Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebook Piolt Program

I signed up for the Chrome OS Pilot program a couple of months ago and was blessed with receiving a Cr-48 notebook from Google. Google has this idea that computing is moving to the cloud (online hosts) and that most of what typical users do is online anyways. Think about how much you use youtube, facebook, web based email clients, online docs, online file storage, online banking, etc. The benefits are things like always having your data and apps saved online so that each time you log on to any Google Chrome OS machine your experience is exactly the same. Chrome OS is basically a Chrome browser on steroids. If you are familiar with the Chrome browser you would do just find on Chrome OS. You get the same themes, tabbed browsing, and apps from the Google App store. What you will not find on the Cr-48 is a local file browser (or at least one that is more powerful than the downloads menu) any or any local computing like a cache of your Gmail.

Over all I am really pleased with the hard ware. If is finished in a matte black rubberized finish, includes a MAC like touch pad, and a built in webcam. What i find odd is the SD card port that I can not access without using a web based photo app like Picasa web.

The full specs include:

Intel Atom Processor N455 1.66Ghz 512K Cacke

Tripod Motherboard MARIO

Hynix 2GB DDR3 PC3 RAM

ITE IT8500 Flash ROM

SanDisk sdsa4dh-016 16GB SATA SSD

Qualcomm GObi2000 PCI Express Mini Card

AsureWave 802.11 a/b/g/n/ PCI-E Half Mini Card

Atheros AR5BBU12 Bluetooth V 2.1 EDR (it is listed as hardware, but no software support has been found

So far using the notebook as an "always with me browser" has worked fine for what it is for. If users expect to use this for ONLINE ONLY Activities then this may be a success. My worry is that since it is a "laptop" people will expect it to perform like a standard laptop running Windows/OS X/Linux it will fail. Google has put a lot of effort into making this work out like the Google Cloud Print which allows you to print to your network printer from anywhere including the Chrome OS.

I would like to see some type of local dashboard that you log into before starting the Chrome browser which can give you basic local access to files, cached email, and shortcuts to apps (local or online). Also I would expect to see a real file browser, it does not have to be super complicated, just copy, paste, move, etc. would be needed. Configuration is also not something that is easily done...if at all. I do enjoy what they are getting at and I can see the purpose, but I am left feeling trapped inside of my browser, heh I keep trying to minimize it for Pete's sake. I hope that Google uses this Beta program well and makes some of the changes that its users are surely coming up with. I am not against cloud computing, I just do not want to be trapped in it.

BTW: This post was written on the Cr-48.

EDIT: I attempted to watch Netflix videos. Currently Netflix is not supported on Chrome OS however the Netflix website says the following:

Watching instantly on your computer

Dear Chrome Pilot user,

Streaming is not currently supported on your device. We're working with Google to ensure that Chrome Notebook users can instantly watch TV shows and movies from Netflix. More details will be announced in the coming months.

Note that your current Internet browser is fully compatible with adding titles to the Instant Queue for later watching on compatible devices.

Complete System Requirements

To watch instantly, you'll need a computer that meets the following minimum requirements:

• Windows
  • Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Vista or Windows 7
  • Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher; or Firefox 3 or higher; or Chrome 7 or higher
  • 1.2 GHz processor
  • 512 MB RAM
• Mac
  • An Intel-based Mac with OS 10.4.11 or later
  • Safari 3 or higher; or Firefox 3 or higher
  • 1 GB RAM

Bing Caught Looking Over Google's Shoulder

Google set up a sting operation to verify some suspicions that Bing was cheating off of them. According to an article at Search Engine Land, Google noticed that Bing's search results started to become very similar to their own when misspelled words were entered. Google devised a way to create synthetic results to test their theory. Using highly misspelled words, Google engineers ran test searches from their homes using Internet Explorer and the Bing Toolbar. By the end of December some of the results started to show up in Bing search results.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself "Who cares" but the search engine wars are still going on. This shows that the information that people put into a search engine is valuable and companies are willing to fight for it. With only two major search engines in the US, since Yahoo uses Bing's results, these kind of tactics are not going to go away. Is this right or wrong or are you indifferent as long as you get the results that get you where you want to be? After reading the article let us know what you think.

Chrome for a Cause

The folks at Google are trying to save the world one Chrome tab at a time. I have always been impressed with the work at Google as they strive to make solutions to improve our daily lives, or just to show off what the human imagination can come up with. Recently they have earned my respect a second time. Today they posted the results for a project titled Chrome for a Cause.

Basically users could install an extension in their Chrome browser for Chrome for a Cause which would "donate" each opened tab to charity. Each person can choose which causes their tabs would support. At the end Google made a donation to the charities using the results of the Chrome for a Cause project. Mashable.com calls the project Innovative Charity and I could not agree more. One million dollars has been donated and allocated to the causes based on the results from the browser extension. Innovative Charity indeed.

Google went on to say at the end of their blog post that they are already thinking of more Chrome for a Cause projects in the future. Is this the future of charitable works?

Google Maps Human Culture Through Written Words

Today I stumbled across an interesting find at slashdot.org, well I didn't so much stumble as i read their posts every few days. Google has been working on a project called the Google Books Ngram Viewer that has basically converted the human history worth of books into a digital format so that the text could be studied. This marks a breakthrough for social scientists, linguists, and a world worth of scholars. The tool is fun to play with as well. Since 2004 Google has indexed 5 million books with over 500 billion words into their databases. Since the advent of the Encyclopedia Britannica the English language has evolved and our daily lexicon has changed by leaps and bounds since the turn of the millennium. In the day of texting, emails, and heavy use of acronyms our language has become vastly different than the spoken English of the 1900s. This link to Discover Magazine delves deeper into the rabbit hole that is the cultural genome. The reading may be on the dry side, but it is no less exciting. I could easily geek out at explaining the feat it is to document and index so much knowledge, I am then reminded of an episode of Eureka that featured a similar phenomenon. So, follow the link and enjoy searching through HISTORY!

*Note* At the bottom of the search there is a grid filled with links of time periods, click the links and you will receive a list of books from that era.

Crazy Awesome Human Anatomy Browser

Google Labs who is always creating experimental pieces of software has created the Google Body Browser. Think of the Body Browser as Google Earth, but for the human anatomy. Using WebGL (web based 3D graphics rendering) over HTML5 combined with Zygote 3D artwork the Google team has created a web application that allows you to search the human body. One can zoom in and rotate various systems in the body using an intuitive interface. By using the search box in the upper right of the screen you can search for say, liver, and from there the display will zoom in on the liver in exact detail. This system is detailed enough to drill down to nervous system pathways, pretty cool if you ask me. I know we at Wiremedigital talk allot about Google, but they create such neat toys that are easily accessible to anyone. So far this app requires Firefox 4 or Google Chrome to work, but who is not using Chrome these days?

Be the Holiday Tech Support Person No More!!

Today I ran across an interesting link on the Google Blog. I am sure that each of us computer/IT/geek types have been stuck in a room working each family members busted computer over a holiday while everyone else eats and is merry. Perhaps, you have been setting up Grandma's new eBook reader or iPhone? Well this clever little link has video tutorials from the Google team that may help you save some time and frustration over the holidays. The online "care package" is either clever and witty or snarky depending on how you interpret the text selections. Each message appears as a greeting card from you to your family member or friend. You then select a topic(s) you think they may need help with and away you go. Here is the link....hope it helps.

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