Chromebook Glory Days

The glory days are ahead, but the Samsung Chromebook already looks like a Macbook Air, at a quarter the price.

New Chromebook: Getting Better, but Its Internet Dependence Is Limiting

a bare-bones version of the Linux operating system capable of running only one application: a Web browser ..... Chrome OS has at last matured from a quirky experiment to something that make sense for consumers. .... 11.6-inch screen .... woke up in less than five seconds. .... If you don’t pause to ponder the difference between an “app” and a bookmark (often there is none at all), it works surprisingly well. .... Chrome OS has the same minimal feel as a smartphone. The constrained space of a mobile screen often forces designers to display fewer options, and less information, at once making for a less cluttered experience. ..... The speakers are also impressive for a small, cheap device. .... Offline photo editing is impossible, which is a shame because a Chromebook would be a good companion on a vacation, when you might take a lot of photos. ...... even the company’s own lineup of offline apps is weak..... There’s a version of Gmail that works offline, and it’s possible to create and edit word-processing documents offline using Google Docs, and read other documents offline.

The Chromebook happened before HTML5 happened. This book is ahead of the times.

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Privacy, Security And Consensus

There is more room for mischief in mobile. The average person is not aware how much they are already giving away.

Study Reveals a Confused View of Mobile Phone Privacy and Security

Smartphones store a wealth of valuable personal data—photos, videos, e-mail, texts, app data, GPS locations, and Web browsing habits—that is increasingly falling into the hands of advertisers, app makers, law enforcement, and crooks...... The majority of respondents also said they believed their mobile phone to be as private as their personal computer. .... millions of people already provide mobile data to marketers, business analysts, and law enforcement, often without their knowledge or consent

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Skype On HTML5 Has Smartphone Implications

Image via CrunchBaseWP Sauce: Web version of Skype confirmed by Microsoft job posting

I have long expressed the belief at this blog that HTML5 is where it is at. Smartphone apps are transitional authorities. If Skype becomes available on your browser, and if the HTML5 browser is the primary player on your smartphone, what is your Skype ID? I want it.

Smartphones are computers. They have been misnamed. PC is personal computer. SC should be small computer. Smartphones are small computers.

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No URL Bar: Big Change

Image via Wikipedia

Conceivably Tech: Google May Kill Chrome URL Bar: he elimination of the URL bar, which could be the most significant UI change to the web browser since its invention. ...... aim to increase the viewable space for web and application content. ...... Chrome led the pace, but it is IE9, which has the most efficient UI at this time, in terms of available pixels to web content. ...... The classic navigation version, compact navigation, sidetab navigation as well as a touchscreen version. ...... The compact navigation model would only have one line and place the navigation buttons, a search button, tabs and menus next to each other. The URL bar is gone and the URL of each tab is not visible at all times, but only displayed when a page is loading and when a tab is selected. ...... allow users to open multiple Chrome windows and apply different users to them. For example, if you use multiple Google accounts, you have to sign out/sign in between different accounts. Via multiple profile support you will be able to be signed into different accounts in parallel and use them at the same time – in different browser windows. ........ future Chrome windows will show the Google account name not just in the window when you are on a Google page, but in the browser windows itself next to the window control buttons minimize/maximize/close. ....... If a user closes all Chrome windows and the reopens a window, then the window will assume the identity of the most recently closed window. If a user closes three windows with three different identities and the reopens three windows, the windows would assume the identity of the three identities again

It is great to see Google want to keep innovating in the browser space. Having more real estate when you are browsing helps. Being able to access multiple Google accounts is a big one. It is not unusual for people to have a private Gmail account and also a work account on the Gmail platform these days.

The Chrome Browser At 10%

Image via WikipediaLast I checked, it was at 5%, but even back then it deserved to do better. Next thing you know it will have hit 20%. Chrome has nowhere to go but up.

InfoWorld: Chrome breaks 10 percent browser market share for the first time

Chrome is the browser I use. It is minimalist. It is fast. It does not feel like there is anything at the top. All you get is the web. I like that.

Google calls it a "modern" browser.

Google's dragging its feet on the Chrome OS Netbook is unforgivable. That is what will take the Chrome browser roaring into the 20s and 30s and beyond.

The Idea Of A Social Browser

Image via CrunchBaseIt's an idea but my hunch says - pun intended - this might not take off. This is like Maradona returning to World Cup Soccer and Argentina losing big earlier this past summer. There is a part of Marc Andreesen that feels that Netscape should have perhaps attained a Google like glory but did not because Microsoft played unfair. ("Life is unfair." -JFK)

Mac App Store: Bullshit

Steve Jobs is this genuinely amazing guy who I have fundamental philosophical differences with. After having replaced the browser with apps on his smartphone he has started to talk in terms of an app store also for the Mac computer. We are going backwards in time, folks, if we keep following the pied piper.

Distributed Search

Image via Wikipedia

Silicon Valley VCs Don't Want Obama's Money, Think Google Is Passe CNet "The triumph of the distributed Web." ....... the aggregate power of distributed human activity will trump centralized control. ........ Google, and other search engines that analyze the Web and links, are much less useful than a (theoretical) search engine that knows not what people have linked to (as Google does), but rather what pages are open on people's browsers at the moment that people are searching ........ "All the problems of search would be solved if search relevance was ranked by what browsers were displaying" ......... the future is "federated search," in which the Web's users don't just execute search queries, they participate in building the index by the very act of searching, immediately and directly. ............you probably also want to know what's showing up on users' computers in apps other than the Web browser. ....... the value of real-time searching, as well as social-network-aware searching, will increase dramatically and quickly. .......... the United State's subsidies on ethanol, France's decision to skip the Internet in favor of the state-sponsored Minitel, and Japan's direct investment in supercomputers as it tried to spend its way out of a recession were examples of poor investments. "Government is a particularly poor judge of new technology" ....... . The millennials are here. Everything changes. The current generation of graduating college students won't remember a life offline. A deluge of unstructured data creates the next great information leaders. ("The dark matter of the enterprise is unstructured data" ........ Wireless broadband will be one of the only IT sectors to see increased funding this year and in the future......... Maintech, not Cleantech ....... Health care administration will be the fastest-growing sector. ......Consumption of digital goods on mobile devices is the growth story of the coming decade. ....... Electronic displays will prove the hottest investment in hardware this year and next. ..... The rumors of the demise of the reporter have been exaggerated.

David Gelernter: Manifesto

Is Google passe? I am not so sure. But Twitter and Wolfram Alpha have put some blood into the water. Suddenly Yahoo and Microsoft are energized on search like never before. The wisdom was Yahoo has lost the game. Now Yahoo is yelling, not so fast. Google has been challenged, that's for sure.

Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Search Come Full Circle: That Human Element
Search: Much Is Lacking

This had to happen sooner or later. Search is such a vast terrain. It will stay the number one challenge online. Content creation is not about to slow down. How do you keep up with the exponential explosion in content creation? You got to come up with new ways of doing search. There has always been a ton of room for innovation in search. But now we are seeing new energy in the domain.

Wolfram Apha Is Cool
Google Falling Behind Twitter?
Eminem: The Relapse: Twitter
What Does Your Resume Look Like Today?
Google Is Working On Search
Job Hunting And 2.0
Is Reading Socializing?
Reimagining The Office
Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
Define Social Media
The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing

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Facebook Faceoff Firefox

Firefox Could Be the Real Facebook Challenger ReadWriteWeb
Mozilla Weaves Its Firefox Cloud InformationWeek
Google Chrome- Faster Than a Speeding Browser Connected Internet

Google Chrome Update Scheme Beats Firefox, Safari, Opera InformationWeek

Firefox to converge with social networks, predicts analyst StrategyEye (subscription)

C for capitalism. C for competition. Capitalism is all about competition.

Some have compared Facebook to an operating system, to a browser. And that is not recently. To many people on Facebook, that is also how they surf the web. That is how they read the news, consume videos. And look at all those people writing applications for Facebook, like they used to write for Windows, like they do for the iPhone, like they do for Twitter. (Skype: Hub)

Google also thought, we already have the people and their contacts, we call it Gmail. But Gmail is not exactly a Facebook threat.



Firefox would have to go through a fundamental reengineering to give Facebook a run for the money. And how do you do that without losing the basic soul of a web browser?

For now I see a ton of growth space for Facebook, and a ton of growth space for Firefox. And Chrome's got plenty of buzz.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
What Should Facebook Do
Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived
The Unfacebook

I am not saying the fight is over before it has begun. What I am saying is I am excited as to what a social Firefox might mean.

In The News

Do we all work for Google now? CNet
Kachingle to 'sprinkle' dollars to online publishers
YouTube slowly building ad-friendly content
Refresh alerts come to Facebook's home page 'stream'
Sun shareholders sue to block Oracle acquisition
Study: Bioelectricity bests biofuels on miles per acre

A Mom's Day Menu

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