Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Dec 08, 2010
First, onto the Chrome browser updates;
This year, the number of people using Chrome has tripled from 40 to 120 million. Speed is what people love most about Chrome, and we’re always working to make the browser even faster. Therefore we’re bringing Google Instant to the Omnibox, showing search results and loading web pages as you type. We’ve also overhauled V8, Chrome’s JavaScript engine. It now runs complex JavaScript programs up to twice as fast as before. These two features are available in our early access channels and will be rolling out to everyone soon.
This was definately the most boring part of the presentation. You know, all the mumbo jumbo about V8 and HTMhoo-ha that nobody really knows anything about. They really should have just had a slide that said "It's like, way faster" then moved onto the Web Store. Just saying, Google.
Today the Chrome Web Store is open for business. Developers have already started uploading apps, and we expect the number to grow over time. Right now the store is only available in the U.S., but will expand to many countries and currencies early next year. The store will be featured prominently in Chrome, helping people discover great apps and developers reach millions of users around the world.
To me, this was the most interesting news. The Chrome Web Store is a place to find the hottest web apps, or, most slickly designed websites. Many of the "web apps" are HTML or Flash ports of popular iPad apps. The Amazon Windowshopper and NPR web apps are nearly identical to their iPad counterparts. To me, that just raises UI questions. Why would I want to use an iPad app with a mouse? No thanks.
If anything, the Web Store is a great place to find new, well designed, intuitive web apps that you would have missed otherwise.
The test notebooks exist only to test the software—they are black, have no branding, no logos, no stickers, nothing. They do have 12.1 inch screens, full-sized keyboards and touch pads, integrated 3G from Verizon, eight hours of battery life and eight days of standby time. Chrome notebooks are designed to reach the web instantly, are easy to share among friends and family, and simply by logging in, all of your apps, bookmarks and other browser settings are there. Setting up a new machine takes less than a minute. And even at this early stage, we feel there is no consumer or business operating system that is more secure.
In the first half of next year Chrome notebooks will be available for sale from Acer and Samsung. More manufacturers will follow. Also, Chrome OS is designed to work across a wide range of screen sizes and form factors, enabling our partners to deliver computing devices beyond notebooks.
Let's be honest. We all thought Chrome OS was going to just fade away. Not so! The OS that's just a browser is finally quasi-real. Thanks to the Web App Store, you can now "install" apps to the browser. They even look like icons on the main window. Google has wisely connected these two projects to make them as seemless as possible.
It remains to be seen, though, if people have room for a cloud OS, next to their phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and refrigerator OS. I'm excited to get one of these test units.
It's going to be great to test out Citrix's tools which make users able to access their Excel files, etc, just using a laptop running a browser. Trigon should be a leading voice on how these new tools can help your small to mid-sized business.
