HitChrome

Eric Schmidt the chief executive of Google said the new Web browser “represents some of the best Google can do,” and encouraged everyone to try it. But now not many people are. Shortly after Google, unveiled Chrome, it was a big hit initially. Chrome shot up to 1 percent of the market but then dipped to 0.8 percent.

Chrome gained a percentage of the market share within the first 24 hours of its release Sept. 2, but since then, it has given back much of those small gains to the leaders, Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Apple Inc.’s Safari was not affected, because Google has yet to release a version to run on the Mac operating system. Chrome is currently ducking it out with Opera for fourth place. Net Applications tracks the browsers of unique visitors to 2 million Web sites.

Chrome started off pretty fast and furious, within 24 hours, they surpassed 1 percent of usage market share, which was shocking and impressive. Since then, they have been slowly fading.”

Microsoft declined to comment, other than to pump up its latest version of Internet Explorer as “faster, easier, more safe and reliable than ever before.”

John Lilly from Mozilla said it was premature to draw any conclusions. “It’s only been three weeks,” he said. “We don’t know anything about anything yet.” But he added that Firefox was “seeing lots and lots of users come back.” Read the rest of this entry »

Mux may not win any points for style, but the website gets plenty for what it does do: allowing users to convert videos from one format to another. It has some handy features you won’t find with others.

Although this may sound rather mundane, but the site will convert just about any video you can find, even those on the web. It’s extremely simple to use, too. Mux walks you through the conversion process step-by-step and requires very little input from users.

I started off by going to YouTube. All you have to do is simply enter the video’s web address. It then captures the video and allows you to download the video in any format you want, including MPEG4, Avi and even the Quicktime video format, to name a few.

To some extent, that goes against the main point of YouTube, which is to put videos into the cloud, where they don’t eat up space on your computer. The four-minute video I downloaded weighed in at a hefty 20 megabytes, but having the file on the computer gives me the ability to put those videos on a portable device, such as an iPod. Read the rest of this entry »

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I don’t blame them to feel that way, what do you think folks? Your turn to talk., come on let’s talk…

Ok listen up if you are part of the population that has to deal with monthly fertility cycles. Newly launched Go28Days may be the thing for you if you are really trying hard to get pregnant, or really trying hard not to get pregnant. Like a bunch of other sites, they monitor your cycle days, temperature and other stuff I’m not going to talk about, and let you know the days you are most fertile. But the site also has a number of nice touches, including sharing of information with select friends. And soon they say they’ll have a Facebook app (of course) and a mobile version to for adding data and, presumably, making a last minute fertility check before engaging in behavior you’ll likely regret in the morning.

The service is newly launched, but is a sister site to a Polish version that launched late last year. Users of the Polish service have created 100,000 fertility charts, the company says, and over 2 million comments have been added (users can add information daily about their…bodies I guess).

Great news - we decided to give Google Chrome comic books to the top two bidders (with their permission) in our auction for charity. Those bids, for $1,600 and $1,575, respectively, will be donated to Donors Choose, an innovative not-for-profit corporation that raises money for schools.

And that’s not all. Google arranged to have both comic books autographed by creator Scott McCloud and many members of the Google Chrome team as a thank you for the donations. A picture of one of them is above.

Thank you to David Hauser from GotVMail and Lincoln Patz from Success Wallpapers for their generous bids. Donors Choose does a lot with a little, and this money will help fund at least a few different much needed school projects. Read the rest of this entry »

After the recent introduction of their Chrome browser, some have suggested that Google may have just kicked off the beginning of a new era of the browser wars. And before you begin by asking the obvious - “What about Firefox?” - read on and you’ll perhaps see why Chrome is a bit different, and why it may prove to be a true competitor to IE.

In the 90’s it was Internet Explorer vs. Netscape Navigator, with IE coming out on top. The way IE was able to grab a huge following was through Microsoft’s bundling of the browser with Windows computers. The browser was simply just there, and consumers saw no reason to seek out another browser when they had one already readily available to them.

In recent years, Mozilla Firefox has been nipping at IE’s heels, and although they’ve managed to snag a good chunk of the browser market, IE is still by far the more preferred browser. Opera and other lesser-known browsers barely make it on the radar, and Apple’s Safari browser barely even captures 1% of the market share.

Google, now a decade old, have matured into a behemoth of a company. They’re an internationally recognized brand, have more engineers and employees than you can imagine, and a good deal of cash on hand to spend on developing promising projects.

While the idea of creating a new browser to compete with the likes of IE is far from new - many have tried, many have failed - the way that Chrome fits into Google’s vision of the web and of computing is what may make it a formidable opponent to Microsoft. Chrome is not simply a standalone browser. Well, it is, but if fits into a much bigger picture. Read the rest of this entry »

Google made it to first thing make money… second thing was to reconfigure it for better display of web pages… IE was made originally for word based websites and not the embedded stuff.

The company line is that today’s Web browsers - Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox chief among them - were built at a time when most of what people did on the Web were view static Web pages. Now, Google says, folks want to do all sorts of things on the Web: play games, balance their checkbooks, upload and watch elaborate multimedia presentations, even compose documents or create spreadsheets. The major Web browsers, Google’s management and developers say, have been slow to keep pace with what users are demanding of the Internet.

Google’s answer to this was to create a brand new Web browser built from the ground up using the latest technologies and technological innovations. And the goal was to build this new browser as an open source model, meaning that developers from around the world will have access to the inner workings of the code so that add- ons, extensions, and improvements can be made by the world-wide community of developers. Google believes that with this platform, developers will be able to build the next generation of Web applications.

Holding the reigns of this initiative, of course, gives Google tremendous power should the browser come to dominate, and there’s clearly plenty of ways the company can exploit that for its own purposes. Chrome, for example, was built in part to handle the JavaScript programming language better than do current browsers. Google’s own online office programs - dubbed Google docs - use JavaScript heavily, and these programs may one day be in direct competition with Microsoft’s lucrative Office platform. Read the rest of this entry »

In Japan, girls are crazy over virtual boyfriends. Webkare (Web Boyfriend in Japanese), a mix between a social network and dating simulation site, is Nippon’s newest web sensation. Geared exclusively towards girls, the site attracted over 10,000 members just 5 days after its release on September 10, racking up 3.5 million page views in the same time frame.

The site is a huge hit over here. Girls sign up and become members of a social network but also users of a dating simulation in cartoon style. They have to try to hook up with one of four male Anime characters (who are the “stars” of the site) through “conversations” and must collaborate with other Webkare members in order to move on in the game. Eventually they conquer the heart of the chosen cartoon boy.

It’s pretty weird but clever. Dating simulations have been popular in Japan for quite a while now, but Webkare marks the first time the concept has been brought online and combined with social networking functionality.

Girls choose between one of four different male cartoon characters they want to hook up with upon registration. They can then “communicate” with their digital crush in cartoon-like sequences to try to win over his heart over the course of the game. It’s also possible to meet other boys later in the story, which uses a virtual high school as the main setting. Read the rest of this entry »

It is the first step in Google’s plan to convince consumers and businesses to replace Windows-based software with hosted web applications. Google is expected to launch an online storage offering.

Google’s new Web browser, has grabbed a lot of attention and already holds about one per cent market share.

That’s actually a pretty good number, considering Chrome is still very new, is lacking some important features (such as plug-in support) and is only available for Windows.

The downloads have been driven by the new-car smell and the hype that big Google projects always draw, but most of this attention has been paid to Chrome as a browser, when it isn’t really a browser at all, or at least not primarily. Because while it sports some serious browser  improvements (notably, the creation of a new process to handle each browser window), Chrome is really a platform for Web applications. This is evident in an often-overlooked feature called Create Application Shortcuts. Enabling this gives you links on your desktop or Quick Launch Bar to Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar. Clicking the shortcut launches the Web app in a streamlined window that gives you more room to work by eliminating the standard browser controls.

Essentially, this makes Web apps look and act like desktop apps. And because is built in, you can work in Google Docs even when you’re not online, and offline support for Calendar is coming. This makes a PC with Chrome into a go-anywhere, work-anywhere office productivity kit.

In researching this piece, I came across the following from blogger Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch: “Let me be absolutely clear: Chrome is not a Web browser, it’s an application runtime. Chrome is really Google Gears with a browser facade. Sure, Chrome is based on Webkit and has browser legacy, but the product’s core capabilities  - and Google’s objectives for them - is running Web applications. Chrome is a development platform, but in the cloud instead of on the PC.” Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to do something good with your time online? Then check out Goodtube, a video sharing site similar to YouTube.

Instead of clips of music bands or people doing stupid stuff, these videos are from volunteers and nonprofit organisations looking to promote their cause.

The website is an extension of Profiles in Caring, a US-based television show. However, faced with a limited-number of episodes, its producers adopted the video-sharing format in an attempt to give more organisations exposure.

Profiles in Caring claims to have featured more than 200 organisations from all around the globe that working in areas such as education, disaster relief, disease, economic development, healthcare, medical care, and poverty.

The site contains a large number of videos from such organisation as the American Red Cross, the March of Dimes and the Special Olympics, just to name a few. Anyone looking for a specific area of interest can search video either by category, by organisation, or even by region.

The site isn’t just for people looking to find information, either. Like YouTube, users can upload videos to the site, although Goodtube is by far selective. General users are only allowed to view, not post, videos.

However, if you are a volunteer or work for non-profit organisation, the site offers one $1,000 grant each month, based on the organisation, its goals, and the popularity of the organisation’s video on Goodtube.