Our digital world ……
“Chrome for Android has been updated today, and along with improved scrolling and startup performance, there’s also a pretty cool new feature — support for WebRTC. WebRTC is a free, open project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications capabilities via some simple Javascript APIs.”
Did you hop on the new Chrome beta track for Android? There’s a treat waiting under the hood. Google’s Brandon Jones has confirmed that the latest build enables the flags page, letting us toggle hidden elements — including the rather big deal of WebGL support. Anyone with reasonably quick graphics can now experiment with full 3D on their phone without having to hack or use a plugin, whether it’s wild music videos or lovefests. Just remember that the experience won’t be as seamless as it is on the desktop. You’ll likely have to force the desktop version of a page just to see the graphics code, and few if any WebGL developers are optimizing for the performance and screen size of a phone. If you’d still like to get a peek at what could be the future of the mobile web, hit the source to join the beta flock.
via Engadget
Introducing Chrome for Android
In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, were introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.
Speed:
With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.
Simplicity:
Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you’re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.A nd as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options tap menu icon, ‘Settings,’ and then ‘Privacy’.
Sign in:
You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer also signed into Chrome—picking up exactly where you left off.Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, youll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.
Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you’re using.
Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We’re eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.
Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and AppsCross-posted from the Chrome blog and on the Mobile blog
In 2006, Google was internally testing a project codenamed “Platypus”, an online storage service. When it was accidentally disclosed during an analyst meeting as “GDrive”, it quickly captured the web’s imagination. Google seemed on the verge of transforming their servers into our own personal hard drives in the cloud. Plenty of startups were working on this (and still are), but the presumption was that Google would be able to scale this beyond anyone else and do it for free, or very cheap. Google refused to talk about it, but story after story after story kept coming.
Then something weird happened: GDrive never actually launched.
It wasn’t until earlier this year that we found out what happened, thanks to Steven Levy’s book In The Plex. In 2008, GDrive was about to launch under Bradley Horowitz (now a lead on Google+), but Sundar Pichai (now the SVP of Chrome) convinced Google’s top executives not to launch it. The reason? He felt like the concept of a “file” was outdated (sounds more than a bit Jobsian) in the cloud-based universe that Google was trying to build. After some debate, the powers that be at Google agreed and GDrive was shelved, and the team moved over to the Chrome team.
End of story, right? Not so fast.
Something curious appeared this evening in the Chromium Code Reviews issue list. As first noted by Nick Semenkovich on Twitter, there was a ticket to add the URL drive.google.com to a list in the browser’s code. This URL (which is not yet live) lead to a Hacker News thread wondering: “Google Drive coming soon?“
Diving a bit deeper into the code reviews, what’s most striking is that drive.google.com doesn’t appear to be referenced anywhere besides this one exposed ticket. This suggests that it’s either no big deal, or that Google is keeping this very secret.
I don’t think it’s the former because the messaging in the one ticket indicates that drive.google.com has been added to the HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) list alongside other key Google apps like docs.google.com and spreadsheets.google.com. Another bit of code puts it alongside Android Market and Google Analytics.
Google information security engineer, Chris Evans, completed the ticket this evening. And Chrome engineer Adam Langley approved it with the message “LGTM” (Looks Good To Me).
I reached out to Pichai (who again, is now a Google senior executive in charge of Chrome), but he declined to comment. A Google spokesperson would only say, “The team is always testing out new features, but we don’t have any details to share at this time.”
It sure seems like something is up. At the very least, Google does appear to be close to doing something with the drive.google.com domain. My best guess — which is pure speculation — is that it will be some sort of new Google app for syncing files over the web across a range of devices. PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, Android phones, iOS, you name it. Think: Dropbox.
But wait, doesn’t Google already offer cloud storage functionality as a part of Google Docs? Sort of. But since that functionality launched almost two years ago, it seems that very few people use it like they use Dropbox — hence, Dropbox’s $4 billion valuation and Box.net’s $550 million valuation.
Google is putting a lot of weight behind Chrome OS and Chromebooks. So far, it seems they haven’t exactly caught fire in the sales department. But they’re iterating fast, and one area of focus has been the file system (despite Pichai’s hope they wouldn’t need one — remember, they’re going after PC users here). One that is built into the core of the OS and tied to the cloud could be very useful to those hoping to switch from traditional PCs. That’s especially true now that Google is finally making their apps fully available offline as well, as they did with Gmail, Docs, etc, this morning.
More to come on this, I’m sure.
via Google May Be On The Verge Of Resurrecting “GDrive” | TechCrunch.
Google is launching a new Gmail web app and updates to Calendar and Docs, in an effort to increase its products’ offline utility.
Google users have called bringing Gmail, Calendar and Docs offline an essential step for improving productivity, Group Product Manager Rajen Sheth told Mashable. The problem, he explained, is that when users need offline access to their email or calendar, they really need it.
To that end, Google is launching a new Chrome app called Gmail Offline. Separate from Gmail itself, the new app is designed for accessing, managing and sending email while you’re disconnected from the web. “We can build on top of a lot of HTML5 standards, which gives us the capabilities to make it work offline,” Sheth said.
The HTML5 app looks and feels a lot like the Gmail app for tablets. That’s because Gmail Offline is based off the tablet version, which was designed to function with or without Internet access. It focuses on the key features users need to access while offline, including organizing, starring, labeling, archiving and responding to email. It won’t give you access to Gmail Labs features, but it will get the job done.
In addition to the Gmail Offline app, Google is rolling out the ability to access Calendar and Docs offline. The feature, available by clicking the gear icon at the top of the page, lets you view events and RSVP to appointments in Calendar and view documents in Docs. Offline document editing isn’t available yet, but Google promises to find a way to make it work. Part of the problem is finding a way to make sure document edits made offline don’t override edits made by online collaborators.
The apps are only available through the Chrome Web Store at the moment. If you try to use the Calendar or Docs offline features, you will be prompted to first install Chrome. Google says that it intends to roll out its offline apps to other browsers once they support the functionality.
via Google Launches Offline Versions of Gmail, Calendar & Docs.
Three finger swipes still work in Google Chrome. The issue you’re having is that default swipes in Lion are two fingers. Go into System Prefs, then into trackpad and change the swipes from 2 fingers to 3. You can also make it both 2 and 3 finger swipes to accomplish the same thing, in which case swiping will work in Chrome and you’ll see get the cool two finger swipes in Safari that have special animations.
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