Chrome OS Tablets, Only for Early Adopters?

Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, made an interesting comment about Chrome OS and the potential users of a Chrome OS tablet:

Chrome OS, Schmidt said is focused on selling Netbook-class computers to early believers in cloud-based storage. The first devices, which he reiterated will come this year, will use either Intel or ARM chips, have a keyboard and won't have local storage beyond that needed to cache data.

"People who believe in cloud computing, believe in the benefits of Web computing and who are Chrome users will be the target market," he said. "It's probably a large market."

Google Chrome has more than 70 million users, but not all of them switched to Chrome because it's a good platform for Web apps. Few Chrome users will decide that Google Chrome is the only important application they use and migrate to a Chrome OS tablet. Google should promote the tablet as a complementary device for browsing the Web and running Web apps, a device that boots quickly, updates automatically, doesn't require maintenance or security software.


It's interesting to read Andy Rubin's blog post that explains why Google decided to close the Nexus One online store:

"While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not. It's remained a niche channel for early adopters."

Google Wave to Be Discontinued

Google's blog announced that Google Wave, the innovative communication platform released last year, will be discontinued.

"Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave's innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began."

Google Wave has a lot of interesting features, but the interface is confusing and difficult to use. While many thought that Google Wave will reinvent email, Google's service combined an online document editor with an instant messenger. Google Wave allows you to create "live" documents that are edited collaboratively in real-time, but it's more than a conversational version of Google Docs. It's based on an open protocol, so you can edit a wave using multiple services. It's extensible, so you can build gadgets and robots that add new functionality.

Google Wave had a lot of potential, but Google didn't manage to build a compelling user experience and define some use cases for the application. Instead of building a general-purpose interface for Google Wave, Google could've used the platform to create multiple applications with clearly-defined goals: a new version of Google Chat, a new version of Google Docs, a brainstorming app etc.

Now that Google Wave is discontinued, some of its feature will be added to other Google services (Gmail, Google Docs), but the platform will vanish. It's clear that Google doesn't want to invest in niche services, which is a big opportunity for startups. "We want to do things that matter to a large number of people at scale," said Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in an interview.

Mobile Google History and Bookmarks

Google added a link to a mobile version of Google Web History at the bottom of the homepage for iPhone and Android users. The mobile Web History lists the most recent searches, the search results you've clicked on and your bookmarks. You can also remove some of your searches.

There are many missing features: you can't search the history, you can't restrict the queries to image search or Google Maps, you can't search your bookmarks or find bookmarks that have a certain label. Google only shows the most recent 10 bookmarks, which seems an arbitrary limitation. The most interesting feature that's not available in the desktop interface is showing thumbnails next to each web page.

"If you've enabled search history in your account (tap 'Settings' and select 'Save Searches' under 'Search History', then tap 'Save'), the history that you see is a combination of all your searches done while you are signed-in, whether you are searching from a laptop at home, your desktop computer at work, or your phone while on-the-go. Your mobile searches are marked with a little phone icon so you can tell them apart. For websites you've visited while searching on a desktop or laptop, you'll see screenshot thumbnails that can help you recognize and return to the right sites quickly," explains Google.




A quicker way to see your most recent searches is to click on the search box from Google's homepage.


If you don't have an iPhone or an Android phone, here are the links to Google's mobile site: http://www.google.com/m/gp and the mobile Web History: https://www.google.com/m/history?action=gethist.

Drag Gmail Attachments to Your Desktop

Gmail looks more and more like a desktop mail client: you can read messages from multiple accounts, attach files using drag and drop and now you can download attachments by dragging and dropping them to the desktop.

If you use Google Chrome 5+ and you want to save a Gmail attachment to the desktop or to a folder that's already opened in your favorite file manager, click on the icon displayed next to the attachment or on the "Download" link and drag it to the desktop, Windows Explorer or other file manager. You can also drag the "Download all attachments" link to save all your attachments to a ZIP file.

"Simply click and hold, then drag your cursor to anywhere in your file system that you want to save the file. Release the mouse button, and voilà! Your attachment is saved (for large files, you may see a progress dialog)," mentions Gmail's blog.


This feature is only available in Google Chrome, but it will work in other browsers when they implement the required HTML5 File APIs.

Google Multiple Sign-in, Now Available

Google is rolling out a feature I mentioned in a previous post: signing in to multiple Google accounts simultaneously from the same browser. When you go to the Google accounts page, you might see a new option: "multiple sign-in". If you don't see the new feature, it will probably be enabled soon.


After clicking on the "change" link, Google informs that this is an advanced feature and that it will only work for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Reader, Google Voice, App Engine and Google Code. When multiple sign-in is enabled, a drop-down is displayed next to your email address at the top of the page, so you can quickly switch to a new account.

"If you use multiple sign-in, the first account you sign in to will be your default account. If you visit other Google products that don't support multiple accounts after you've signed in, you will automatically sign in to your default account for that product. If you sign out of any Google product while signed in to any account, you will be signed out of all your Google Accounts at once." (Google help center)


When you enable this feature, the most significant change is that you'll see a new drop-down next to your email address in Gmail and other supported Google products. Click on the drop-down and you can sign in to a new Google Account without signing out from the previous account.

Another change is that Google's URLs include a different number for each account: http://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/, http://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/, etc.


Google's help center explains that Google's services didn't allow you to sign it to multiple accounts at the same time using the same browser because Google uses sign-in cookies that only let you sign in with one account at a time. Obviously, you can use multiple browsers, Chrome's incognito mode, IE8's "new session" feature, multiple profiles, but the new Google feature makes things easier. Now you can read your messages from two or more Gmail accounts by opening Gmail in multiple tabs.

There are some known issues related to multiple sign-in: this feature is not available on mobile devices, Google Calendar's gadget doesn't work properly in Gmail, you can no longer use offline Gmail and offline Google Calendar and the "note in Reader" bookmarklet only works for the default account.

{ Thank you, Stefan and Max. }

Yet Another Chromium Updater

One of the drawbacks of using Chromium, the open source browser that powers Google Chrome, is that you have to manually update the software. Google offers three channels for early releases: beta, dev and Canary, but you still have to wait up to a week to try the latest features.

Fortunately, it's not very difficult to write a script that downloads the latest Chromium build every 6 hours or every day and then installs it. For example, the URL of the most recent Windows build that passed all the tests is: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/continuous/LATEST/mini_installer.exe.

Chromium Updater is a Windows application that makes it easier to update Chromium. You can change the update interval, switch to the snapshot channel, which includes the Chromium builds that didn't pass all the tests, use the built-in Flash and PDF plug-ins from an existing Chrome installation. Some of the text from the setup wizard is in German, but the application is in English.


It's important to note that Chromium builds are likely to be buggier and less stable than Google Chrome builds. Chromium also lacks some features that are available in Google Chrome: the built-in Flash and PDF plug-ins, support for H.264 videos, Google branding, automatic updates.

{ via Google Chrome Help Forum }

Send Links from Firefox to an Android Phone

Android 2.2 has a cool service for sending messages to phones: Android Cloud to Device Messaging. "The service provides a simple, lightweight mechanism that servers can use to tell mobile applications to contact the server directly, to fetch updated application or user data."

A simple way to use this service is to send a link from your browser to an Android device. Chrome to Phone is a Chrome extension that makes this possible, assuming that you also install an Android application on your phone. The extension has been recently updated and you can use it to send links, phone numbers and text from web pages.

There's also an unofficial Firefox extension called "Send to phone", which offers similar features. The Firefox extensions adds an option to the contextual menu, so you don't have to click on the toolbar button to send some text.



Some things you can try:
* send a Google Maps link and the Google Maps app from your phone should handle it
* send a link to a YouTube video and the video should start playing on your phone
* copy a phone number from a web page and send it to your phone
* copy a short text from a web page (<1KB) and send it to your phone's clipboard.

Note that you need a device that uses Android 2.2 (Froyo), which is officially available for Nexus One, HTC Evo and HTC Desire. Motorola Droid will be updated to Froyo starting from next week, while other phones will be updated in the coming months.