Google Chrome 17 Hits Stable Channel

It's been a busy week for Google Chrome - Google today posted Chrome 17 to the stable channel, two days after releasing the first Chrome beta for Android 4.0 tablets and phones. Chrome version 17.0.963.46 patches a number of security holes and adds some small new features and cosmetic tweaks.

Chrome 17 adds a feature called Download Scanning Protection to the browser, which compares downloaded .exes and .msi files to a Google-maintained list and lets the user know if the file has been downloaded from a known malicious site. Users can still click through the warning messages, but it's an extra level of security that may occasionally prevent infection.

The other major innovation is more aggressive Omnibox Prerendering - the browser will begin to load search results and webpages in the background before you finish typing them in an attempt to make page loading seem faster. There are also some new APIs for Extensions and "other small changes," including the fact that the new tab button no longer has a plus sign in it. For a complete list of bug and security fixes, the release notes are linked for your convenience below.

The new version of Chrome is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and most flavors of Linux.

Source: Google

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Google TV Goes ARM with Marvell's ARMADA 1500

It wouldn't be far off the mark to call Google TV as one of the unmitigated disasters of 2010 - 2011. Through the failure of the Logitech Revue, it was responsible for Logitech's below-par performance last year, and also for the stepping down of its CEO. Anand covered Intel's winding down of the Digital Home Group and it could be said that Google TV / Intel's concept of Smart TV not taking off as expected was one of the reasons.

However, Google doesn't give up on its efforts without a fight. With access to the Android market and an upgrade to Honeycomb, Google TV received some life support last October. However, pricing and device power consumption were the two other prime factors which needed to get addressed. In order to take care of these factors, it was inevitable that Google and its partners would end up moving to an ARM based platform. Given that ARM has remained the architecture of choice for Android smartphones, this was also a move predicted by many.

We covered Marvell's foray into the DMA (Digital Media Adapter) market with their ARMADA 1000 platform. Today, Marvell is officially launching the next generation ARMADA 1500 (88DE3010) SoC. They also announced their team up with Google and indicated that all the Google TV boxes at the 2012 CES would be powered by Marvell silicon. Read on for our analysis.
 

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LG Premiering Google TV Powered Televisions At CES

Our inboxes are filled to the brim with releases of all types; most hit the round file and never end up on the site, some are a bit more compelling. This one goes in the latter category, though the news will only sound good to some of you. LG will be introducing a 3D set that combines their own Smart TV platform with Google TV. The set will be previewed at the LG press conference on Monday, for now we have the linked PR below and a few glamour shots.

It is likely that the TV will feature the latest Google TV hardware we heard about earlier today. If the press shots are at all indicative, the Google TV platform may soon be customizable in the same fashion as Android on mobile phones is today. LG's Smart TV with Google TV appears to feature an entirely different interface than we've seen on prior Google TV hardware, looking like an amalgam of LG's prior Smart TV interface and Google TV. Most notably is an interface that includes current content being played back in a panel alongside the interface. Previously the interface was overlaid on content, and video coexisted alongside interface elements only within certain apps. 

We'll see how this all shakes out Monday. Till then, we'll keep sifting through our inboxes. 

UPDATE: Following up on LG's press release, Google posted an update to their Google TV Blog that expands on the announcement and reveals that LG will be using their own L9 SoC in their line of Smart TVs. In April, LG announced that they would become an ARM licensee, and this appears to be the first fruits of that agreement. We hadn't heard of the L9 previously, and suspect that it is an ARM Cortex-A9 derivative, though GPU and other specifications remain a mystery. Google's post reaffirmed commitments from Sony, Samsung and Vizio to include Google TV devices in their line-ups, and mentioned MediaTek as SoC manufacturer for Google TV based products. 

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Google using Chrome browser to flog Chromebooks

Google has started to use its popular Chrome browser to try to sell Chromebooks for the Christmas period.

The simple adverts have been showing up at the top of the Google Chrome homepage as Google tries to push the Chrome OS-fuelled notebooks.

Currently only Acer and Samsung have made Chromebooks, with the latter far and away the dominant manufacturer.

Simplicity

Although the notebooks have won praise for simplicity and the speed in which a user can be up and running, the offline features remain a major sticking point as TechRadar's Samsung Chromebook review suggests.

A pop-up shop in a PC World and Currys superstore in London's Tottenham Court Road garnered a nice bit of publicity, but Chromebooks cannot be accused of being over-hyped since their launch.

In truth, as offline functionality is added to Chrome OS, it becomes a more viable alternative to Windows, although key products like Google Docs' usefulness without a connection are still severely limited.

Google's Chrome browser is going from strength to strength, however, and with the apps becoming more prominent within it, and the decision to advertise Chromebooks, there may be light at the end of the tunnel for those who believe that the potential of a cloud-based computer strategy is high.

But can Chromebooks come good? Find out what we think in our video below:

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Samsung and Google Cancel Unpacked Event - May Delay Nexus Prime and Ice Cream Sandwich

Google and Samsung had scheduled an event, Unpacked: Google Edition, for October 11th, but the companies today reported that the event has been canceled. It was expected that Samsung would release a new smartphone, which has been referred as both, Galaxy Nexus and Nexus Prime in reports. Google was also set to launch the next version of Android (4.0) called Ice Cream Sandwich. The new Samsung phone would have run the new Android obviously. 

No concrete reason for the cancelation was given, although Samsung said that they felt that "it wasn't the right time to announce a new product". This suggests that the companies decided to postpone the event due to Steve Jobs' death, and if this is the case, it's a very respectful call towards Steve. The event is set to be rescheduled at a later date but no further details have been given yet. 

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

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Google launches Chrome Zone in London store

Google has launched a 'shop-within-a-shop' at the flagship Currys and PC World superstore in London's Tottenham Court Road in order to sell its Chromebooks.

The Chrome Zone has been daubed with a primary Google-style brush, and will look to explain the cloud OS notebooks to the general public.

The only notebook on offer will, of course, be the Samsung Chromebook, with Acer's version yet to launch in this country, despite being badged as 'coming soon' since the launch in June.

Great deal of thought

"We've put a great deal of thought into the design of this Chrome Zone," said Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing for Google in the UK and Ireland.

"Chromebooks are the perfect notebook computers for people who live on the web, and offer a faster, safer and more secure online experience, without all the time-consuming and confusing maintenance required by typical computers."

Mark Slater, category director at Dixons Retail, said: "Initial customer response to the launch of Samsung's Chromebook has been excellent and we are expecting a lot of customer interest and excitement now it is in-store.

"It's the most revolutionary laptop on the market and as the leading electrical retailer in the UK we are thrilled that our flagship store has UK exclusivity to showcase this new technology to our customers.

"We have dedicated staff who have been specifically trained in using the Chromebook to demonstrate all its unique benefits and features to customers."

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How to Avoid Being Penalized By Consistent Google Panda Updates

Google Panda is an algorithm that is used by the popular search engine to find websites and pages in poor quality. A site that is of poor quality may end up being “panda slapped” and will be removed from the Google search engine or severely penalized.

This is an algorithm that has recently been updated to easily find pages that are not of good quality. However, you can avoid penalties if you use the right standards with Google Panda.

Make unique content:

You should create more original items on your website. Google Panda will penalize sites that do not have any unique contents on them. You should make sure that everything on your site is original and does not feature any copies of things that you might have placed on other sites.

Do not duplicate your content:

Duplicate content is content that will be the same on multiple pages on your site. It will cause your site to appear repetitive and unoriginal. You should make sure that you are using more unique content if you want to keep your site looking as unique as possible.

Keep your ads working?

You should monitor exactly who is sponsoring your site with regards to what contents they have to offer. Ads that do not relate to what people are searching for when getting on your site can appear in some cases. They can keep your site from being as useful as possible.

Make your site understandable:

You should also see that you are making it obvious as to what every page on your site is about. Google Panda tends to view vague or unclear pages in a negative manner. It will end up creating penalties on sites that are not clear in quality or content. You should make sure that you avoid vague pages when you are getting a site ready.

Focus on keeping it easy:

A website should be very easy to move around. A user should not have any problems with going from one section of a site to another. Google Panda will look through all of these problems and will penalize sites that are not easy to move around. You should make sure that you keep your site clear and easy to handle if you want to avoid being penalized.

Consistent updates are key:

The last thing to do is to keep your site updated when you can. A blog on your site can help you out. Keeping your blog updated with relevant updates and details on your site can help you out with getting your site to be a relevant and well updated one.

These are good tips to use if you want to keep your site from being harmed by Google Panda. It will help to keep from dealing with problems that relate to Google Panda by keeping your site relevant and keeping all of its content under control. Doing the right things can help you to keep your site from being seen as an irrelevant one that may be hit by Google Panda.

Author Bio: Maher is a blogger and avid social media user. He works for smsfi from where you can send free sms.

Google TV 2.0 Coming to Logitech Revue This Summer

Promising prospects for linux hybrid graphics in Google Summer of Code 2011 @ www.phoronix.com

[Phoronix] Multi-GPU PRIME & GPU Hot-Switching Proposal

a Russian student developer has just voiced two ambitious proposals: Multi-GPU PRIME support and GPU hot-switching.

The Russian student developer, Антонов Николай, is interested in either open-source PRIME multi-GPU support or multi-graphics card hot-switching support to be worked on as this year's Google Summer of Code.

Open-source GPU PRIME support came about a few days over a year ago as an attempt to provide multi-vendor graphics processor offloading / multi-GPU rendering. The PRIME name comes from David Airlie, the author of the original code, dubbing it off NVIDIA's Optimus Technology that was introduced a month prior. Unlike Optimus, PRIME could theoretically work with any open-source graphics driver regardless of hardware vendor. However, the only active work on PRIME lasted for a matter of days and so David looked for someone else to take over this work. Now there may be that chance with the 2011 Google Summer of Code.

The other alternative project that Antonov has expressed interest in is graphics card hot-switching for X.Org. This would be interesting for being able to pop-in a second GPU without blowing out an existing X.Org Server or simply for dual-GPU notebooks to flip from the integrated to discrete graphics seamlessly. It's along the lines of last year's switcheroo work, but more integrated into the X.Org Server for seamless switching.

With these two features, however, there is some display-server-specific work, so any X.Org Server code wouldn't necessarily provide direct benefit to the Wayland Display Server.

Google updates new commenting feature for Google Docs

Google Docs is an excellent product from Google company which helps to user to edit the document in online without any use of special software’s. The latest news from Google is they are going to update new commenting feature for Google docs, so it’s like a real time chat between the users which are editing the same document with comment feature. Whenever user comment on the document and that comment will appears on right side of  the document including with their profile pictures and timestamps. Even you can use “@” to interact and reply with particular user comment or discussion on that document.

If user is offline the comments will appear on their e-mail account, so that you can reply for that comment via email without visiting the Google docs web page. Users can also read and view the full discussions simply by clicking the discussion button from the top menu of that document.

Live: Google I/O Day Two, The Chrome Keynote

We're here at Google's I/O conference in San Francisco where we're about to get a huge dose of Chrome. We suspect this will be the launch of Chrome OS. Tune in to our live notes below for all the details.Google VP Sundar Pichai has taken the stage.Last year announced that 70 million users were on the Chrome browser. They're now at 160 million active users.last year were at Chrome 4. Didn't have Mac stable versions.In the last twelve months have been releasing updates every six weeks. Just pushed Chrome 12. Many new APIs. Speed is also key. 12x improvement in Javascript improvement alone.]]>

Google Announces 160 Million Chrome Users, Massive Improvements Coming

Chrome's user base "more than doubled" in the past year with browser uptake increasing from 70 million to 160 million thanks to Linux, Windows, and OS X versions of the browser finally reaching parity. Google is touting speed and security as their major priorities with each Chrome release.

The Google Chromebook Breaks Cover At I/O 2011, Hits Retailers June 15th

The Google Chromebook is here for reals now. Google first announced the nondescript CR-48 Chrome OS Notebook back in December of 2010 but the production version, now called Chromebook, was just announced at Google I/O 2011. The idea is the same as the original in that it's basically a barebones computer that runs Google Chrome OS. In many ways the philosophy is a lot like Apple's iPad in that the hardware takes a backseat to the user experience. Google is selling a Chrome interaction platform, not a traditional notebook.]]>

Coming This Summer: Fully Offline Gmail, Google Calendar, And Google Docs

While it hasn't always been clear just how big of a bet Google was going to make on Chrome OS, after Google I/O today, it seems very clear that they're very serious. With the launch of Chromebooks, Google is aiming to strike right at the heart of Microsoft and the Windows stronghold. But they know that one big hold up remains before a browser-based OS can be everywhere: offline access.With that in mind, on stage today, Google's Sundar Pichai revealed that Google has internally been using offline versions of their three most popular apps for months now: Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. And this summer, all users will be able to use these apps offline too.]]>

Google Announces Chromebooks For Business, At $28 Monthly Per User

Google Product VP Sundar Pichai announced today at Google I/O that the Chromebooks functionality for consumers will be expanded for businesses. According to Pichai, 50% of companies today are running the ten-year-old Windows XP software. In addition, that fact that users are increasingly using their laptops to move in and out of the company firewalls has created problems for CIOs and IT admins.Said Pichai, "Many companies have a hard time upgrading OS and most users use laptops today. They take them in and out of enterprise firewalls and this is challenging for IT admins. CIOs and IT admins are moving computing to the cloud."]]>

Google Announces Google Talk Video Chat for Android 2.3.4

Back when we reviewed the Nexus S and Android 2.3, one of our only complaints was that gingerbread sorely needed front facing video chat support. Third party video chat clients take time to be updated to support new devices, and at that point there wasn't a simple solution. It seemed inevitable that Google would leverage existing Google Talk video support to enable video chat not just between phones but also the desktop.

Google today announced just what we've been waiting for. First party video chat support is coming in Android 2.3.4 to Nexus S devices as an OTA update in the next few weeks. Other Android 2.3+ devices will get the update in the future depending on manufacturer OTA update releases. 

The update will enable video chat support on devices over 3G, 4G (if your carrier supports it) or WiFi between enabled Android 2.3+ smartphones and tablets, and the desktop Google Talk client. 

 

In the client, a video or voice chat button will appear next to contacts which can then be tapped to initiate the chat. The client will suspend video chat and continue audio as well if the video chat session loses focus in Android, and any text chat recieved will be superimposed on the ongoing video chat. The interface looks like a slimmed-down version of what we saw in Android 3.0 on the Motorola Xoom. 

Google has also provided a short video demonstrating overall functionality. 

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Google Chrome will protect your CPU from harmful downloads

Google Chrome will soon make the harsh bowels of the internet safer for everyone. Google Chrome already protects users from harmful websites by displaying a warning message beforehand. Soon, Google will implement a new security feature that will protect against dangerous downloads as well.

In a future update for Google Chrome, the following message will appear whenever you attempt to download harmful Windows executable files.

This warning doesn’t do enough to catch someone’s attention. When this update is rolled out to the general public, hopefully it’ll be a lot more noticeable. There’s also an option to save the file anyway. Don’t say the mighty Google didn’t warn you if your computer starts acting up.

Chrome will determine what downloads are harmful based on listings from the Safe Browsing API. Also, Google won’t know the exact web address the malicious site or download is located. This is done to protect user privacy.

For now, this feature is only open to a small number of users who are a part of the Chrome development release channel.

White Google Nexus S Headed To Vodafone UK

Vodafone UK has announced that they will be selling a white version of the Google Nexus S smartphone in the UK and 23 other countries around the world, and it looks like the white version will be exclusive to Vodafone.

The Google Nexus S comes with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and it has a 4 inch WVGA AMOLED touchscreen display with a resolution of 480 pixels, processing is provided by a 1GHz processor.

There is also two cameras, with a front facing VGA camera for video chat and  a rear facing 5 megapixel camera, it also feature NFC capabilities, A-GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR

Vodafone UK have not given an exact date of when the white Nexus S will be available in the UK and there are also no details on pricing.

Google Android 3.0 - Honeycomb Preview

The tablet market today is a far more interesting place than it was just over a year ago. Since the launch of the iPad, there hasn’t been a real competitor to iOS in the tablet space. We’ve seen customized versions of Android for larger devices like the Galaxy Tab, but they’ve all had their fair share of limitations. In fact, Android releases up to Gingerbread were never really designed to be used on larger screens. But Honeycomb has the potential to change all that and it could be just the catalyst manufacturers need to come up with the next iPad-killer.

It’s been public knowledge that Honeycomb (v3.0) was going to be the next major release of Android after Gingerbread (v2.3). It all started when Andy Rubin showed up at the D: Dive Into Mobile event with a mysterious looking tablet that was later revealed to be the Motorola Xoom running Honeycomb. CES gave us a sneak peek at Xoom and a host of other tablets that would run Honeycomb. At the Honeycomb launch event a few weeks back, Google gave us a full-blown preview of the OS. Now, with the Xoom releasing this month, the time has come for Google's official answer to the iPad.

Honeycomb has been designed ground-up for use on tablets. Google also confirmed that Honeycomb is a tablet-only OS for the time being and that some of the new features would eventually transition over to phone versions of the OS. That’s where the next release of Android codenamed Ice Cream comes into picture; more on that later. Honeycomb represents Google’s first effort to be a serious contender in the tablet market. Make no mistake here Honeycomb is an absolutely massive release with a smorgasbord of new user and developer features; some of which are so well implemented that they could give iOS a run for it’s money. Without further ado, let us dive into the juicy bits.

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