list, and camera”, essentially giving you access to the same functionality of native apps but directly in your device’s browser.

The WebAPI project certainly isn’t trying to create a full-blown operating system. However, working hand in hand with Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project, which aims to build a “complete, standalone operating system for the web”, it could create a potentially compelling alternative to Google’s browser-based Chrome OS.

It appears that Mozilla is serious about the project, as a report from CNET claims they’re in the process of hiring full time programmers and plan to have the basics in place by February.
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Image credit: dropit2entrecard.blogspot.com

Something fell off our plate amid the late craze in tech reporting, especially with Google buying Motorola and HP abandoning PC biz and webOS devices. That doesn’t mean this little nugget is not worthy your attention, quite the contrary. Three years ago, Google mentioned it would eventually enable the so-called native code execution in Chrome. The latest beta of Chrome 14, unleashed a week ago, now supports this functionality, the Google Operating System blog has discovered.

In Layman’s terms, native code execution lets the Chrome browser run snippets of web code specifically optimized for your computer’s processor rather than analyze, interpret and painstakingly turn HTML code line by line into a machine-readable format – that takes a lot of time, slowing down code execution as a result.

Google’s definition simply states the technique lets developers “build web applications that seamlessly execute native compiled code inside the browser”. For our tech-savvy readers, Google outlined some of the benefits of this technique in the announcement blog post three years ago:

Modern PCs can execute billions of instructions per second, but today’s web applications can access only a small fraction of this computational power. If web developers could use all of this power, just imagine the rich, dynamic experiences they could create. At Google we’re always trying to make the web a better platform. That’s why we’re working on Native Client, a technology that aims to give web developers access to the full power of the client’s CPU while maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability and safety that people expect from web applications.

The stable Chrome 14 release is expected within a month, when native code execution will become standard feature for the 160 million active Chrome users, as of May 11. So, why should you care? Read on…

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Kodak has started the process of auctioning off some or all of its lucrative patents. Kodak’s demise is well documented as the once $30B company has seen its market cap slide to around $800m as the digital imaging company has continuously lost share to competitors. According to the WSJ one potential bidder is “a large, strategic buyer in the wireless industry looking to use the patents for defensive protection.”

This news comes on the tails of this past Monday’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google for a whopping $12.6B in cash. Google has long been rumored as potential suitors of multiple patent-holding companies such as InterDigital, Kodak and of course Motorola Mobility. If these Kodak patents do sell, they will not gather nearly as high of a price as the Motorola deal, but could likely see Kodak’s stock take a nice move up.  This morning’s news of one analyst saying Kodak’s patents could be worth 5x the company’s market cap sent shares up more than 25% and are currently up more than 5% in after hours trading on the latest Wall Street Journal news.  Meanwhile, InterDigital saw a pop in its shares today as another rumor was swirling that an auction will take place after Labor Day weekend and that there are multiple interested parties.
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We here at 9to5Google are no strangers to Chrome Experiments, sweet little snippets of code that highlight the many advances Google’s been adding to its browser. Take, for example, a tech demo where you write your message and have the band in a music video dance it out. Today, Conceivably Tech points us to another interesting showcase that highlights the efficiency of Google’s WebGL support in Chrome.

WebGL is for the web what OpenGL stands for on your desktop, a standardized way for web developers to tap the power of your graphics card directly, by embedding an OpenGL code right inside web pages. The WebGL Water demo runs smoothly full screen on my 1.6GHz Core i5 MacBook Air and the water ripple effect, particles and lighting effects have to be experienced first hand in order to be fully appreciated.

The code runs best in Chrome due to the use of the OES-texture-float extension, which is currently only available for Chrome. If this is a sign of things to come, soon we will be able to run complex visualizations and shiny 3D games right inside our browser.

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Some rather nice new updates have begun rolling out to lucky Chromebook/Chrome OS users this week with a number of welcomed features including a 32% faster resume (in most cases), instant Netflix streaming, Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader app, Print to Docs with Google Cloud Print, and various business-related features.

While the update of course brings the usual “bug fixes and improvements”, it also includes features aimed at education and business users. One of the more notable features is the Citrix Receiver Tech Preview app which is now available to Citrix users via the Chrome Web Store. This will allow you to “access desktop software such as Adobe® Photoshop® directly from your Chromebook”.

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After sending out the usual laundry list of bug fixes for its Flash Player yesterday, Adobe is coming under pressure from Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy who claims the update only listed 13 of the approximately “400 unique vulnerabilities”… A number he describes as “embarrassingly high”.

Ormandy claims he sent the bugs to be fixed “as part of an ongoing security audit” and, according to a report from Computerworld, was “upset that he was not credited for his bug reports”. After noticing he hadn’t received credit in the patch, he took to Twitter to address his concerns, prompting Adobe’s senior manager of corporate communications to tweet the following:

“Tavis, please do not confuse sample files with unique vulnerabilities. What is Google’s agenda here?”

Ormandy responded, also in a tweet, saying:

“I don’t know what Google’s agenda is, but my agenda is getting credit for my work and getting vulnerabilities documented.”

Hours before the patch officially rolled out, Google launched the latest version of Chrome 13 and 14, which included the Flash Player patch in question, and was accompanied by the following statement from Google:

“The Chrome Team would especially like to thank Tavis Ormandy, the Google Security Team, and Google for donating a large amount of time and compute power to identify a significant number of vulnerabilities resolved in this release of Flash Player.”

Adobe did credit 10 other researchers in the report accompanying the update, but had only this to say about Google and Ormandy’s work:

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Really fast
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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zItInA2ruMk”]

The above video is reportedly Chrome OS running on a tablet, looking very unfinished, but hey, at least it’s something. This isn’t an official video by any means, but put together by web developer Francois Beaufort. You’ll notice that icons look much different, being bigger and more tablet optimized. The QWERTY keyboard looks very familiar, almost Honeycomb-like as well.

We don’t expect this to be close to even the final build of the Chrome OS that will ship on a tablet — if it ever does. It’s cool nonetheless. Check out a few shots after the break. (via Lilputing)

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Macstories has discovered the latest build of Chrome Canary adds native fullscreen support in Lion. The fullscreen in the Canary build is definitely much better than the current Chrome’s botched fullscreen. In Canary, fullscreen feels native and has earned a spot in mission control and three finger swipe. You’ll also notice there is a curtain button to toggle the tool bar on and off. Interested? We expect this feature to come to the next Chrome update, but go ahead and download the latest Canary build. Check out a few more images after the break.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8HnmpIFUPk]

No need for a Ticket Restro in the Google Paris Office where they work on YouTube and Chrome mostly.

Get in line behind us here.

Via Elgan
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Google’s rapid development cycle with Chrome not only lifted the browser’s version number into the stratosphere, it has as well produced some of the industry-leading features and innovations. Initially, those capabilities were late in Chrome OS, but with the operating system now in the wild and powering Chromebooks, Google has taken a more aggressive stance to keeping Chrome OS and Chrome on the same page.

Today, the search company announced on the Google Chrome releases blog that Chromebooks are getting updated to Chrome 13, the latest stable version which was released two days ago for Windows, Linux and Mac desktops. Chrome version 13.0.782.108 (platform version 587.100) is now available on the Stable Channel for the Acer AC700, Samsung Series 5 and Cr-48  Chromebooks. It includes all of the features of Chrome 13 plus several Chromebook-specific additions. Release highlights after the break:

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A new extension called Start Google Plus brings functionality of Twitter and Facebook to Google+. The extension not only allows you to post to all three social networks, but puts Twitter and Facebook into your Google+ stream too.

Another cool feature Start Google Plus offers is the ability to import your Facebook photos. SGP is available on Chrome and Firefox. Check out a few photos of the extension after the break. (via Lifehacker)

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If you are a mainstream Chrome user like I imagine most of you are, the first stable version of Chrome 13 is now available for auto upgrade.  Why upgrade?

Google Instant Pages prefetches links so that page load times increse dramatically.  Linux and Windows users will now also get a print preview (Linux before Mac?! oh ChromeOS :P)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jn93FDx9oI]

To manually upgrade, go to about Chrome and hit the upgrade button (below):
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Stunning 45-degree views are now available in Maps for more places in the US and abroad.

Never content with resting on its laurels, Google have been iterating their products at a pace faster than ever before. Here’s a quick overview of some of the noteworthy changes we spotted in Google’s popular services, such as Docs, Tasks, Chrome Web Store, Blogger and Maps. The latter now features breathtaking 45° imagery for many more US cities (full list here), including international locales, such as Córdoba, Spain. If you haven’t yet seen highly detailed aerial photography in action, definitely give it a try now by checking out the Córdoba, William P. Hobby Airport or the Houston Ship Channel 45° views from all four directions.

Chrome Web Store, the Google-ran online repository of web apps, now supports more markets, having added sixteen new countries for 31 countries in total. In-app payments in web apps distributed on Chrome Web Store are also a go-go: Google confirmed paid transactions in web apps will be available to users in twenty countries “later this year”. Zyngas of this world will love it, that’s for sure. More features in other services right below the fold.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EEOWbIqQdE]

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The Guardian is reporting Chrome has overtaken Firefox as the #2 browser in the UK. Chrome now has 22% of the market and Internet Explorer, which is currently first, holds 45%. In fourth, Safari has 9% of the market. (via web metrics firm Statcounter) Chrome’s success is due in part to TV advertising. Chrome is Google’s first product advertised in the UK.

Also today, Net Applications is saying Safari now has 8% market share worldwide. (via MacDailyNews) Check out the graph below:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0XLL86e1FU]

Google today released a new bottom-floating toolbar for Internet Explorer and Chrome users (no Firefox?) called Google Related.  They explain it like this:

Google Related is a browsing assistant that offers interesting and useful content while you are browsing the web. For instance, if you’re browsing a page about a restaurant in San Francisco, Google Related will assist you by displaying useful information about this restaurant such as the location of the restaurant on a map, user reviews, related restaurants in the area, and other webpages related to San Francisco restaurants — all in one place.

Whenever you’re navigating to a new page, Google Related will look for interesting related content and, if available, display it in a bar at the bottom of your page. Google Related can display categories such as videos, news articles, maps, reviews, images, web sites and more. To preview a listed item or see additional items, just use your mouse to hover over different categories in the bar. For example, when you hover over a video link, the video pops up in a preview box and you can play the video directly on the page.

This is an interesting move that will likely get a lot more clicks through Google…if it catches on.
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