How has it been “Living In The Google World”, only using Chrome and online apps?

Ok, I have a confession to make. Actually a few of them. 

The last 2 days have been relatively light in terms of producing work online. There was a good amount of offline things I’ve had to do (if you filed for an extension on your taxes in April, you know they’re due now).

I also started using my hard drive for storage. More on this below.  

In any case, I have done some work and have a few new insights. 

1.  I’m crawling along still without Robofrom, but things are getting easier on the password front because Chrome is remembering all of them. Unfortunately my upgrade to the Chromium nightly build means I’ve had to re-enter the passwords I had already stored in Chrome. 
 

2. I ditched the online storage issue. I’m sure there’s an answer out there somewhere waiting to be found and I’ll find it sooner or later, but right now, I store images on my hard drive and then upload them to Amazon’s servers. Doing this made my life MUCH easier. I can still edit in Photoshop.com but not having to save the image over to Picasa Web Album removed a few steps and reduced frustration. 
 

3. Chrome is a little finicky with the refresh on some sites, Awstats (stats program that shows information about your website and it’s visitors) is one of them.

When I hit the site’s “update” link, the screen flashes like it’s doing an update, but then I have to do a “refresh page” with Chrome to get the page to redraw.
 

4. When I select a bit of text to copy, I sometimes stumble into the situation where the whole page is selected by Chrome. This means I have to unselect, go back and more carefully select the text I want.

I think this happens more often when I’m selecting text in a text box, but I’ll keep watching and see if I can figure it out. 

So there ya go.

Not much drama, but then again, I wasn’t doing much hard core work online today. Tomorrow will be a much different story as I have a couple of deadlines to hit. 

I haven’t bit the bullet yet to convert all my email accounts to flow through Gmail, but I always know it’s there for me. 

If someone knows of a simple and transparent “online hard drive“, please post a comment.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

“Living In The Google World” – Day 2 and Day 3

So the idea of a cake with a stick of dynamite in it isn’t new.

But what about the idea that Google’s Chrome is actually a “gift” in many ways to Microsoft? 

Let me explain a few obvious examples of what I mean. 

1. History has proven time and time again that Microsoft is great at taking competitors ideas, incorporating them into their own software and selling a bunch of copies.

With Chrome, Google just gave Microsoft a whole lot of ideas. 
 

2. Chrome signals a new paradigm for the future and possible scary competition to Microsoft. Ever the competitor, this “crisis” gives credence to the demand for “CHANGE” and is many ways a “license” by the public for Microsoft to take bolder steps than maybe they felt comfortable with in the first place. 

In other words, Microsoft can now go into “Battle mode”, making rapid changes, upgrades, etc. which will all more likely than not, be better for their users. 
 

3. Chrome is a great example of the concept of completely separating the app from the OS. Sure it runs “web pages”, but when normal users start creating little desktop short cuts to their “Chrome Apps”, people look at things differently.

Indeed, given the release of Chrome, it makes sense now for Microsoft’s to release a slimmed down Windows 7 OS that encourages users to run online apps using Windows Live, eliminating the need to bundle Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker with the OS. 

4. Chrome inspires new thinking and new creativity. Combine it with Android and “WOW”, everyone’s imagination is fueled. Beyond more ideas to copy, web developers and programmers everywhere are inspired by it.

It’s likely that some of that inspiration and new creativity has touched some of the developers at Microsoft too. It will be great fun to see what pops out of it. 
 

See the idea now? We already know Chrome was Google’s gift to the “ecosystem”, but it’s also a gift to Microsoft as well.

If you know of other examples on how Chrome is a gift to Microsoft, speak up and post a comment. 

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Chrome: Google’s Present To Microsoft

Looks like the world is jumping on the reports of the Google Chrome browser’s small market share drop over the last week.

The news was the opposite for “The Chrome Voice”.

Here at www.chromebrowser.com, we saw an increase of 4.62% for Chrome.

Sure we’re a small site with a very targeted topic, but the change has been significant. 

Since last week, the numbers actually show an increase for both Chrome and Safari, but a loss for IE, Firefox, Opera, Mozilla and Seamonkey.

Since I last measured on 9/17/08, here’s how things have changed:

• Chrome usage rose from 45.69% to 50.31%
   
• Firefox usage fell from 34.01% to 33.07%
   
• IE usage fell from 15.74% to 12.23%
   
• Safari usage rose from 2.03% to 2.66%
   
• Opera usage fell from 1.52% to 1.41%
   
• Both Mozilla and Seamonkey dropped from 0.51% to 0.16%
   

The 9/23/08 stats for www.chromevoice.com are:

It will be interesting to watch both the trend here at www.chromebrowser.com and the larger trends tracked by others world wide.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Chrome Browser Shows 4.62% Growth In Market Share on www.chromevoice.com

Tuesday on Sept 23, T-Mobile is going to be officially announcing their Android based HTC Heaven Phone which will of course be running the Chrome browser.

Gizmodo is going to be carrying a live blog of the event.

There is some speculation that the announcement will also include the availability date, which may be “now”.

For everyone in love with Chrome, this will be a great opportunity to carry Chrome around with you wherever you go. You can also have the cool phone everyone wants to see that isn’t an iPhone.

See more about the announcement at Gizmodo.com here.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Carry Google Chrome Browser Around In Your Pocket?

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Jeffrey Chester, the executive director for “The Center for Digital Democracy ” described Chrome as a “state-of-the-art surveillance program” because of the unique ID Chrome creates for you when installed.

Think of this unique id as a “digital finger print” which can reportedly be used by Google to uniquely identify you by correlating it with other information Google collects about you such as you IP addresses, cookies, and your use of YouTube or Gmail.

Chrome’s project manager, Brian Rakowski, says that users can opt out of this when they first install Chrome by not checking the box that says “help make Google Chrome better by automatically sending usage statistics and crash reports to Google.”

True, they can opt out of sending the information, but the unique tracking id is always created and even recreated by Chrome if you delete it.

Clearly, some people consider this unique id a major breach of their privacy, and thus Ablesoft from Germany offers a simple app “unchrome” to zero out this unique identifier.

More info about “unchrome” is available here.

Read the full article by Elise Ackerman in the San Jose Mercury News here.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

CDD Privacy Concerns, Says Chrome Browser a “state-art surveillance program”