Chrome OS out for a Ride

Google had a preview of their much talked about operating system. Incase you haven't heard, Google announced earlier this year they were working on an operating system for the Internet. After their release of the Chrome web browser, the Chrome OS news was simple to interpret, Linux + Chrome Browser.
Google is releasing the operating system as open source as they have with the Chrome Web Browser. Thanks to an engineer at www.gdgt.com, the OS is readily available for download for virtual machine or like most Linux distros, Live (USB Bootable).
After downloading the VirtualBox version, I gave it a test run.

Ever since the Internet has evolved into a monstrous realm of web applications for both work and personal, social networking and email, it’s safe to say having an operating system that only connects to the web is a good idea. Even a fast computer boots up from it’s slumber in about a minute, while as my test reveals, you can be up and ready to check email or anything of importance in half the time. And yet, you wonder what about files, documents, etc. As I continue to test the Chrome OS, I will explain the importance for Cloud computing and using applications such as Google Apps and Gmail.
Finally, if you use a Live OS, you can boot up to the internet off a USB drive. Chrome OS Bootable version fits on a 1 GB USB. Consider when you have a cold computer, and need to log onto the web to check an account or email, utilizing a bootable version of Chrome OS will have you online immediately. Consider it.

Google Voice

With Apple’s media fest last week filled with iPod and gaming introductions, I noted it’s time to announce what tool I think is best suitable for me (at this point and time) and take Apple out of the limelight for a second. Quite frankly, how often does one need to get a new iPod or upgrade their iPhone OS? Not I. But I have been using a tool worth looking at. I’ll have to stick with Google Apps this time, the most recent of my explorations is that of Google Voice.
I got a Google Voice number not too long ago, and it’s like managing your private VoIP network. With Google Voice, you get one phone number and that number will call you on as many devices as you would want. When someone calls you on your Google number, the devices you added will all ring, depending on your setting of course. I included my personal and work cell numbers, as well as my office number. Now I only need to give out one phone number, and I can choose to answer either device. What’s convenient is that  you can route the calls are you wish. For instance, my office number will not ring after 5PM, nor weekends.  You can also choose to screen unknown callers. A great feature is your voicemail. If a call goes to your voicemail, Google Voice can email the transcribed message or sent as a text (SMS) message to a mobile device of your choice.
The tricky part is that you may have a Google number, but you need to download a Google app on your mobile to call as that number, otherwise you will be calling as the number on your device. This is convenient if you have a work cell number or a personal cell number that you rather not give out. You can also make a call direct for the http://voice.google.com website. What else can you do from your website? When you login, you may send SMS messages as well, that is very convenient if you are not quick on a qwerty keyboard.
Other features on Google Voice include recording conversations and managing contacts.

Make Money on YouTube

Don’t we often wonder, can we make money on video’s we upload on YouTube. There are followers of the crazed YouTube video like “David after dentist”,  and you wonder why would someone even upload it. Now, Google has a reason. With Google’s YouTube Partnership Program, if you uploaded a video that accumulates a large number or views, you might have a chance to profit ad revenue from Google. You must apply for a YouTube Partnership to get started.
Once you enrolled in the Partner Program, and uploaded videos, Google will determine if the video qualifies for revenue based on their criteria, including number of views and content. If your video is eligible for, you will receive an email and see an "Enable Revenue Sharing" message next to your video on the watch page and in other places in YouTube your account. If you want to earn income from your YouTube video, you will need to have a Google AdSense account.

Seeing Chrome is more places

Yesterday I was told by a computer support technician at a particular school district, that they were going to install Google Chrome on all the schools in their district. This was revealed to them this week, having to complete that task in all grade K through 12 before the first day of school this Monday. Although, Chrome has been received well among IT professional, NSS Labs tested IE 8 to be the most secure browser at this moment. Although, an article by Microsoft Watch revealed the NSS Labs test was founded my, Microsoft, surprised?
Even though IE 8 tested well, it won’t be long before malicious attackers will find more vulnerabilities on the browser. Moreover,  while Google engineers can patch and improve their product rigorously, IE 8 won’t see an update to new found problems unless it’s the second Tuesday of each month.

Web Elements

As part of Google Services for Websites, Google's new Web Elements are handy segments, or widgets if you will, of Google products for your sites. Among the products include Goggles Maps, Calendar, YouTube News and more. Google's Web Elements makes is easier to include content to your site. For instance, If you have data that you want to share on your site, or graphs based on data, you can use the spreadsheet web element which allows you to upload a spreadsheet to Google Docs, and share the data on your site. If and when you change the data on your spreadsheet online with Google Docs, the data on the site is updates. This is a wonderful tool is you need to provide pricing for products or services. I will demonstrate the ease of this service.
You do this by going to Google Web Elements, and selecting the segment you want. Let's take for instance YouTube News. You select a News Provider, in this case, Fox News. You will see a preview of it and immediately below you have the code you need to copy and past to your site, as I will do below.

Google provides API's to utilize Google Services for Website to further enhance your sites. Among Web Elements, which is my favorite thus far, Google has added more services such as Page Speed and Google Translator.

Chrome Problems

I been browsing the Web looking for problems on Chrome that I have encountered, and frankly, Google search doesn’t have any recent results in problems with Chrome. I’m not a huge social network kinda guy, but I find that Chrome does not do too well on Facebook or Flickr, for me in this case. If you recall, I defaulted Chrome as my main browser, and since then, I been pretty happy at the speed of it until now. Google Chrome has crashed or frozen on me on sites such as Facebook and Flickr and music site Pandora. I’m still on the latest build, 2.0.169.1. I will continue testing Chrome, while searching for the problem and posting an update whether this is a patch problem or a simple configuration issue.

IE 8 Hacked…. as was Safari and Firefox

The CanSecWest Conference in Vancouver going on now until tomorrow, March 20th, 2009, reported the IE 8 has been hacked by a hacker who calls himself Nils. Soon, Nils successfully hacked the latest versions of Safari and Firefox. A competition called PWN2OWN was put on yesterday to exploit IE 8, Firefox and Chrome on Windows 7 platform and Safari and Firefox on Macintosh. Along with desktop browser, the competition includes exploiting mobile devices of the following popular platforms; Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Nokia and Windows Mobile.

Based on the information from this article and as of this post, the only successful hacks were IE 8, Safari and Firefox. Hackers at the conference state there is less research on mobile devices to find possible bugs to exploit the phone.

Whoa! Google Chrome

This September, Google released an open source web browser, Chrome. A comic posted by Google, “Google Chrome – Behind the Open Source Browser Project” explains the browser in it’s entirely – read it. Based on my messing with the browser, it is faster, more secure, and most importantly, free and open source. Google states instead of rolling out one version with tons of features having to wait a year for a release candidate, they update two version as often as possible. Of the two releases, being stable and developer versions, I've use build 1.0.154.48 without a problem. Chrome didn’t need add-on installation or configuration at first run. Flash and PDF’s easily ran on sites with those files.

With the release of the developer Beta, I decided to make Chrome my sole default browser yesterday, utilizing version 2.0.169.1. The new Beta is 25% faster than the previous, and reports it was 35% faster than the first release. I didn’t see much of a difference between my now version and previous builds. However I did see a faster reaction in Chrome compared to Firefox (my old default browser), and defiantly faster than IE 7. Did someone say Internet Explorer? This week will probably be a busy browser testing week, with IE releasing version 8 today. So far, comparing Chrome to Firefox, both are open source, however, as you install add-ons to Firefox, it slows performance. Chrome renders quicker resulting in faster loading times. JavaScript processes quicker as well in Chrome.

Chrome also release Chrome Experiments, 15 projects showcasing complex JavaScript on Chrome, versus other browsers. When Apple released its public beta for Safari 4 last month, it claimed that Safari was "the world's fastest and most innovative browser." Today Microsoft’s IE 8 was released, and it previously reported to come out on top of Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.05 loading 12 out of the top 25 Web sites. Check out Google Experiments, I think Google Gravity was the best, using JavaScript to shatter the Google Homepage, shifting and shaking it around as you resize or move your window. I tested them myself on Chrome and Firefox…. I yet to install IE 8 to try this. Another favorite, was DOMTRS, utilizing the Document Object Model and JavaScript for an old favorite.

I did manage to to stall Chrome, for some reason, while trying to import my bookmarks from another browser it crashed. I realized it only imported my IE bookmarks and not Firefox.