18 Jan 10 Chrome OS Wannabe Developers – Need some ideas? Here’s something different
The App Store has one main flaw that disappoints iPhone users, it’s full of SPAM. Why? Because anyone can make their own application and get it passed through, even if it’s just an RSS feed with ads. This bugs me because there are so many things people could be embarking on, but there’s just a bunch of lazy greedy developers who are in it for the money. I don’t want to see this happening with the Chrome Extensions section that will be coming to our screens soon. So, to give you all a heads start, I’ve came up with my own wish list of extensions and web applications that I’d love to see in the near future.
1) A DVD viewer – Something that will have options for chapters, subtitles, and play/pause. It should be full screen.
2) Music Player (Maybe with the DVD viewer combo?) – This would be good for people that have iPods and iPhones (other MP3 players available) and need to charge and load them. I think making music web based would be hard, I know there’s Last.fm and Pandora, but it’ll bring back the whole issue of DRM.
3) Skype – Or a way we can call people. There’s already web based IM applications, but there isn’t any voice applications except Google Voice. Still, we want something that doesn’t force you to already have a number and be one-to-one chat.
Feel free to comment with your own. 
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13 Jan 10 Cybercrime – The only real downfall of Chrome OS?
The only thing I’m worried about Chrome OS is that because it’s so simple and user friendly (more than Macintosh and Windows ever were and will be) it’ll open up to more crime on the internet. Why? Because there is literally nothing that stops you from changing your proxy settings to route to another location. But there are a few steps that couple be taken that would help to solve this and it all comes back to Google.
1) Make Web History mandatory, not optional
There is no reason why they should make this optional, it is something we need. As long as only you, the account holder, and Google can go through it, there shouldn’t be a fear of having the access. Heck, who knows? Maybe Google has all of ours secretly and just isn’t telling us? Either way, it needs to be documented.
2) Keep the purchase data on file, along with serial numbers and IP addresses
Data about the machines we bought with Chrome OS installed should be immediately sent to Google the moment we start the machine for the first time. Do not make the user register on their end, instead let the stores do that. They need to take the advice of Apple and the iPhone, how it doesn’t activate unless you sign up with AT&T (and no, jail breaking doesn’t apply to this example), kinda like buying a gift card. They need to have your footprint, and keep track of the changes being made (ex. accessing your GMail account with 5 different IPs, yet using the same machine).
3) Actually punish the people doing the crime
Legally, our internet providers aren’t allowed to do the things that Google has the right to, so I see no wrong in Google taking their own measurements to protect intellectual rights and people’s rights. If they have evidence of harassing, they need to bring that up, if they see someone looking for the latest Britney Spears CD, they need to speak up about it. If they don’t, Google is just as bad as the people using the internet to do such things.
06 Jan 10 Need to get that office slideshow done quickly? There’s an app for that!
People often complain about the whole “Well, my company wants me to use Microsoft Office no matter what.” So, keeping that in mind, I didn’t want to bother you with Google Docs because I want to keep it universal, kinda like I’ve already showed you applications that are very similar to the pricey desktop versions. So, today I’m going to show you the Microsoft Office applications that you can manage via your Windows Live Account.
Excel
Organize your company's data efficiently
PowerPoint
Need to make a slideshow?
As you can see, they look very much like the desktop versions of themselves, and do the same similar things. The difference? They don’t take up disk space. This will be the future of how office computers operate, it’ll allow for better workflow and keep everyone productive. Word and OneNote will be coming soon too, making it a great way to take notes and write papers if you’re a student.
30 Dec 09 Produce an entire album in Myna
Let me tell you a little about myself. I graduated high school a few years ago, then not really knowing where I was headed, I decided to get into music, specifically audio engineering. Anyone who’s into this stuff pretty much knows just how much money has to be put into it – A LOT. You have to get your microphones, your consoles, and then you have to decide which DAW (digital audio workstation) to get. So how exactly are we going to get this to work on Chrome? It already does.
Looks very similar to rival desktop applications
Myna is an excellent piece of software at Aviary. While it’s still very basic, having no options for effects or multitrack recordings, it comes very close to the likes of GarageBand. Not just the interface, but the shortcut keys aswell. Don’t want to use the loops they offer? You can always upload your own. There’s a record button too, so if you want to record your voice or instrument, you have that option too.
My completed mix
So here’s the little dinky mix I did for demonstration. I think the great thing about Chrome is that you can go fullscreen, something that Safari and some of the other browsers can’t do. All these web applications look AMAZING just by themselves. Especially when it comes to DAWs, a web based interface is a hundred times better because of the memory hogging that they use. If any of you use Pro Tools or Logic Pro, you know what I mean. I’m so exciting in the thought that I won’t need all those dongles and iLok drives to make studio quality music that isn’t laughed at.
21 Dec 09 25 DAYS OF CHROMEMAS
12 Dec 09 Chrome OS Diet – Bootable 1GB USB setup
@Hexxeh has done it again, this time providing us with a 1GB image. This includes the same Wi-Fi adapters as found in Ubuntu Karmic and provides support for most adapters out of the box. I’m currently seeding via the torrent, will put the mirror up as soon as I get to 10GB or so.
Chrome OS Diet (2)05 Dec 09 Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter Chrome OS ready
So Doug from DELL managed to get the Broadcom Wi-Fi to play nicely with Chrome OS, well done! The bad news was that his image was pretty big from the fact that he basically made a copy of his USB drive which was a whopping 8GB!!!! So, I downloaded a copy to see if it worked with my Latitude (and it did by the way), resized it to 3GB, and stuck it on my external. Works great!
Have uploaded the new image for you all to use. Please note that this version is strictly for DELL machines with Broadcom manufactured adapters.
Google Chrome OS IMG (for Broadcom adapters) (26)27 Nov 09 Black Friday Special – Google Wave invites from us!
Are you ready to Wave?
That’s right, as a special treat, we’re going to give away Google Wave invites to some lucky new members. So here’s the scoop. We’re nearing the 200 mark (195 as of this post) and want to give back to everyone becoming part of the community. So what are the lottery numbers? Member #200, #300, #400, and #500 will all get an invite.
But not to fear, for the rest of you all that don’t get the lucky number, we’ll have a random drawing to select 10 more winners. Exciting, huh? We’ll be posting the winners as they’re selected and as the member count approaches each milestone, so stay tuned!
Random winner #1 on 28/11 – evillemon
Random winner #2 on 29/11 – bucky
#200 winner on 30/11 – kevin-pratt
Winners should expect your invites next week. Google manually sends them out.
26 Nov 09 Virus protection on Chrome OS?
Linux may be a very well protected operating system, but it has its flaws. The fact that millions of people will be using the new Chrome OS in the future means that we’re going to see a lot of threats appearing, especially since everything is executed in the web. What makes this different than using something like Firefox or Internet Explorer? You on’t see any warnings like ActiveX and everything could technically go through.
So what happens if we do get a vulnerability in the Chrome system? Google has said that you won’t ever need to update, but of course, this is something that needs to be addressed. In OS X, they run cleanups in the early hours of the day in the background, so are we looking at something like this being built in? It should be addressed, because it either has to be web based, or built in the official release.
25 Nov 09 Making a website in Google Chrome OS
There have always been web applications floating around that allow you to work on text documents, images, and other media. They haven’t always been in the spotlight though, and people that constantly work with desktop applications such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver may not have ever stumbled upon these because we’re so soaked up in this opinion that you HAVE to use the standard to make a website.
The problem right now is that these desktop programs take up an enormous amount of space. A few days ago, I needed a few gigabytes to empty my external hard drive into my desktop. I deleted my music, some pictures, and documents I didn’t need anymore that equaled a whopping 10GB (and yes those music files were bought from 7Digital, iTunes, and Napster). That wasn’t enough though, so I had to continue, this time with my Applications folder. I started off with my Logic Studio, which could be installed later, then a couple of editors I checked out but never used. In the end, that wasn’t enough, So, I then turned to the Adobe Creative Suite. Luckily, I only need five applications from it, deleting the others solved my issue.
But let’s say that you needed to build a mockup for a client and all you had was the Google Chrome OS on your netbook. Now let’s say you had to take that mockup and make it into a complete working website. This demonstration is under the OS X build of the Chrome browser, but it’s proof that you don’t need these $1,000 applications to make something beautiful.
First step – Creating a visual reputation of the website in Splashup
Splashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.
I’m not going to give you a huge write-up on how it works because if you’ve used Adobe PhotoDeluxe, GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, and Photoshop, you already know how it works – just like any other editor. There were other choices to choose from, but Splashup was the closest to how popular desktop imaging editors work.
Oh, and no, I did NOT get paid to pick them, just want to point that out.
I will instead show you my progress in points, starting with setting up my workspace. Probably the first advantage of Splashup is that it’s not complex and gets straight to the point, not demanding for color profiles and resolutions.
Starting with a 600x800 board, the minimum I go with in order to work with most resolutions
Make sure you sign up for an account beforehand, this way you can save under their extension and keep your layers intact.
I start with a 600×800 image because it lets me look at it as if it were in a browser. It also allows me to make sure that I’m building something that won’t be too big or too little for the screens.
For the best experience, go into full screen as it’ll let you focus on the project and not your other tabs. It’s stunning, reminds me of working in MacPaint in the early 90’s on an old desktop Macintosh (back when there were big floppies).
This this what I began with:
Before
The finished mockup:
After
Now while I could have done something more complex, I wanted to keep it simple. But if we needed to slice our design, where would we go from here? You could either copy and paste everything to separate images, or you can use another web based tool. Right now I can’t seem to find an online based tool, but have sliced my header out.
Second step – Coding
Most sites today are based on CMS setups, so it’s more likely that you’ll use a built-in editor like WordPress has. If not, there’s a few web based ones around, so feel free to have your pick. My current favorite is EtherPad. Save it as plain text and rename it to .html or .php, etc when you upload it.
Meant for writing, but good for HTML too
The finished product
Here’s what you get after all that hard work. My finished project doesn’t look all that great because it was pretty much rushed, but at least you know it’s getting closer to being something that can be done via a single browser!
Excuse the lack of creativity, it's just a demonstration
And there you have it, a decent looking page that’s ready for primetime.
