The following site does just what it says (I tested it on Chrome). It revolves the internet around while you surf. At a constant slow pace it will continue even when you're fighting your pointer's way to a link that's turning away from you.
Oh, and there's great soothing music in the background.
Well kids, Google has just released some serious information about the much anticipated Chrome OS at today’s webcast, so grab some popcorn and buckle up, ’cause here we go. Google Chrome OS has a radically different approach to computing, and assumes that most of what you want to do on your computer involves your web browser and internet connectivity — and when we think about it, are they so wrong? Those of you who were expecting an Android type interface are going to be sorely disappointed, as the Chrome browser, in a nutshell, is Chrome OS. So let’s just get this out there right now: this isn’t going to be an OS designed for video editing, Photoshopping, or 3D modeling. This is a lightweight conduit for access to online information and utilities. No doubt all of this has piqued your interest, so hit the jump to check out the full story.
Google has said flat out they designed the Chrome OS with three things in mind: speed, simplicity, and security, so we are going break down some of the finer points they touched upon under these pretenses.
Speed
Several times Google engineers stated that turning on your Chrome OS powered netbook should be like turning on a television; hit the power button and within a couple seconds you should be browsing. They have been focusing on this and working hard to improve upon it. Currently Chrome OS’ cold boot time is 7 seconds to the login window, with an additional 3 seconds for user login making for a total boot time of 10 seconds. Not bad. Google is hoping to have that time shaved down even further by the time they are ready for release.
Simplicity
Your information is stored in the cloud. No user bits are going to be stored on the modest solid state hard drive that all Chrome OS netbooks are going to come with. While this may be a terrifying prospect to some, it does afford Google some flexibility to rework the traditional computing work flow. There are no application updates to be installed, no backup solutions needed, and no maintenance operations to perform. When you login to the could you can be sure that your Chrome OS netbook is up to date, patched, and ready to go. The main interface, to the shagrin of many we’re sure, is also very simple in that it’s a Chrome browser window. You can customize shortcuts and favorites, but the foundation UI isn’t going to blow anyone’s socks off with eye candy.
Security
This was really getting hammered upon. Security is accomplished in two main ways: architecture setup and the cloud. First and foremost there are three partitions setup on the Chrome OS’ SSD drive, a root partition (which is read-only and holds the OS), a user partition (which by default is encrypted), and a swap partition. When you boot Chrome OS it checks the integrity of the OS and if it finds that your OS has somehow been corrupted or compromised by maleware, it simply re-downloads a fresh copy of the OS from the intertubes. All on its own. Again, your information is in the cloud and the system is technically stateless, so the OS can be restored at point in time without any detriment to user data.
We know that a lot of you have some burning questions and want to see the UI in action, so have a couple videos queued up. Go ahead, we know you’re curious.
Today we'd like to share with the web community information about SPDY, pronounced 'SPeeDY', an early-stage research project that is part of our effort to make the web faster. SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression.
We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web's tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.
So far we have only tested SPDY in lab conditions. The initial results are very encouraging: when we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster. There is still a lot of work we need to do to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions. However, we believe that we have reached the stage where our small team could benefit from the active participation, feedback and assistance of the web community.
For those of you who would like to learn more and hopefully contribute to our experiment, we invite you to review our early stage documentation, look at our current code and provide feedback through the Chromium Google Group.
Posted by Mike Belshe, Software Engineer and Roberto Peon, Software Engineer
While we've been sitting, waiting, wishing for the Nokia N900, we missed something very important: It's not a phone. As this Nokia ad shows, it's actually a psychotic shapeshifter. At least I think that's the message they're trying to send.
If you don't feel like watching the whole ad, jump to about 1:50. It's where the truth is revealed. It's also the moment when I began to daydream about the days when ads actually showed the product for more than a few seconds. UPDATE:
Offers up the following:
Maemo 5 OS
3.5-inch WVGA (800 x 480) resistive touchscreen display
110.9 × 59.8 × 18mm, 181g
Portrait-orientation sliding QWERTY
Mozilla-based browser, full Adobe Flash support
ARM cortex A8 processor
32GB internal memory
5.0 MP Carl Zeiss camera with dual-LED flash, auto-focus and sliding cover
MicroSDHC support up to 16GB
FM transmitter
Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, WCDMA 900/1700/2100, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP
The GlideTV Navigator is a $150 wireless remote control for use with home theater PC setups. The large-ish center trackpad area is surrounded by various buttons while the outside of the remote features media, search, power, and volume controls.
The remote comes with a charging station and USB receiver that works “with Windows PC, Apple Mac, Sony PlayStation 3, or any set-top box that supports standard mouse and keyboard HID devices,” though the real draw is for Windows users as special GlideTV software can be used to launch applications and web sites, as well as search various popular content providers like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, YouTube, and more.
The Windows-only software also provides a much needed on-screen keyboard.
This product features:
Clickable touchpad mapped to your TV screen — precise cursor control, one-thumb scrolling, single and double-click selection.
Backlit AV buttons to control volume and playback.
Directional buttons for easy two-axis navigation.
Dedicated Esc, Enter, Back, and Function keys to control applications.
On-screen keyboard — requires download, Windows only.
Integrated search menu with links to Google, Amazon Video on Demand, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and more - requires download, Windows only.
Rechargeable battery.
United States — $149
Eurozone — €129 (VAT included)
United Kingdom — £119 (VAT included)
The N900 is up for preorder, and Nokia is throwing in its BH-703 Bluetooth headset to sweeten the deal. That's beats €500 ($710) in Europe. The N900 packs some hot specs, but remember it needs T-Mobile's network for 3G. [Nokia]
Windows/Mac/Linux: Opera 10, which we've had in beta and release candidate forms already, officially hit the net today, bringing its Turbo compression, new interface, and visual tab bar to the browser feature battle.
There's also a host of bug fixes and minor menu tweaks, of course, along with changes to Speed Dial, the much-acclaimed Mail client, and your freedom to place the new resizable tab bar with thumbnail previews anywhere you want on the screen—top, bottom, left or right.
Opera 10 is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems only. Tell us how you think Opera 10 stacks up against the competition in the comments.
