A U.S. District Judge wants Apple and Samsung to sit down and have tea, Apple’s new campus is getting some love from neighboring cities, and Hulu has decided to play nice with those new App Store subscription rules. The remainders for Monday, June 20, 2011 are asking everyone to join hands and start a love train.

Macworld

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Google unveiled a beta version of its Chrome OS Tuesday morning.

The company showed off the operating system, which has been in development for over a year, during a press event here. Also making an appearance at Tuesday’s event was the Chrome Web Store, which we expected to see launch today. If you’re using the Chrome browser, you can visit the store and start installing apps now.

Chrome OS, which doesn’t go into general release until next year, relies entirely on web-based applications for basic productivity tasks like mail, document editing, photo sharing, social networking and reading news. Its inner workings are based on Google’s own Chrome browser.

To get around the connectivity problem inherent to web-based apps, Google says every Chrome OS laptop will ship with both wi-fi and cellular connections. The company has partnered with Verizon — when you buy a Chrome OS laptop, you get 100MB of free data per month for two years. There are no long-term contracts. If you want to upgrade, you only pay for what you need. Chrome OS users can buy a day pass from Verizon, or choose from a few long-term plans starting at $10 per month.

Acer and Samsung Chrome OS laptops will go on sale in mid-2011, with more OEMs to follow, the company says.

In the meantime, Google is launching a pilot program to get hardware running Chrome OS into developers’ hands. Early adopters can sign up to get a black, unbranded Chrome OS notebook, codenamed “Cr-48.”

Google VP of product management Sundar Pichai held one up during the event — it’s a full-sized laptop with a 12.1″ screen, an Intel Atom processor, a world-mode 3G radio, a flash memory drive, and it has a built-in “jailbreaking” mode so you can hack it. Google is also giving away a few of the pilot laptops to its Facebook fans.

From what we’ve seen so far, Chrome OS is extremely fast (the demo we saw was running on the Cr-48 laptop) and, provided you already have a Google account, it literally takes under a minute to get up and running.

Pichai, who has been using ChromeOS for six months, continuously gushed about its speed, which was evident during the demos.

“By building an experience based totally on the web, we’ve made all of the user experiences instant,” he said.

When you launch Chrome OS for the first time, you log in with your Google account and immediately see a grid view of pre-installed web apps like Gmail, Google Reader, a text editor and apps from The New York Times and other partners. All of the apps shortcuts live inside a browser window, so if you want to start surfing, you just type into the URL bar. Chrome OS also has built-in controls for syncing, so any user can log into any Chrome OS laptop and get the desktop and the same experience they’re used to.

From the home screen, you go to the Web Store and install single-serving apps that are enhanced versions of those already available on the web. The download-and-install option gives you a few more niceties, like the ability to answer e-mail, work on your docs and play games when you don’t have a web connection.

The Web Store launched Tuesday in the U.S. with around 500 applications. Other countries and regions will follow soon, Google says.

These installable web apps square well with the cloud-based direction we’re currently heading. Whether you’re reading a book, writing e-mails, or sharing documents, cloud-based apps allow you to stay synced across your phone and all of your computers.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed up at Tuesday’s event to drive home his belief the time is right to release Chrome OS.

“We finally have a viable third choice for an operating system on the desktop,” he said.

“We’re now able to build web applications that are at the scale and power of desktop applications,” he said, citing the speed an security innovations made by Firefox, as well as new technologies like HTML5, as the advancements that paved the way to a web-based operating system.

In a round of demos, Amazon showed off two apps — a web app version of its Kindle reader, and a product browser called Windowshop. We saw apps from Sports Illustrated and The New York Times. They both looked like a rich news readers, with enhanced navigation heavy on HTML5 and JavaScript, all the recent headlines, photos and videos loaded dynamically. Curiously, there were no ads on display in the apps.

Many of the apps are free or available under a freemium model. Some of them, like games, cost $2 or $3 each. You buy apps from the Chrome Web Store using Google Checkout, so you need to have a Google account to buy apps.

Google has also partnered with Citrix for easy installation of enterprise apps with secure, company-only sharing features. The Citrix platform will launch during the first half of 2011, the company says.

We’ve seen hints of the Chrome OS and Web Store launch in recent weeks. In Novemeber, rumors that OEMs were prepping laptops loaded with Chrome OS surfaced. Just last week, Google debuted Chrome 8, the first version of its web browser with the built-in ability to plug into the Chrome Web Store. TechCrunch uncovered an e-mail from Google telling developers to get ready for the Web Store launch. In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, the company unceremoniously posted a page for getting started with its Google Cloud Print service that lets you print a page from a laptop or mobile to any printer hooked up to a Windows PC with internet access.

Google admits there is still much work to be done on Chrome OS, and the bug tracking page shows numerous stability problems and hardware shortcomings.

“We’ve made amazing progress but we still have a lot of work to do,” Pichia said.

If you want to try it out today, you can join Google’s developer program and install Chrome OS on a wide range of hardware. But as Google VP of engineering Linus Upson said Tuesday, the process is still rather hairy for non-geeks.

“The question is, how comfortable are you compiling from source,” he joked.

See also:

• Rumor: First Chrome OS Notebooks Land This Month
• Google Chrome OS: Ditch Your Hard Drives, the Future Is the Web
• Chrome Store Possibly Launching Dec. 7
• Chrome Web Store Is Now Open for Developers
• Chrome 8 Arrives
• Mozilla Shows Off Plans for an Open Web App Store

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The latest epic series from National Geographic is Great Migrations. It’s a seven-part series that takes you around the world to see the arduous journeys taken by some species.

Move as millions. Survive as one.

This is the first National Geographic wildlife film shot entirely in Blu-Ray native format. It promises breathtaking high-definition clarity. (Unfortunately, my preview episodes were ordinary DVDs.)

My six-year old was particularly fascinated by the red crab migration on Christmas Island. Forty-five million red crabs migrate from the inland forest to lay eggs in the Indian Ocean.  After a week-long journey, the crabs take a refreshing dip in the sea and get ready for breeding activity. Eventually, the female crabs release their larvae into the harsh waves. Many years, none of the larvae survive the tides and feeding predators. But every few years, millions of baby crabs survive 25 days of growth to wash back as a red wave on the shore. They complete the circle of migration by heading back to the forest in the center of the island.

If you don’t find the crabs interesting there are flying foxes in Australia, army ants in Costa Rica, wildebeests in Kenya, great white sharks in Mexican waters, zebras in Tanzania, elephants in Mali and two dozen other stories of migration. You can view some clips on the Great Migrations webpage.

As a parent, these are powerful stories. All of the migrations involve breeding. The species take these epic journeys to create their next generation. Our struggles to raise geek generation 2.0 look pale in comparison.

Sperm whales, carriers of the largest brain on the planet, may travel a million miles over their 50-year lives. The males return from their polar hunting grounds to temperate equatorial waters to find females. The sperm whale’s clicks are the loudest sound made by any animal. We are not sure what all the sounds mean, but surely some must mean that they are on their way.

My kids and I both loved watching the the show. The visuals are spectacular on a standard TV and I expect them to be breathtaking in high definition.

Remember that migration is the circle of life and not every creature makes the full circle. Some of the wildebeests do not make it all the way across the crocodile infested river. There is a little blood, more dread than gore. I had to point out that it was bad for the baby wildebeest, but good for the crocodile. They have babies too.

Personally, I enjoyed Alec Baldwin’s narration. But I have to admit that I kept waiting  for a quip from Jack Donaghy (Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming).

The first episode of Great Migrations premieres on Sunday, November 7. The the companion book, Great Migrations, goes on sale October 12.

The shows producers were kind enough to send me preview DVDs and a copy of the companion book, Great Migrations.

View full post on GeekDad

Send your kids outside to play! Fall is here, and … okay, yeah, some of you are experiencing some ridiculous heat right now, but pretty soon it’ll be lovely weather outdoors. There are all sorts of good reasons to get outside—not the least of which is that it seems to be tied to better eyesight, even if the kids are just sitting there being inactive. But of course, if you can get them running and jumping around, then that’s even better for a host of other reasons. They’ll be healthier, which means that when we’re all old maybe we can get some money back in Social Security for ourselves instead of having to pay for ridiculous health care expenses. (Hey, a guy can dream, right?)

If you happen to be in West Virginia near Shepherdstown, there’s another good reason to get your kids outdoors: free shoes! Vivo Barefoot is an event partner and they’ll actually be giving away roughly 180 pairs of their kids’ shoes, first-come first-serve. The Freedom’s Run is “part of a larger initiative to benefit Wild and Wonderful Trails for Every Child, which builds fitness trails and creates ‘learning’ gardens in schools.” They’re also very interested in kids’ physical development and are trying to encourage running with and without shoes on the new trail.

Anyway, I’m a fan of barefoot shoes myself but I know that they’re still fairly expensive, even the kids’ versions—though unless you’re nearby it’s probably still cheaper than a trip to West Virginia. If you are in the area, however, take a look and consider participating! Aside from the kids’ run there are also a 5K, 10K, half marathon and full marathon.

In the meantime, for those of you runners who can’t make it to Shepherdstown this weekend, have a look at the “world’s first fully-illustrated running blog”: Drawn to Run. Illustrated by an Australian woman who calls herself Flee, it’s a pretty new site with some very fun running-related cartoons, and you can see that Flee loves her Vibram FiveFingers.

OK, now get out there! Go on, shoo, and don’t come back inside until it’s time for supper.

View full post on GeekDad

You may have heard a thing or two about Google’s music service, likely to be dubbed Google Music.  The idea was discussed at I/O back in May, which expectations we would see something around September.  Well, September is here, and we’ve really heard nothing new about Google Music, until now.

Reports are now coming in that sources are revealing that Google Music may be landing sometime around Christmas.  Sources are also revealing that Google is planning to launch the service along with Android 3.0.  There’s only one catch, it seems that Google Music, being spearheaded by Andy Rubin himself, is having zero luck in signing deals with any major record labels.

Music is not the only area where Google is reportedly having difficulty getting content providers to come on board.  There have been numerous reports that they are having an equally difficult time swaying studios and networks to partner with them over Google TV.  One thing is for certain, though, and that is Google had better hurry up and get some record labels on board, or they will be launching a shiny new music service with no music to be found.

Google may be gearing up to launch their music service along with Android 3.0

View full post on Google Android News Android Forums

Quick, name one thing worse than the latest firmware update to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 not being to Android 2.x. Stumped? How about the latest update not only keeping the phone at Android 1.6 but also introducing a WiFi bug that proves to be quite the nuisance when located in an area with poor cell reception. Never mind the fact that you probably rely on WiFi working properly most in areas where reception may be poor, if your signal happens to drop down to zero bars then gets wind of a good connection and the bars jump back up, out goes the WiFi. The issue has only appeared in phones that have gone ahead with the R2BA026 update. Our advice would be to simply steer clear of it and wait for a fix from SE.

[Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog via Engadget]

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Verizon just sweetened the pot for those who plan to head out and pick up the Motorola Droid X tomorrow. Not only will VZW be offering exclusively the SanDisk 32GB microSDHC card, but for new Droid X owners they will but slashing $50 off of the $150 regular price tag. It will still cost you a pretty heavy hundred bucks, but the 32GB card brings the Droid X’s storage up to a sizable 40GB. If you’re looking for that kind of space for media and software (and with the Droid’s HD video recording capabilities and the soon to be released Android 2.2 update allowing app storage on the SD card you just may well need it), it might just be too good of a deal to pass up.

[Press Release, via Droid-Life]

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One of the reasons I have been using my Google Nexus One more than the N900 over the last month or so is the sheer number and quality of applications for Android. The N900 is a fantastic device, but applications need to get better. I saw a Tweet from Chanse (Nokia employee) that he was testing a new Twitter application called TweeGo. I followed the link to Maemo Central and followed the instructions to download and install the application to my N900. I also discovered an update to Witter and can honestly say that lack of a good Twitter app is no longer a concern for me on the N900.

TweeGo

I was getting some dependency errors and had to enter apt-get -f install to get things straightened out, but now all is good. TweeGo definitely has a slick look and feel to it, but still feels a bit early in development with some limits on Twitter functionality. You can view your Twitter stream, post status updates, and perform some functions after tapping on a Tweet (Retweet, reply, favorite, unfollow). I do not see any way to view mentions or direct messages, update your status with photos, or view conversations/threads. I was all ready to stop using my current application, Witter, and make the switch to TweeGo when I saw there was an update to Witter made today too.

Witter

The updated Witter version improves the UI, which is the area I wanted to see fixed up since it already had a ton of functionality built into it. As you can see in the screenshot, you can now view profile pics in your Twitter feed while also getting a cleaner default theme. The one final function I would like to see is the ability to view the conversation. Other than that, I have to say I am quite happy with Witter and am pleased with the way applications are rolling out on the N900.

View full post on Nokia Experts