Java technology is not supported on Chrome OS yet. This may not be good news for Chrome OS since so many web apps are powered by Java technology. I guess if the front-end development migrates to HTML5, Javascript, CSS and other lightweight browser-centric implementations than Java will not be a factor. This is probably quite a few years into the future though. So, for the present, Java support on Chrome OS is highly desired and would be beneficial to cloud-computing.
Since Google AppEngine already supports Java and Android is based on Java this should not be to terribly difficult to accomplish.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Migrating from Delicious
With the recent uncertainty surrounding the future of Delicious social bookmarking site, I started using Google Bookmarks on a daily basis. I noticed that the services are very similar except for the delimiter between tags. The tag delimiter in Delicious are spaces and in Google Bookmarks it is the comma character. This takes some getting used to since I have been using Delicious for years.
Google Bookmarks needs a tag cloud user-inteface display. It may already exist but I have not found it yet. Just a matter of time to making this happen.
One last thing is that it would be nice to implement an import Delicious bookmarks with tags and notes and automatically transform them into the Google Bookmarks format. Hopefully, Yahoo! sells off Delicious and it will continue as a bookmarking service. I have come to depend on Delicious for research purposes and migrating to another service has its impacts to my daily online productivity.
Google Bookmarks needs a tag cloud user-inteface display. It may already exist but I have not found it yet. Just a matter of time to making this happen.
One last thing is that it would be nice to implement an import Delicious bookmarks with tags and notes and automatically transform them into the Google Bookmarks format. Hopefully, Yahoo! sells off Delicious and it will continue as a bookmarking service. I have come to depend on Delicious for research purposes and migrating to another service has its impacts to my daily online productivity.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Chrome OS Notebook Cr-48 Impressions After the First Week
Since receiving my Chrome OS Notebook Cr-48 from Google last weekend, I began using it as a replacement of my Acer netbook which I use daily at home for all things a netbook was designed to be for the past week. I can gladly say that Chrome OS has entirely replaced my netbook for the past week without any pain or changes to my personal online browsing behavior one bit. I have been using my Linux netbook since Fall 2008 on a daily basis so this transition was not a difficult one at all.
There are a few rough edges in the Chrome OS user experience compared to just my trusty netbook. In Chrome OS, the built-in Adobe Flash support is not reliable. This has been widely observed and reported. I have seen this behavior in the past on my Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 prior to upgrading to Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6. Flash now is rock solid on my Mac. As for Chrome OS in its current release, Flash crashes often in Chrome OS, especially when switching between various tabs in the browser. An update to Chrome OS that was pushed on Day 4 of my using it resolved quite a bit of the crashes but not all of them. I am confident this wil be resolved as ChromeOS matures.
Flash loads itself OS wide in the ChromeOS so it effectively crashes all the tab instances in the Chrome browser. Google or Adobe needs to fix this and make the Flash support isolate itself from other tabs and pages. Maybe Flash 10.2 will resolve this behavior. Or Google can design a way to isolate Flash from other tab instances in Chrome. This problem has been acknowledged by Google and Adobe and they are working on fixing this as a top priority. "Flash Player for Chrome Notebooks" On an additional note, Google is already working on this "Chrome Adds Flash Sandboxing" so it should be pushed as Chrome OS update soon.
The touchpad tracking in Chrome OS sometimes is inconsistent. This I can attribute to the beta nature of Chrome OS and the Pilot Program. The touchpad does not always track drag-n-drop operations. I am confident this will be resolved by Google in future updates to Chrome OS.
In the browser, there no convenient method to switch between browser window instances without using the keyboard. This is a user-interface design feature that should be easily resolved by the Chrome OS team. I have send feedback making the recommendation that ChromeOS implement a button, right-click menu action, and touchpad multi-touch gesture that performs this function. The touchpad multi-touch gesture should be the familar sweep right or left similar to how the scroll up and down currently works.
On the hardware side, a locking slot (Kensington type) is missing from the actual Cr-48. This is an easy fix on the hardware for physical security. Additionally, an input for external microphone is needed. When I was using GMail Call Phone, this became an apparent need. This is also another easy fix to the hardware design.
Other than that, Chrome OS is relatively solid and in my opinion will be one potential future platform where the cloud is more important than the hardware. The rest of the world needs to catch up to cloud-computing from an end user perspective and change their habits. Since I have been working in the cloud for several years now, the change to my user habits is very minimal. I have been a user of Google Docs since it was in beta and already made the full transition to using cloud services for everything Google Docs provides years ago.
Oh yeah one last thing on hardware is processor speed. The more the better. The Cr-48 apparently contains an Intel Atom N455 1.66Mhz chip which I think is sufficient for netbooks but not a notebook. With the larger 12.1" display, a much faster processor is needed. Especially for handling the fullscreen video. Or maybe integration of faster GPU such as NVidia, AMD, or others. This type of hardware is already on the market so as Chrome OS nears public launch sometime in 2011, I am sure the publicly available devices from various manufacturers will meet this requirement.
Chrome OS as a netbook replacement is a no-brainer. As a notebook, well there some things that Chrome OS can not replace yet. If you are doing any type of development work (applications, multimedia authoring, music editing, etc.) then Chrome OS is not yet mature enough to handle these functions in my opinion. The potential is there but the reality is that cloud services and tools are not. For instance, there is no Eclipse or NetBeans for the cloud IDE yet. Cloud development IDEs are beginning to emerge (i.e., Cloud2Code) and other tools such as Pixlr, Picnik, Creately are making serious progress for the cloud tools marketplace.
I have seen others post that Chrome OS in 2011 will be nice Windows NT 4.0 and Mac OS X 10.0 when they were first release. Chrome OS represents the beginning of a shift in user behavior and a new platform. I suspect in about 2-4 years from now it will be widely used as the cloud industry matures and more services are developed. Joe Wilcox over at BetaNews has published some really insightful viewpoints comparing Chrome OS in 2010/2011 to Windows NT4 and Mac OS X 10.0. See "Who is the cloud for?"
As a personal music device, well I use iTunes and have an iPod which is not available as an cloud service. I already have a large personal music collection so using Pandora or Slacker is not an option. Maybe some type of iTunes like services that lets me leverage cloud storage or local network accessible storage servers is in the works. The Apple 'walled garden' will not work for my personal collection of digital music. Sounds like an area for cloud innovation to me. I wish I had the time to work on something like that. I wonder is anyone is working on something like this? Hmm. I am quite sure some one is but just have not discovered it yet.
For personal online video, Chrome OS shine except for the Flash issues and underpowered CPU. HTML5 and WebM stuff all work great. I have tried this on YouTube and have not had any issues with HTML5 video streaming. Hulu works fine... NetFlix is not yet available. For video editing and authoring, YouTube has some nice editing features available now. But for professional level work there is much room for cloud innovation.
If the cloud really takes off in the next five years, I am sure the development community will adapt accordingly. For now, Chrome OS will works as a netbook replacement and web browsing device. If you use cloud applications (web-mail, Google Docs, Pixlr, Picnik, etc.) it will serve you well.
There are a few rough edges in the Chrome OS user experience compared to just my trusty netbook. In Chrome OS, the built-in Adobe Flash support is not reliable. This has been widely observed and reported. I have seen this behavior in the past on my Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 prior to upgrading to Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6. Flash now is rock solid on my Mac. As for Chrome OS in its current release, Flash crashes often in Chrome OS, especially when switching between various tabs in the browser. An update to Chrome OS that was pushed on Day 4 of my using it resolved quite a bit of the crashes but not all of them. I am confident this wil be resolved as ChromeOS matures.
Flash loads itself OS wide in the ChromeOS so it effectively crashes all the tab instances in the Chrome browser. Google or Adobe needs to fix this and make the Flash support isolate itself from other tabs and pages. Maybe Flash 10.2 will resolve this behavior. Or Google can design a way to isolate Flash from other tab instances in Chrome. This problem has been acknowledged by Google and Adobe and they are working on fixing this as a top priority. "Flash Player for Chrome Notebooks" On an additional note, Google is already working on this "Chrome Adds Flash Sandboxing" so it should be pushed as Chrome OS update soon.
The touchpad tracking in Chrome OS sometimes is inconsistent. This I can attribute to the beta nature of Chrome OS and the Pilot Program. The touchpad does not always track drag-n-drop operations. I am confident this will be resolved by Google in future updates to Chrome OS.
In the browser, there no convenient method to switch between browser window instances without using the keyboard. This is a user-interface design feature that should be easily resolved by the Chrome OS team. I have send feedback making the recommendation that ChromeOS implement a button, right-click menu action, and touchpad multi-touch gesture that performs this function. The touchpad multi-touch gesture should be the familar sweep right or left similar to how the scroll up and down currently works.
On the hardware side, a locking slot (Kensington type) is missing from the actual Cr-48. This is an easy fix on the hardware for physical security. Additionally, an input for external microphone is needed. When I was using GMail Call Phone, this became an apparent need. This is also another easy fix to the hardware design.
Other than that, Chrome OS is relatively solid and in my opinion will be one potential future platform where the cloud is more important than the hardware. The rest of the world needs to catch up to cloud-computing from an end user perspective and change their habits. Since I have been working in the cloud for several years now, the change to my user habits is very minimal. I have been a user of Google Docs since it was in beta and already made the full transition to using cloud services for everything Google Docs provides years ago.
Oh yeah one last thing on hardware is processor speed. The more the better. The Cr-48 apparently contains an Intel Atom N455 1.66Mhz chip which I think is sufficient for netbooks but not a notebook. With the larger 12.1" display, a much faster processor is needed. Especially for handling the fullscreen video. Or maybe integration of faster GPU such as NVidia, AMD, or others. This type of hardware is already on the market so as Chrome OS nears public launch sometime in 2011, I am sure the publicly available devices from various manufacturers will meet this requirement.
Chrome OS as a netbook replacement is a no-brainer. As a notebook, well there some things that Chrome OS can not replace yet. If you are doing any type of development work (applications, multimedia authoring, music editing, etc.) then Chrome OS is not yet mature enough to handle these functions in my opinion. The potential is there but the reality is that cloud services and tools are not. For instance, there is no Eclipse or NetBeans for the cloud IDE yet. Cloud development IDEs are beginning to emerge (i.e., Cloud2Code) and other tools such as Pixlr, Picnik, Creately are making serious progress for the cloud tools marketplace.
I have seen others post that Chrome OS in 2011 will be nice Windows NT 4.0 and Mac OS X 10.0 when they were first release. Chrome OS represents the beginning of a shift in user behavior and a new platform. I suspect in about 2-4 years from now it will be widely used as the cloud industry matures and more services are developed. Joe Wilcox over at BetaNews has published some really insightful viewpoints comparing Chrome OS in 2010/2011 to Windows NT4 and Mac OS X 10.0. See "Who is the cloud for?"
As a personal music device, well I use iTunes and have an iPod which is not available as an cloud service. I already have a large personal music collection so using Pandora or Slacker is not an option. Maybe some type of iTunes like services that lets me leverage cloud storage or local network accessible storage servers is in the works. The Apple 'walled garden' will not work for my personal collection of digital music. Sounds like an area for cloud innovation to me. I wish I had the time to work on something like that. I wonder is anyone is working on something like this? Hmm. I am quite sure some one is but just have not discovered it yet.
For personal online video, Chrome OS shine except for the Flash issues and underpowered CPU. HTML5 and WebM stuff all work great. I have tried this on YouTube and have not had any issues with HTML5 video streaming. Hulu works fine... NetFlix is not yet available. For video editing and authoring, YouTube has some nice editing features available now. But for professional level work there is much room for cloud innovation.
If the cloud really takes off in the next five years, I am sure the development community will adapt accordingly. For now, Chrome OS will works as a netbook replacement and web browsing device. If you use cloud applications (web-mail, Google Docs, Pixlr, Picnik, etc.) it will serve you well.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Yahoo! Closing a Few Services
Following a layoff announcement, Yahoo! has just announced that it plans to close down a few very popular services such as Delicious, AllTheWeb, Buzz, etc. "Yahoo! to close Delicious" I have used Delicious quite extensive for social bookmarking since 2008. I have thousands of bookmarks with quick notes about several of them that I use every day. In light of this, now I have to migrate my Delicious bookmarks to another service. I was evaluating Google Bookmarks this past summer but now I am forced to make the transition.
I have saved and exported my bookmarks from Delicious but now the task of migrating all my tags and notes will be a bit of a pain. The features and behavior of Google Bookmarks is comparable to Delicious.
This is one aspect of the web, cloud services, and using online services that is a point of frustration for me. This is not the first time I have had to migrate from one online service to another. I thought that Delicous being so popular was well supported by Yahoo! so it should be immune to exactly the type of service interruption that is occurring soon with Yahoo! and Delicious. So this time, maybe Google Bookmarks will stick around for at least another 20-30 years.
I have saved and exported my bookmarks from Delicious but now the task of migrating all my tags and notes will be a bit of a pain. The features and behavior of Google Bookmarks is comparable to Delicious.
This is one aspect of the web, cloud services, and using online services that is a point of frustration for me. This is not the first time I have had to migrate from one online service to another. I thought that Delicous being so popular was well supported by Yahoo! so it should be immune to exactly the type of service interruption that is occurring soon with Yahoo! and Delicious. So this time, maybe Google Bookmarks will stick around for at least another 20-30 years.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Chrome OS Updates Itself Seamlessly
On Day 4 of using the Cr-48, Google pushed an update to Chrome OS. The OS update process everyone is accustomed to (i.e., Windows, Mac, Linux) usually takes quite a long time. On traditional operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, this normally means stopping what you are doing and waiting for the OS to download the updates, verify, apply, and then restart the OS. This is typically a 5-30 minutes evolution depending on the size of OS update.
The traditional (non-cloud) OS update process can be entirely disruptive to what you were doing and means you have to wait until the OS is done updating itself. The restart and logon can take an additional 2-5 minutes depending on your particular configuration.
Google Chrome OS update took about 30 seconds total time to update itself last night. I was shocked to say the least. This includes shutdown, restart, and logon. For some rough numbers Chrome OS logon process is about about a 10-15 second process, shutdown is about 1-2 seconds, restart is another 5-8 seconds.
On another note, the Chrome OS sleep/awake process is virtually instantaneous. It occurs automatically when you open and close the lid of the notebook. The sleep/awake cycle on my Mac takes about 5-10 seconds; on Linux about 8-15 seconds; on Windows about 10-20 seconds depending on how it feels that day.
For a time starved home user, this is the most painless update of any OS I have ever experienced. Less time waiting for the machine and more time spent online.
The traditional (non-cloud) OS update process can be entirely disruptive to what you were doing and means you have to wait until the OS is done updating itself. The restart and logon can take an additional 2-5 minutes depending on your particular configuration.
Google Chrome OS update took about 30 seconds total time to update itself last night. I was shocked to say the least. This includes shutdown, restart, and logon. For some rough numbers Chrome OS logon process is about about a 10-15 second process, shutdown is about 1-2 seconds, restart is another 5-8 seconds.
On another note, the Chrome OS sleep/awake process is virtually instantaneous. It occurs automatically when you open and close the lid of the notebook. The sleep/awake cycle on my Mac takes about 5-10 seconds; on Linux about 8-15 seconds; on Windows about 10-20 seconds depending on how it feels that day.
For a time starved home user, this is the most painless update of any OS I have ever experienced. Less time waiting for the machine and more time spent online.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Chrome OS Netbook Cr-48 Beta
I received an unexpected email from the Chrome OS team to sign up for the beta Chrome OS Notebook Beta... responded to it. I verified the sender and responded to the e-mail and crossed my fingers. To my surprise, two days later, I received a box from UPS Ground containing a the Google Chrome OS Notebook Cr-48. I am shocked. This is a very limited release beta program.
This is like an early X-Mas present from Google. The next few months is going to be fun and interesting.
This is like an early X-Mas present from Google. The next few months is going to be fun and interesting.
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