New Windows Chrome Icon?

Now I'm not sure if this is happening for everyone, but when installing Google Chrome on a new Windows 7 machine, the Chrome icon looks like this:

Is anyone else seeing this?

Google Phone Confirmed

The existence of the Google phone was confirmed in this recent blog post on the Google Mobile Blog.  It had previously been tweeted by a Google employee as well, which may have been the cause of the announcement.

The phone will be made by HTC and will be Google-branded.  It will be sold unlocked and it will have a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor and an OLED screen.  If TechCrunch's post from around a month ago is correct, it will be a device that uses VoIP for voice rather than the carrier's voice capabilities.  This would likely be Gizmo5 if it is true, and in that case there's a good chance Google will start charging for the service.

If this device will actually be sold (and isn't just exclusively for Google employees), it could seriously change the balance of power in the mobile space.  Right now, most mobile users seem to remain blissfully unaware of the existence of unlocked phones.  Google has the power to change that.  If the phone is cheap enough to be competitive with other (subsidized) smartphones, it could just make people consider unlocked phones as an option.  Carriers now have more control than handset makers, but that could easily change.  If people stop buying subsidized phones and the price of unlocked phones comes down, the carriers will actually have to make people like their service and their pricing.  (What a concept!)

It's something I've thought about a lot lately since I've been looking at all sorts of phones and carriers.  The major problem right now is that all the carriers (except maybe Sprint) charge extremely high amounts for family data plans with smartphones.  If this can help bring prices down, I'm all for it.

Google To Open-Source EtherPad

According to PC World, Google is set to open-source EtherPad, a real-time collaboration webapp.  They recently acquired the company behind this application, AppJet.  It seems EtherPad users liked the service enough to make Google listen.

For those who don't know, EtherPad allowed users to collaborate on a single document in real-time, much like Google Wave does.  (And by that I mean instantly.)  Each user's edits are clearly marked.  It's like Google Docs meets Google Wave, really.

New pads can once again be made from the EtherPad home page, and this will be the case until the code is completely open-sourced.

Things like this are why I really love Google.

http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/etherpad-back-online-until-open-sourced

New Blogger

I almost forgot to announce this, but that post below reminded me.  As you may have noticed, I didn't write it.  So I'm pleased to announce that this blog now has another writer, Eugene Niemand.  He's going to be a big help... and I hope this blog will continue to grow in the future.

Google Goggles mobile visual search

Have you ever seen something and wish you could get more info in as snap (pardon the pun) or you see something and think WTF is that. Well there will be an App for that, namely Google Goggles.

It was only a matter of time before Google came out with a visual search product. Google Goggles is geared towards the mobile market and allows anybody with the ability to snap a photo to receive relevant information via Make Magazine

Now the question is how long will it take Google to catch up with other similar applications? Most services I have seen only does bar code scanning so Google is one step ahead in that aspect, seeing that you can search for any image, so if you take a picture of Big Ben in London or The Statue of Liberty it will return results based on that.

I can think of a plethora of uses for this, product reviews, history of places while walking, more info of say a Polar bear while visiting the zoo just to name a few. Here is a short video that demonstrates Google Goggles.

Google Has Acquired AppJet. What Does This Mean?

Google has just acquired AppJet, the makers of a web-based real-time collaborative document editor called EtherPad.  The employees who worked on EtherPad will be joining the Google Wave team.  What does this mean?  Well, I'd guess the reason for this is to make Google Wave a whole lot faster.  One of EtherPad's main selling points was that it was really fast.


After all, Wave in its current state ends up being very slow and clunky after 150 or so posts in a wave.  If this acquisition can help that, this is very good news.  Once that problem is taken care of, it seems like it'll almost be ready for a final release.


http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/google-acquires-appjet

Chromium on Linux - Bookmarks Sync Now Enabled By Default

Looks like today the daily builds of Chromium have the bookmarks syncing feature enabled by default. No more running it with --enable-sync at the end.  Finally!

Google Public DNS

Well, isn't that interesting.  Google just released a DNS service.

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

I've been an OpenDNS user for a while now, but this is interesting, so I decided to try it.  It's not really configurable like OpenDNS is, but for the average user that doesn't matter.  But will the average user realize the benefits of such a service?  Will the average user even care?  Not likely.  That's what Google needs to work on if they want to make Google Public DNS catch on.

There's also, you know, all that extra data going through Google.  I know some people that wouldn't like that idea.

Running Chrom(ium) OS

Well, as I've said, I've been getting a bit too busy for blogging (and honestly sometimes there's just not much to blog about)... so this has already made its way around the internet by now.  As such, you've probably already seen it.  For those who haven't...

@hexxeh on Twitter has created images ready to be booted from a USB drive.  You can find them at chromeos.hexxeh.net.

If you happen to have a Dell Mini 10V lying around, you can try this image released by a Dell employee.

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/11/25/chrome-os-wi-fi-support-running-on-a-mini-10v-source-code-available.aspx

Hexxeh says on his website that he will be releasing a newer image soon with wireless fixes for the RT2860 (MSI Wind, Eee PC 901 and 1000 series) and BCM43XX (Dell Mini 9 and 10) wireless chips.