Google has filed at least four patent applications for technology it is building into its Chrome browser to try to make the web a more powerful foundation for applications.

Three patent applications concern Google’s Native Client, a technology for letting downloaded software modules run directly on a processor rather than more slowly through on-the-fly decoding as with the commonly used JavaScript. The fourth patent application involves O3D, a technology to let browser applications take advantage of 3D acceleration of graphics hardware.

Ultimately, Google hopes to standardize the technology so all browsers can use it, though it is not waiting for a standard. “Native Client so far is outside any standards process. We’re in discussions with other browser vendors on how to move that forward. We’d like to see all these things standardized,” said Linus Upson, engineering director for the Chrome browser and Chrome OS, in an interview in December.

The lead engineer for Google’s Chrome Operating System told Ars Technica the emerging product and its Chrome Web browser sidekick will have a complete media player that approximates the functionality of Windows Media Player. Chrome OS boots up a netbook in a fraction of the time it takes to start today’s existing computers. With Google’s Chrome Web browser, Chrome OS loads Web applications in just a few more seconds. If Google can complete Chrome OS and get partners Acer, Asus, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, to make and sell Chrome OS machines, it will be quite the feat and quite the gauntlet for Microsoft,

The Google Chrome Operating System isn’t expected to find its way onto netbooks until the end of 2010, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that it is aimed at disrupting the entrenched Microsoft Windows operating system.

The lead Chrome engineer told Ars Technica the emerging product and its Chrome Web browser sidekick will have a complete media player that approximates the functionality of Windows Media Player, which Microsoft made ubiquitous by serving it with Windows.

Chrome OS is an open source Web operating system Google is building to run on netbooks as an alternative to computers running traditional operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac. Those machines take several seconds or minutes to boot up.

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Asus has prototype Android and Chrome OS smartbooks in its labs and is currently deciding whether to release an ARM-based device alongside its Intel-based Eee PC netbooks, the company’s chairman has told ZDNet UK.

Jonney Shih, Asus’ chairman, said in an interview on Wednesday that the manufacturer was still not sure how many people would sacrifice the application compatibility advantages of Windows and Intel for a lower-cost subnotebook running a Linux-based OS on an ARM chipset. He also said Asus was working on a tablet or slate device.

“With the current Wintel-based Eee PC, the advantage is you still enjoy the [application] compatibility,” Shih said. “The smartbook is usually based on ARM — then you will have some advantage in the cost. This will further push the original direction of the netbook.”

Shih said Asus — the manufacturer that kicked off the netbook phenomenon with the first Eee PC in 2007 — was “still not 100 percent sure” what proportion of its customers would go for a smartbook over a Windows netbook, adding that other considerations in putting out a smartbook included the choice between Google’s two operating systems, Android and Chrome OS.

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• Asus Pondering Between Android And Chrome OS (ubergizmo.com)

- Times are tough out there for the operating system: Its lucrative spot in “the stack” between hardware and software is, at least for businesses, becoming just a container for a virtual machine. Not only is the operating system no longer managing the hardware, thanks to the work of VMware and Citrix, but as applications continue move to the Web operating systems are also losing relevance on the software side to the browser.

Making the matter no easier for traditional operating system vendors, upstart and free OS alternatives exist like Google’s Chrome OS and Canonical’s Ubuntu.

So with operating system powerhouses like Microsoft and Apple, and upstarts like Google, the competitive window looks pretty small. But Tariq Krim is trying to make money between the operating system’s rock and hard place: he’s chief executive of Jolicloud, a company that wants to own the go-to operating system for netbooks.

Jolicloud is a stripped down operating system that, instead of running software, connects to Web services using their application programming interface (API). It has an application store stocked with Web services like Skype, Boxee and Gmail and users can install applications with one click. Krim thinks consumer computing will continue to become more Web-application centric, and he wants to put Jolicloud in a position to take a cut. “It’s like the iPhone meet Facebook meets Evernote,” says the chief executive.

In launching the European company, Krim says he’s planning on somewhat radical assumption: that hardware will become so cheap that people can just give it away. “They’re becoming disposible,” he says. “We wanted to prodive an experience where basically the computer becomes totally irrelevant.”

Krim means what he says: Jolicloud is designed to allow the computer to be “recyclable” with the push of a button. The data is backed up on cloud-based storage and with the proper credentials can be restored to any Jolicloud device.

Microsoft Corp. is prepping the first service pack, better known as “SP1”, for its new operating system, Windows 7, according to a report from a prominent Windows blogger.

Rafael Rivera has quoted some registry codes on “Within Windows” that are pointing towards the first service pack for the highly popular operating system.

Incidentally, Microsoft has this tradition of releasing the first service pack around a year after the new iteration of Windows OS is released, but this new report marks a shift in its strategy. 

This perhaps owes to the considerable success of Mac OS X, and imminent entry of Google in the OS domain with its new Chrome OS.

The first service pack, which incorporates already-released security fixes along with new bug patches as well as several other new features, could be crucial for the software maker as several corporations won’t comprehensively deploy the OS across its networks until the pack is released.
 

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• Microsoft readying Windows 7 for Service Pack 1? (seattlepi.com)

Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can expect more attention from cybercriminals in 2010, according to a new report released on Tuesday by McAfee Labs.

Also at risk are users of Adobe products including Acrobat Reader and Flash. And the security firm predicts Google’s Chrome OS will “create another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users”.

The company also anticipates smarter and more dangerous Trojans that “follow the money”, as well as a “significant trend toward a more distributed and resilient botnet infrastructure that relies much more on peer-to-peer technologies”.

In an interview, David Marcus, McAfee Labs’ director of security research and communications, said he expects “an explosion of Facebook and other services targeted by cybercriminals”. In addition to malware such as Koobface that spreads among Facebook users’ friends list, Marcus expects an increase in rogue Facebook applications.

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• Adobe predicted as top 2010 hacker target (theregister.co.uk)
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January starts off 2010 with much excitement and anticipation. January 7th is the start of the Computer Electronics Show (CES). This is where vendors like Nikon will present their products like the CoolPix S1000pj. January 26th Apple will be making a significant product announcement. It has been greatly speculated that Jobs will be announcing the long anticipated Apple “iSlate.” Lastly, it has just been reported by ComputerWorld that on January 5th, Google will be holding an Android, invitation-only, event at the Googleplex in Mountain View. The event will consist of a press conference, presentations and question and answer sessions.

Although January starts off the new year with much fan-fare — it’s 2010 that the industry will be watching very closely. The speculation is that 2010 will be the year of the tablet. We seem to have more speculation than facts these days. The rumor mill is producing four distinct tablet stories. We are looking at the Microsoft Courier, the Apple “iSlate,” HP might be in tablet development and it was just reported in Gizmodo that Google and HTC are supposedly working on a tablet.

Some in the industry are speculating if Schmidt is purposely holding the Google conference right before CES. This is a similar move to what Jobs did in 2007 — when he announced the iPhone right before CES. In essence, the iPhone became all the talk at CES 2007. I think that Schmidt is a smart man. This very well calculated move worked for Jobs and Schmidt is hoping it will do the same for Google.

In a post first reported by David Richards of Smarthouse, he confirms that HTC has a product that will compete with the Apple tablet. It appears that Schmidt is going to pull a “one more thing” on January 5th.

HTC, who has been working closely with Google for the past 18 months have several working models of a touch tablet including one model, is based on the new Google Chrome Operating System say sources. An Android based device which is set to be shown privately to core HTC customers at the CES Show is set to incorporate new Qualcomm processors, touch technology and new software from Adobe.

Although the competitive landscape of the tablet is young it would appear that Apple and Google have a significant lead. Of the two, I do believe that Apple has the advantage. Leaving technology behind for a moment. The tablets will succeed based on two factors — price point and content.

Apple is rumored to be coming in between $700 – $900. The price is rather steep and may keep many from buying the iSlate. The high price maybe justified since the iSlate is apparently content rich. Apart from what is already offered in iTunes the story is that CBS and Disney are very interested in providing TV subscription services. Additionally, Apple has been rumored to be speaking with publishers, broadcasters and movie studios to bring subscription based services to iTunes. These services may come in the form of news papers, text books, magazines all updated in real time, living stories and Internet TV — all operating on a 3G or 4G network; even white-space is a strong possibility. This makes the iSlate sound more like a media tablet, than a big iPhone.

As far as the Google – HTC tablet, I have not heard of price or content packages. According to PCWorld the Google Chrome OS-based netbook “will come pre-installed with Google apps such as Google Map, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calender, and Google Search by Voice.” I am making the assumption that the tablet would at bare minimum have this set of applications — since it’s running the Google Chrome OS.

With all these speculations and some facts, there is still a level of uncertainty on what Google will be presenting on January 5th. The speculation runs their entire portfolio. Whatever happens on the 5th one thing is certain — it will be all the talk at CES 2010.

Follow Ramon Nuez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ramonbnuezjr

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• Ramon Nuez: HTC and Google Making a Tablet (huffingtonpost.com)

After years of dominating search on the Web, Google is looking to change the way we go about surfing it. A little more than a year ago, it launched the beta version of Google Chrome for Windows. It was simple, clean and fast. In December the company released Chrome for Mac and Linux, which helped catapult the browser past Safari in total market share. It now trails only Firefox and the ultimate preloader, Explorer.

Chrome’s many virtues include security and stability. (For example, if a site crashes on you, the rest of the tabs in your browser will keep working–no need to relaunch the whole thing.) But speed stands out as its key differentiator. Independent studies show that Chrome boots up and loads Web pages faster than Explorer or Firefox. Who doesn’t want that?

Chrome is not only fast; it’s free. So why has Google been putting so much effort into developing it? For one thing, because of the rise of Web-based applications. These let you create documents and spreadsheets (Google Apps, Zoho, Microsoft Office Online), listen to music (Pandora, iLike, Lala), edit photos (Piknik, Photoshop.com and check your voice mail (Google Voice) online. “But the pace of innovation in the browser space wasn’t keeping up,” says Brian Rakowski, director of product management for Google Chrome. “So we decided to start designing a browser from the ground up to see if we could build one that is faster, easier to use and fundamentally more secure.” So far, more than 40 million users have downloaded it.

But Google’s plan for world domination is far from complete. Scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2010 are netbooks that will run on Chrome OS rather than Windows or some other operating system. These devices will be optimized for the Web and will boot up directly into the browser, with no desktop as we know it today. It’s unclear whether Google will license the operating system to manufacturers like HP and Acer or put out its own hardware in the form of an official Google Chrome OS netbook. Either way, you won’t be able to purchase Chrome OS to install on your computer. You will have to buy a new netbook if you want the full Google experience.

If there’s any doubt that Google has been gunning for Microsoft, then Chrome OS certainly puts that to rest. It’s your move, Microsoft. Good luck
 

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We all know about Windows 7. The newest operating system from Microsoft, which is an upgrade from Vista and XP.

Linux, which has been around since the birth of computers and which Apple Mac is based on, is another operating system in use in servers and many appliances.

Google has released another Linux based operating system, Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS is basically a powerful web browser, running your computer instead of just an application running inside of Windows (or Mac). What applications will it run? Well it’s optimized to run web applications over the Internet.

Google’s vision of the world, which is how most of us use our computers is a world that’s pretty much all working from a web browser – with no or very few applications.

Google Chrome OS is NOT going to make a dent into Windows or Mac sales anytime soon, but you should be aware of it, as it could be an option on your next netbook, notebook or desktop computer.

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• 3 reviews of Google Chrome OS (rateitall.com)
• 26 reviews of Linux (rateitall.com)

Chrome OS Netbook Specs Leaked: Multi-touch, SSD, and More

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