When Google ceased promotion of the FireFox web browser awhile back, many had their suspicions. They were correct. Google was in fact ‘up to something’. Chrome was it; their very own web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Among the coolest features of Chrome is that each browser window operates as a separate process so that if one site ‘freezes up’, it won’t crash the whole browser, just that site. It also offers “incognito browsing” where all of your cookies, history, and temporary internet files from that browsing session are removed as soon as you close the browser (removing any trace from your computer as to what you were doing). Hey, don’t get any ideas!
Check out this vid to see the 10 main features of Chrome:
Why does Google care about playing the browser war? What are they plotting? Is this Google’s next entry along the path to world domination? Apparently Google has a long term focus to develop enterprise web-based applications directly integrated into the chrome platform, to compete head-on with Microsoft Office. Basically, they hope that people will favor their web-based offerings and abandon MS Office and Exchange. Google will need to seriously amp up Google Docs in order to compete on the enterprise platform.
Personally, I’m going to stick with FireFox. Don’t be surprised to see the most popular Chrome features duplicated in a future release of FireFox. FireFox is open source, so no possibility for sneaky code under the radar. Mozilla has no ulterior motives for FireFox (as far as I know).
One must wonder at what point in the game Google will determine it has enough power to step into the Operating System market. Google OS anyone? Perhaps if they are able to deliver a few rounds of heavy blows to Microsoft. Google already does have the Android platform, an operating system for mobile devices such as cell phones. Look for that in the near future, it could very well be something special.
It would be nice to have a house integrated with Google search capabilities. Where did I put my car keys?
“3 matching results”.
I remember as a kid in the 80’s watching the film “Tron” and seeing a high-tech executive desk that had a computer display built into its surface. The computer was controlled by voice and by direct touch. We’ve seen this type of concept in movies and TV dozens of times. It was only a matter of time before this technology began to “surface” in the real world. Well it finally has, literally known as “Microsoft Surface”, it was first announced in 2007 and now in 2008 has “surfaced” for “hands on” interaction and testing at several locations around the globe.
Surface is a tabletop computer that allows simultaneous multi-touch and multi-user interaction as well as interaction with physical objects in the ‘real’ world. For example, imagine placing your digital camera on the Surface computer and right next to your camera, on the screen below it appears the pictures you’ve just taken. You can resize the pictures and interact with them using just your fingers. This is a SMALL example of what this new machine can do.
Although the Surface technology will take a few years to mature and become mainstream, the applications are virtually limitless.
Microsoft believes this jump in user experience is as big as going from DOS to Windows. They consider the Surface interface not a GUI (Graphical User Interface) like Windows but a NUI (Natural User Interface), which is a new term they coined to describe Surface’s uniqueness.
I guess Bill Gates is going to likely raise his goal from “a computer in every home” to “a computer on every surface”.
Learn more about Surface here:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Now I wonder when we can finally expect to see holographic display technology become mainstream (think Star Wars)?
