Google Infinite Digital Bookcase
Google: We designed a digital bookcase that’s an infinite 3D helix; http://eicker.at/Google3DBookcase
Tagged: Chrome Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
HTML5 Browser Compliance
W3C has released HTML5 browser compliance results. Believe it or not: IE9 outperforms even Chrome; http://eicker.at/HTML5
Gerrit Eicker
HTML5 vs. Flash
Harding, YouTube, on HTML5 vs. Flash: We need to do more than just point at a video file; http://j.mp/9KjIKL
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Gerrit Eicker
RWW: “The battle between HTML5 and Adobe Flash for dominance over video on the Web is likely to end poorly for one of the two, and lately it’s been looking worse and worse for Flash. Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to the Web stating why Flash would remain banned from iPhones and iPads and just yesterday, Apple got an ‘unexpected ally‘ in its anti-Flash crusade – the adult entertainment industry. – But today, just to keep from making things too cut and dry, Google-owned video site YouTube has come out with a list of its own reasons on why Flash is here to stay, for now, and HTML5 simply isn’t qualified to handle the job at hand.”
Harding: “We need to do more than just point the browser at a video file like the image tag does – there’s a lot more to it than just retrieving and displaying a video. The tag certainly addresses the basic requirements and is making good progress on meeting others, but the tag does not currently meet all the needs of a site like YouTube. – To that end, we’re excited about the new WebM project. Google is open sourcing and contributing the VP8 codec to the WebM effort. Google, Mozilla, and Opera have all committed to support WebM, and we have already started making YouTube videos available in the WebM format. Adobe has also committed to support VP8, the video codec for WebM, in an upcoming Flash Player release. … HD video begs to be watched in full screen, but that has not historically been possible with pure HTML. While most browsers have a fullscreen mode, they do not allow javascript to initiate it, nor do they allow a small part of the page (such as a video player) to fill the screen. Flash Player provides robust, secure controls for enabling hardware-accelerated fullscreen displays. … Video is not just a one-way medium. Every day, thousands of users record videos directly to YouTube from within their browser using webcams, which would not be possible without Flash technology. Camera access is also needed for features like video chat and live broadcasting.”
CT: “It may seem that Steve Jobs is on a lonely crusade against Adobe’s Flash format with the rest of the industry simply waiting who this battle will turn out. While Adobe is rallying support for Flash, Apple receives support from a rather unexpected ally, the adult film industry. The founder of Digital Playground, one of the porn heavyweights in the U.S., told ConceivablyTech that it will abandon Flash as soon as the desktop browsers fully support HTML 5. We also learned that 3D is just not there yet and that online movie streaming is unlikely to replace Blu-ray discs anytime soon.”
WebM: “The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. – The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Wants in on Your Action
Dumenco: If you are in a business that is connected to information, Google wants in on your action; http://j.mp/addmGD
Gerrit Eicker
YouTube Goes HTML5
YouTube introduces an experimental version of an HTML5-supported player (Chrome, Safari only); http://j.mp/6rgKjs
Gerrit Eicker
Chrome and OS X: Squeezing Windows
Google is aiming at the bottom of the OS market, Apple at its top: squeezing Windows in between; http://j.mp/61MK3j
Gerrit Eicker
How to Install: Google Chrome OS
TechCrunch describes how to install Google Chrome OS: step-by-step guide, done in around 15 minutes; http://j.mp/3SugT3
Gerrit Eicker
Google Chrome OS
Google unveiled its much-anticipated new operating system, Google Chrome OS; http://j.mp/2OIS5q
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “First, it’s all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs. – Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn’t trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. – Most of all, we are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. … Google Chrome OS will be ready for consumers this time next year.”
NYT: “The new operating system, which is closely tied to Google’s Web browser, also named Chrome, is seen as a potential challenge to Microsoft, whose Windows software powers the vast majority of personal computers. – But with the Chrome operating system, Google is not trying to build a better version of Windows. Instead, it is aiming to shift users toward its vision of ‘cloud computing,’ a model in which programs are not installed on a PC but rather are used over the Internet and accessed through a Web browser. In Google’s approach, a user’s data will also reside on servers across the Internet, rather than on their PC.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Chrome Operating System
Google has annouced the natural extension of Google Chrome: the Google Chrome Operating System; http://tr.im/rlnd
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. … Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple – Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.”
TC: “Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. … But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, ‘However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.‘ Yeah, who do you think they mean by that? … So why do release this new OS instead of using Android? After all, it has already been successfully ported to netbooks. Google admits that there is some overlap there. But a key difference they don’t mention is the ability to run on the x86 architecture. Android cannot do that, Chrome OS can and will. But more, Google wants to emphasize that Chrome OS is all about the web, whereas Android is about a lot of different things. Including apps that are not standard browser web apps.”
NYT: “The move is likely to sharpen the already intense competition between Google and Microsoft, whose Windows operating system controls the basic functions of the vast majority of personal computers. … Mr. Pichai and Mr. Upson said that the software would be released online later this year under an open source license, which will allow outside programmers to modify it. Netbooks running the software will go on sale in the second half of 2010. The software is compatible with processor chips made by Intel and ARM, the company said.”
RWW: “With this, Google can obviously put its own web apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs at the center of the user experience, and this is surely part of Google’s motivation behind releasing this OS. But given that Chrome is simply a browser, any other web app would obviously also be able to run on it as well.”
VB: “But the battle is also going to have some interesting sideshows, as Google’s move could also bring it squarely into opposition with its sometime ally, Apple.”
pC: “With Google Chrome OS, as it is supposed to be titled, its vision of everything delivered through the Web may come a little closer. It will also mean apps would run within Chrome when users are offline (it has already started doing that with some of its services like Gmail).”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Chrome Final
Google‘s browser Chrome drops its beta label, promises better stability and even more speed; http://is.gd/bjgI
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Gerrit Eicker
RWW: “After only 100 days and fifteen updates, Google has taken the “beta” label off Chrome, its WebKit based browser. Given that the company has a penchant for keeping products like Gmail or Google Docs in perpetual beta, it comes as a bit of a surprise that Google already considers Chrome to be a 1.0 product. … If anything, the release of Chrome engine has made all the other browser developers focus on the speed of their JavaScript engines again, which can only be a good thing for those of us who spend a lot of our days in browsers. The only missing piece that is still holding Chrome back today is the absence of a good extension architecture.”
Heise: “In den Programmoptionen der finalen Chrome-Version hat Google die für den Datenschutz relevanten Einstellungen zusammengefasst. Der Benutzer hat sie so besser im Blick und kann sie auf Wunsch deaktivieren – bis auf die ID. Chrome erzeugt bei jeder Installation eine eindeutige ID-Nummer. Der Browser überträgt sie mit weiteren Informationen über die Systemumgebung, etwa die Sprache und die Versionsnummer, an Google, wenn er nach Updates sucht (hat der Benutzer die Option ‘Nutzungsstatistiken und Ausfallberichte’ aktiviert, sendet Chrome die ID auch bei der Übermittlung dieser Daten). … Einer der Gründe für die rasche Veröffentlichung der finalen Version dürfte das Interesse von Distributionspartnern sein. Es gebe eine Reihe von interessierten Kunden, darunter OEMs, die den Browser aber nicht vertreiben könnten, solange er nicht in einer finalen Version vorliege.”
Gerrit Eicker 07:33 on 19. October 2011 Permalink |
Google: “As digital designers, we often think about how to translate traditional media into a virtual space. Recently, we thought about the bookcase. What would it look like if it was designed to hold digital books? – A digital interface needs to be familiar enough to be intuitive, while simultaneously taking advantage of the lack of constraints in a virtual space. In this case, we imagined something that looks like the shelves in your living room, but is also capable of showcasing the huge number of titles available online – many more than fit on a traditional shelf. With this in mind, we designed a digital bookcase that’s an infinite 3D helix. You can spin it side-to-side and up and down with your mouse. It holds 3D models of more than 10,000 titles from Google Books. – The books are organized into 28 subjects. To choose a subject, click the subject button near the top of your screen when viewing the bookcase. The camera then flies to that subject. Clicking on a book pulls it off the shelf and brings it to the front and center of the screen. Click on the high-resolution cover and the book will open to a page with title and author information as well as a short synopsis, provided by the Google Books API. All of the visuals are rendered with WebGL, a technology in Google Chrome and other modern browsers that enables fast, hardware-accelerated 3D graphics right in the browser, without the need for a plug-in.”
TC: “I wrote a while back about the eventual necessity for the internet to become beautiful. The trouble is that the things in the world we consider beautiful in an informational context – magazine and book layouts, typography, etc. – are necessarily limited in the information they have to present. It’s this limitation, the known quantity aspect, that lets designers work effectively. – How should you design something, then, that presents effectively limitless information (say, all the world’s books) through a fairly limited medium (say, a web browser)? Google has one idea. Put them on a gigantic helix. … But is this really something people will want to navigate? Probably not. People like analogs in their digital catalogs, and this one seems a little bit too off the wall. … Anyway, it’s a fun little experiment you can try out here. Note to Mac Laptop users: be careful how you swipe or you may accidentally navigate off the page or invoke some arcane gesture.”
VB: “With tablets and eReaders offering a number of new ways to experience books, the browser has been relatively ignored. However, not a lot of people consider getting into a bubble bath with their nice glass of wine and a laptop book to wind down the day, but you never know. To that end, the virtual bookcase may not be a competitor to the Kindle, but rather to the book discovery service overall. It could also simply be a way to funnel people toward purchasing Google Books, but it’s still pretty cool.“