Chrome is dead?

RIP Chrome

Is Google’s Chrome browser “flat-lining” as John Brandon at Computerworld says or have things simply calmed down to normal while Google works quietly at just following their own master plan? 

What used to be a flash of new articles, posts and reports about Chrome each day have significantly faded off in the last few weeks, but as posted yesterday, visits to www.chromevoice.com continue to grow and so do the percentage of visitors using Chrome. 

After looking and watching and looking some more, I think Google continues to operate in their own world, simply following their long term plan, one that has clear objectives, yet leaves the implementation up to the really smart people on the Chrome team (and of course open source contributors). 

Remember the announcement of Android last year? After a bit the hype died down, but Google kept working on it and now it’s going to be released next month. 

Pundits who call Chrome to be dying now will surely be eating crow come this time next year. 

Wanna bet?

See all of John Brandon’s article in Computerworld here.

“Living In The Google World” – Morning 1 – Working with Images

Day 1 Morning:

This is the first day of “Living In The Google World” and I decided my first adventure would be to figure out how to edit and add images to “The Chrome Voice”.

So here goes:

Step 1 – Reinstall Chrome:

I want to start from a clean slate so I uninstall Chrome, reinstall, switch to the developer channel and update to version 0.2.152.1. 

All went well, and now I’m 100% Chrome and “Living In The Google World”.  

I do wonder why the about box for this version shows “Checking for new version”  constantly.
 

Step 2  - Find Photo editing tool

I start looking at Picasa online, but want more control over image editing so I go to Photoshop.com (Adobe’s online image editing).

The interface is fairly intuitive and the app runs lightning quick in Chrome.

One problem…I need to get an image to edit…and I’m not ready to run back to using my hard drive yet so I open up my online Picasa library directly from Photoshop.com. Very cool. 

(NOTE: 1st “Living in the Google World” Insight – I need my online apps to be able to fully access files to my online storage location in a secure fashion. This seems like a basic function that every online app should have.)

I pick a test file, make a quick edit and send it back to my Picasa online folder. So good so far. 
 

Step 3 – Make the photo accessible to this blog

Now I have to get this file to display on my blog. Easy. Picasa gives me a URL I can use to share. 

Well not quite…

For some reason, Word Press doesn’t like the URL when I try to use it to access the image.

I’m looking all over for the easy and obvious way to share, even hit the help file and see about emailing the link to myself. That still doesn’t work.

After about 10 minutes of trying, I give up and embed the image using HTML (see the image above).

So the net results of “Living in the Google World” so far? It’s taken me 60 minutes instead of 10 to create this post.

Ok, some of it was a learning curve and installation of software which was expected.

The part I didn’t expect and I would guess most typical users don’t have the patience for was messing around trying to figure out how to display a photo on my Picasa web album here.

Either there’s something I’m not getting about Picasa’s way of doing things or I just hit a friction spot that needs to be ironed out.

Summary:
Key learning: online file editing tools need to easily access online file hosting services
App for photo editing – www.photoshop.com
App for photo hosting – picasaweb.google.com
Browser: Google Chrome
Desktop Apps used: NONE
Desktop Storage used: NONE

Enter the Matrix -or- “Living in the Google World” for 7 Days

NO PICTURE TODAY: READ BELOW TO HEAR THE REASONS WHY

Having written so much about Google’s Chrome browser, how it fits together with Gears, Android, Google Apps, and more, I decided it was time to try to totally “Living in the Google World” for a week.

By “Living in the Google World”, I mean that I’ll only use Chrome as my browser and only use online web apps (Google is the first preference) instead of desktop apps.

Beyond giving a great experience of the reality of current web apps, I think it will also open up some insights on the future of the web, applications and software in similar way to how being one of the first to get broadband access at home opened up my eyes to the real potential of the web back in 1998.

Sound tough? We’ll see. You get to watch it as it unfolds day by day.

I’ll list all the apps I run in Chrome and whatever else comes up.

For those who still have questions, here are the detailed rules:

1. All the work I normally do with desktop apps must be done with online apps, giving preferential treatment to the Google suite of products.
2. If there’s a critical desktop app I need that I can’t find an online equivalent to, I go without.
3. If it comes down to an emergency or a situation of “There’s no way I can’t skip doing this work”, I’ll make a note, get the work done and promise to share all the notes at the end of day 7.
4. There will be times where I need to upload/convert work in progress to be usable by the web application. If no online “import” software is available, I’ll revert to using the desktop software just until I get the work online.
5. Where possible, I won’t even use my hard drive as a temporary storage space. If I can’t find the proper online accessible storage, I’ll use a 32 meg memory key as a temporary holding space until I find one or 7 days are over.

One request, if you have a favorite Google app that is ultra useful for you or another web app that you find indispensible, please to post it as a comment. I think I’m going to need all the help I can get.

PS – No picture today because I’m still starting up by finding the right webapps for image editing.

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