Chrome OS: What We Know and Don’t Know

Four months ago, Google announced it was working on an operating system for netbooks called Chrome OS. Today, at a press event at the Googleplex which I attended, the company demonstrated it in public for the first time and provided more details about its plans.

Nothing Google had to say came as a great revelation–it largely confirmed and expounded upon the goals laid out in the initial blog post on the project. Chrome OS will emphasize speed, simplicity, and security; it’ll store everything in the cloud; it’ll come preinstalled on netbooks. And it’s an open-source product with a Linux heart beating deep inside.

After the jump, my first stab at collecting known and unknown details about the OS–additions, corrections, and questions welcome.

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Google Reveals Chrome OS

I’m at the Googleplex this morning, where Google is showing off Chrome OS for the first time. More details to come, but I’m tweeting the news fast and furious at the moment–follow me at Twitter to see the news as fast as I learn it.

5Words: Tragedy Strikes Beloved Apple Tablet

God, no: Apple tablet delayed.

Courts: Verizon’s AT&T ads OK.

AT&t’s snarky anti-Verizon ad.

How to improve Office 2010.

Flips to get Wi-Fi soon?

Pre for $80; Pixi, $25.

Trillian for iPhone now available.

ThinkPad Edge: hey, what’s that?

Blu-Ray for $78? That’s tempting.

AOL to shed mucho employees.

Michael Arrington annoys Lance Ulanoff.

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Thoroughly Modern IE9?

As expected, Microsoft began talking about Internet Explorer 9 in public yesterday at its PDC event in Los Angeles. So far, it’s only talking about its guts–but it’s working on two of the items from my personal IE9 wishlist, faster JavaScript and the beginnings of HTML5 support. Microsoft browser honcho, Dean Hachamovitch, has a blog post up in which he talks about what this means for developers. (It’s a nicely straightforward one, with a chart that shows just how slow IE8′s JavaScript is compared to the competition, and which even discloses that Microsoft has only succeeded in getting IE9 back in the pack so far–it’s still the slowest, but by a lot less.)

Hachamovitch also says that IE9 will utilize hardware acceleration to render graphically-rich sites faster and better. Sounds like a good idea, and like an example of Microsoft attempting to make the fact that IE only runs on Windows into an asset rather than a liability. (Browsers that run on multiple platforms are presumably less likely to get a thorough tweaking to run especially well on one particular OS.)

Still no word on what the company is thinking about interface changes, or when it intends to release the browser. I’m still rooting for a major facelift, but we’ll see…

Apps and an App Store for Livescribe’s Pulse Smartpen

“Unique” is one of the most overused words in tech, but it’s the only way to describe Livescribe’s Pulse smartpen. Depending on how you look at it, it’s a voice recorder that can also take notes, and then lets synchronize them and upload them to a computer for later reference. Or maybe it’s a note-taker that also records audio. Or a tablet PC without the tablet and PC parts.

Whatever Pulse is, it just became more versatile and customizable. Livescribe launched an application store today, one that’s very much in the spirit of the iPhone App Store. Available through the Pulse’s desktop software (which runs on PCs and Macs), it’s a repository for programs–mostly free or cheap ones–that extend the usefulness of the pen. Buy one and sync your phone via its USB dock, and it gets downloaded to the pen.

The Livescribe app store is starting small, with thirty apps. They include language tools (such as Japanese Travel Phrases), games (Hangman!), and reference works (a guide to the U.S. presidents–or as much about them as it makes sense to read off the tiny display on the Pulse’s barrel.) Using a pen loaned to me by Livescribe, I used and liked a English-Spanish dictionary that uses the Pulse’s handwriting-recognition feature to let you write words you’d like to be translated, and a helicopter game that reminded me of a 1980s arcade-game side scroller such as Defender.

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The Sordid World of Post-Purchase Marketing

Earlier today I was squawking about the sales tactics of PeopleFinder’s Stud or Dud? iPhone app: Once it has your credit-card info, it attempts to use a discount to convince you to sign up for various services that cost $24.95 a month, a price that’s mentioned only in fine print. As I did my grumbling, I didn’t realize that the U.S. Senate had been conducting a hearing on tactics of this sort, which are widely used by some of the largest e-commerce companies in America. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has a good summary, and embedded this news report:

One of the companies that’s made millions off these shenanigans is Orbitz. Last March, I blogged about the related indignity that company puts its customers through: tacking travel insurance and limo rides onto their airfare purchases and forcing them to opt out (if they notice the charges) rather than opt in.

If you read every single word on every page during a sales transaction with companies that do this, you might avoid any unexpected charges. But dealing with this stuff makes an online sales transaction feel like it’s pockmarked with land mines that might go off at any moment. And it leaves me feeling like the e-tailers in question–some of who otherwise have extremely respectable sites–think their customers are patsies.

Isn’t a company’s reputation worth more than any few million dollars? Wouldn’t it be nice if corporate America quietly decided that treating consumers this way wasn’t worth it before the Feds force them to cut it out?

Reminder: Take Our Windows 7 Survey

Many thanks to everyone who’s taken a few minutes and participated in our satisfaction survey for Windows 7 users. Hundreds of you have done so already–but we could use some more responses, especially from folks who have bought new PCs with the OS pre-installed. Click here to take the survey if you haven’t already–thanks in advance, and I can’t wait to share the results.

Microsoft Opens Up the Office 2010 Beta

At its PDC developer shindig in Los Angeles, Microsoft is announcing that it’s putting Office 2010, which isn’t due to ship until the first half of next year, into a public beta. You can download the whole beta right here, and if you’re an Office user and are curious what’ll be new in Office 2010, the beta is worth a look. (You can install it alongside an existing earlier copy of Office and leap back and forth, although in my tests, my copy of Office 2007 briefly launched its install program whenever I returned to it after having used Office 2010.)

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I’m Chiming in at a Webcast Today

Very brief reminder: I’ll be watching and tweeting a Web interview with Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson today starting at 2:30pm ET; you can find it here. Drop by if you’re interested in hearing him be interviewed about tech’s role in health care reform…

Resolved: The Best Gadgets Are the Work of One Company

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is reporting that Google is absolutely, positively working on an Android phone of its own for release early next year. He seems to be confirming scuttlebutt from a month ago, and the only thing that’s changed is that the shipping schedule has supposedly slipped a bit.

If Arrington’s right, Google may be about to indulge in an act of overweening hubris: It’s hard to imagine that HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and other makers of Android-based devices will be anything but profoundly ticked off at the prospect of their software supplier going into competition with them. But the more I think about it, the more I hope that the Googlephone is a reality.

Almost without exception, every truly great handheld gizmo has consisted of software and hardware from one company. The iPhone and iPod, of course. Palm products from the original PalmPilot right up to the Palm Pre. Every BlackBerry ever released. Almost every Psion. They’ve all been more than the sum of their parts, because they’ve been beautifully integrated in a way that’s only possible when a single company’s responsible for everything.

It’s certainly possible to build a really good gadget with somebody else’s software–Verizon’s Droid proves that, as do other devices all the way back to HP’s beloved 200LX palmtop. But they’ll always operate at a disadvantage to ones that reflect a single vision.

Arrington says he knows nothing about the specs of the alleged Googlephone.  It would be pretty sad if it turned out to be a mundane handset that could have come from anybody. I’m thinking it would pack a highly customized version of Android that’s even more focused on putting a bevy of Google services in your pocket. Any guesses?

Chrome OS: The Great Unveiling

On Thursday morning, Google is holding a press event that sounds like it’ll be the closest thing to an official introduction that the company’s Chrome OS for netbooks has gotten to date:

While this will be more of a technical announcement, we will be showing a few demos that will definitely be of interest to you as well as a complete overview and our launch plans for next year. We’ll also hold a Q&A session with members of the Google Chrome OS team following the presentation and demos.

I’ll be at the Googleplex for the briefing, and will blog it here just as quickly as I can. I’m still recovering from compiling my Internet Explorer 9 wish list, so I’m not going to muse on what I’d like to see in Chrome OS, or guess at what it’s likely to involve. But would any of you like to take a stab at it?

Stud or Dud? This iPhone App’s a Dud!

Back in September at the DEMO conference, public-information company Intelius launched DateCheck, an impish iPhone app that ran an instant background check to tell you if prospective dates had criminal backgrounds or other undesirable qualities. Now DateCheck has a competitor: Intelius rival PeopleFinders is introducing Stud or Dud?, another impish iPhone app that runs instant background checks on prospective dates. Ones that look for criminal records, sex-offender status, address histories, marriage status, property ownership, and more.

By way of introduction to Stud or Dud, a PeopleFinders representative sent me a report on…me. It seemed to say I sometimes go by the name Samuel McCracken (nope–that’s my pop!), had me at an address I haven’t lived at in seventeen years, and listed three phone numbers, none which were current. It had me as single, which is correct, although it was (logically enough) unaware of the relevant fact that I’m engaged. At least it got my age right.

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Here’s My Internet Explorer 9 Wish List. What’s on Yours?

According to Neowin’s Tom Warren and Cnet News’s Ina Fried, Microsoft will have something–maybe just a little something, but something–to say about its plans for Internet Explorer 9 at its Professional Developers’ Conference in Los Angeles tomorrow. The company often briefs tech reporters in advance about major announcements, but it hasn’t told me a darn thing about IE9. So I’m just as curious as anyone else to know what the upgrade is going to involve.

And for the next few hours, at least, I’m free to ponder the features that would get me excited about a new browser from Microsoft…

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Xbox Live, Facebook and Twitter: Incompatible

Here’s a telling moment from my first experiences with social networking on Xbox Live: While rifling through status updates on Facebook, I spotted a comment that seemed worthy of a response, which would’ve taken forever to type on my controller. Also, there was a Web link which the Xbox 360 couldn’t access. So I got off the couch, walked into the next room, and typed out a response on my computer, then spent the next five minutes looking at the Web site in question.

That’s a failure, and it carries over to Xbox Live’s Twitter implementation as well. Both features went live on the Xbox 360 today along with Last.fm’s Internet radio service and the Zune Marketplace, a facelift for the console’s existing video storefront that includes 1080p video and online movie-watching parties.

Of all the new features, I’m mostly interested in how the Xbox 360 does social networking. With Sony readying Facebook support on the Playstation 3, and the PS3 blockbuster Uncharted 2 allowing you to post in-game progress to Twitter, the games industry seems to be latching on to social networking.

Input is the obvious problem. Unless you spring for a $30 Xbox 360 Messenger Kit (which you’re cheerily reminded about when starting up Facebook), both networks feel trapped behind glass. You can read what other people are doing, but participating is a chore.

However, the feeling of looking-but-no-touching goes beyond input. On Twitter, you can’t visit Web pages because the console doesn’t have a Web browser. That’s too bad, because external links are as much a part of Twitter as the things people say. Facebook suffers from the same problem, and more: You can’t add friends, you can’t use apps and you can’t modify your profile. You can’t even poke people.

The major problem is that Facebook and Twitter are made for the open Internet, while the Xbox 360 is a walled garden. Looking at full-screen photo albums in Facebook is a redeeming quality, but ultimately social networking is incompatible with the closed system of consoles. I don’t expect to use Facebook or Twitter on the Xbox 360 too often, and when Facebook comes to the Playstation 3, I’m not expecting a markedly better experience.

TypePad Takes on Tumblr With Free Microblogging Feature

Six Apart’s TypePad blogging service has long been aimed at bloggers who were serious enough about what they were doing to fork over money for a blogging platform. But today Six Apart is announcing TypePad Micro, a new level of TypePad service that’s meant for extremely casual blogging–and which is the first version of the service that’s free.

Six Apart CEO Chris Alden told me that TypePad Micro is meant for quick, brief, informal blogging and photoblogging–the kind of stuff that feels like a cross between traditional blogging and status updates a la Twitter. It’s a hybrid that’s associated with Tumblr, the service that popularized microblogging, and TypePad Micro’s most obvious rival. Alden said that he thinks Micro will appeal both to paying TypePad customers who’d like a home for a microblog, and to people who are currently part of TypePad blog communities but who don’t blog themselves.

Micro is a reduced-feature version of TypePad Pro: For instance, it currently offers only one theme, called Chroma (you can customize its colors). Alden said that Six Apart might add more themes later, and that it doesn’t plan to place ads on Micro blogs. But it does see the new service as a good stepping stone to full, paid TypePad Pro accounts.

TypePad supports the concept of Twitter-like followers, and any followers a Micro blogger has are prominently displayed in the Chroma theme. So a Micro blog does, indeed, feel like a richer, semi-standalone version of a Twitter account.

A few TypePad Micro blogs:

•      Microdogging
•      Cute Funny Sexy Awful
•      Dollarshort (this one’s by Six Apart cofounder Mena Trott)
•      Awesome

And here’s Chris Alden’s own Micro blog. And Alden’s post about TypePad Micro on the official TypePad blog.

If you give the new service a try, let us know what you think…

The Myth of Platform-Independent Applications

At Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles this morning, Seesmic announced that its Seesmic Desktop, a popular tool among Twitter power users, is coming to Windows. Finally!

Um, hasn’t Seemsic run on Windows all along? Well, yes, but that’s because it’ s written in Adobe AIR, an application platform that lets programmers write Flash applications that can run outside the browser. (That’s a dumbed-down explanation of AIR, but enough to get the gist across, I hope.) One of the principal selling points of AIR is that it lets developers write one app that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, as Seesmic Desktop does.

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