ViewSonic Ponders Chrome OS with ViewPad 100
SlashGear has taken a hands-on look at ViewSonic’s ViewPad 100. While purely a prototype device right now, the tablet is getting its fair share of media coverage. The plan is to have the ViewPad 100 run both Android and Windows in dual-boot fashion, and ViewSonic is also looking at loading the tablet with Chrome OS at some point.
Some of the specifications include an Intel Atom N455 processor, 1GB DDR3 memory with a 10-inch 1024×600 capacitive screen. Charbax from ARMDevices recently got some video of the device at the IFA Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin.
Four to five hours of battery life versus seven or eight on Android? Sounds like Android wins there.
Having dual-boot devices with Windows and Chrome OS would be a great option for a transitional period, but don’t expect many devices to hit the market that are loaded with both. It’s both too expensive and prohibitory to higher adoption rates of cloud-based systems.
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Privacy Watchdog Releases Google Video
This clip portrays Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a merchant of secrets in this computer generated clip that looks almost like a children’s cartoon. It was created by Inside Google, which is funded by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.
What do you think? Is Google as bad as this suggests?
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thechromesource Daily: Links for 9/2/10
The Chrome browser is officially two years old today; CNET talks about how it has reshaped the browser market.
TechCrunch says its site visitors are increasingly using Chrome and the browser may overtake Firefox soon.
ReadWriteWeb believes that tablet computers will be successful because they are shareable.
Here’s a roundup of the Samsung Galaxy tablet, which many thought would be best suited for Chrome OS.
Google Wave will be available for developers to implement on their own server solutions, maybe it will never die now.
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Why Does Google Think Social Media is so Important?
Google has been on a buying spree for social media companies. In 2010 alone, social companies Aardvark, Slide, Jambool, Like.com, Angstro and SocialDeck have been acquired by the search company. The past five companies they have bought are social-related. This doesn’t include a $100 million investment in social media games maker Zygna, which makes the popular FarmVille, among others.
It’s clear that in the coming months Google plans to launch something big, notwithstanding other projects such as Chrome OS and Google Music. It’s possible that the company believes that any social networking strategy could be the “glue” so to speak that holds many of these services together.
It’s all a part of trying to keep users on Google’s services since they are starting to see a lot of eyeballs move from Google and sticking on Facebook, since people spend a lot of time on that site. Consider this recent graph released by Business Insider, and you’ll see what executives at Google see as a potential threat from Facebook.
That’s all Google-branded sites versus Facebook. Dot com.
Although Google probably cannot diminish what Facebook has already done, they can create something that is complementary to their own services. People are still going to continue to use Google, and even use it for getting to Facebook’s site. What Facebook really lacks are core services that people might be interested in using such as e-mail and news. But that could be changing as many Google employees hop over to working for Facebook.
Indeed, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington reported yesterday that Google employees that attempt to leave the company for Facebook are being offered sweet deals to stay. The promise of a pre-IPO company like Facebook offers a great deal of potential for enterprising engineers.
But could Facebook compete with Google’s technological prowess? Most likely not, and I doubt that we will see Facebook launch its own productivity suite or operating system anytime soon. Although some do see a world where Facebook offers e-mail service as ideal, don’t we already all have e-mail addresses? I mean, you needed one to sign up for Facebook anyways!
Of course, once Facebook is a public company post-IPO that may change.
Related posts:
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Chrome 6 Hits Stable Release
The Google Chrome Releases blog has just posted that Chrome 6 has hit stable release. That means in a short time that everyone will be updated to version 6 and all of its new features. This is just in time for Chrome’s two year anniversary, by the way.
Chrome 6 is a big update; there is PDF integration, new syncing features and a revamped user interface for simplicity. It’s also faster, which is to be expected. You can read about all of the new features in some of the posts I’ve written about Chrome 6.
Now that Chrome 6 is in stable, we should expect a full release cycle to take six weeks. That means Chrome 7 should be available just around the time of Google TV and the Chrome Web Store’s launch in October.
The beta channel has also been updated to reflect some security updates. There were also a good amount of rewards that went out with this new release. Over $4,000 has been awarded to researchers who have found vulnerabilities in Chrome.
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Video: Chrome Experiments Compilation
Here’s a look at some of the best Chrome Experiments that have been in the directory. It’s great to see that all of this is done within the browser.
This video has been out for a while so if you’re interested in more Chrome Experiments to try out you can see some of the ones that I have profiled in the past.
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thechromesource Daily: Links for 9/1/10
Confusion over the many variations of Chrome is understandable; here is a rundown to keep things straight from Computerworld.
GigaOM’s Sam Dean thinks that Google could spend heavy marketing dollars promoting Chrome OS.
Job listings looking for IT workers with Google App Engine skills have been the largest growing cloud jobs in the last quarter.
Could Gmail’s Priority Inbox be a way for people to organize their information better when Google launches its social network?
Business Insider takes a look at the difference between Apple TV and Google TV.
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StatCounter: Chrome Continues Rise, IE Slips in Market Share
It’s the beginning of another month, and that means StatCounter and NetApplications both release conflicting reports about browser share statistics. I shared last month my reasoning behind using Statcounter for a gauge which is that NetApplications requires you to pay money to see their full statistical information.
That’s great but we’re not CNET or the Wall Street Journal, so we’ll take whatever pieces of data we can get for free, thank you.
So while the data may appear slightly different between the two sources, the overall picture of the top five market share is not drastically different between the two according to ConcievablyTech.
According to StatCounter, Chrome was up again for the month of August, turning in a share of 10.78% up from 9.88% in July. Internet Explorer was down 51.34% in August from 52.68% in July. Firefox was up slightly 31.09% from 30.69% in July. Here’s a graph.
By the way, CNET has a full analysis of the NetApplications data here complete with a fancy graph. It probably cost them $5,000 to produce that one blog post. Enjoy their spoils!
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Operating Systems Access To Web, Desktop to Cell Phone
Microsoft Google Web Clients, Operating Systems
Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, Chrome? How possibly can the playing field be leveled to evaluate which system is the most popular?
Let’s start with a basic premise. This premise is that the internet will be the thoroughfare for data in our lifetimes. What you see in the chart above is a breakout of the systems used to visit internet web sites.
We will be honing this metric as time goes by. We welcome your comments to improve our Web Client Metric.
NOTE – * Denotes actual number divided / 10. Windows products currently are depicted this way for graphical purposes. Actual share for Win 7 = 10.7%, Win Vista = 10.9%, Win XP 49.2%, All Windows Operating Systems – 89.1% .
Source- Wikipedia.
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Google Chrome Labs Shows Up in Chrome Canary
The Canary build of Chrome was updated today, and as result DownloadSquad discovered you can now use Google Chrome Labs, which was previously only available in Chromium. Just get the latest version of Canary, and type “about:labs” in the omnibox. From there you’ll get to see what Google is calling “some crazy experimental stuff”.
However, for the time being, the only things that’s available is the Side Tabs function that puts your tabs over to the left – good for widescreen users.
Now that it is in Canary, expect to see Chrome Labs show up in the beta release soon and hopefully more experimental browser goodness to come in the near future.
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