Internal development of Google’s Chrome OS is expected to finalize late this year, with products launching in early 2011. Chrome OS is a cloud-oriented operating system targeted at heavy internet users. Over the last few years, Google has been launching many different online applications, such as Google Docs, Voice, and (of course) acquiring YouTube. The final intent for these projects is to provide the consumer with desktop-comparable applications that will run with ease on cheap netbook computers. Recently, YouTube has entered an HTML5 beta to test how well videos can be streamed without use of bulky and resource hungry applications such as Adobe Flash. With Chrome browser being HTML5 compatible, it makes a perfect match for netbooks.
Schmidt is expects netbooks running Google’s Chrome OS to sell for around $300 to $400—which isn’t surprising considering most netbooks are priced in that range. Google will be offering Chrome OS free of charge, so the price of a Chrome OS powered netbook is mostly the cost of production. What advantages will Chrome OS have against Windows? It’s hard to say specifically—there has been plenty of speculation, but we won’t know until the final product launches.
"It will be up to the manufacturers who do it, but the price points you should think about are the current netbook pricings which are 300 dollar, 400 dollar price points.”I’m sure that we will be able to see great integration amongst Google products. Such as the Android mobile OS, Google online services, and anything else Google may possibly launch.
UltraVPN is a client/server SSL VPN solution based on OpenVPN. It encrypts and anonymizes your network connection.
UltraVPN is a simple user interface to connect or disconnect to our VPN servers.
To use UltraVPN, you need to right click on a traybar icon (on the bottom right of your screen) that looks like a computer with a red screen. After right clicking on it, choose "connect".
What can you do with UltraVPN?
UltraVPN 1.0
Windows only: If you use Windows Media Center to manage your movies, TV shows, and music, then you need to grab Media Browser, an open-source plug-in that displays your downloaded media and all its associated metadata and artwork in one slick layout.
After installing the free, open-source Media Browser plug-in, it only takes a few minutes to zip through the one-time setup wizard and choose which media you'd like the tool to aggregate for you. Then fire up Windows Media Center, and the Media Browser option will be listed among the Center's native Movie, TV, and Music choices.
Media Browser only works on Windows Vista and Windows 7. What kinds of plug-ins improve your Windows Media Center experience? Kick around your ideas in the comments.
Media Browser
If you're big on BitTorrent, chances are you've heard of the popular BitTorrent clients uTorrent and Vuze (previously Azureus). According to a study highlighted by all-things-BitTorrent blog TorrentFreak, uTorrent download speeds outpace Vuze speeds by up to 30% on some ISPs.
The research revealed a remarkable speed difference with uTorrent users getting 16% higher download speeds than Vuze users. On average uTorrent users reached a 176 Kbps download speed while Vuze users were stuck at 151 Kbps on the same torrents and with the same ISPs.
The reason for the speed disparity: Researchers believe that variations in the way the applications distribute peers, how they handle connections, and how they discover new peers influences the speed. If you aren't already using uTorrent—our readers' favorite BitTorrent client—these results seem to provide compelling reasons to switch. Hit up the full post over at TorrentFreak for more details.
Windows: If you're a devotee of Firefox's add-ons and features but would like just a tad more operation speed, Pale Moon might be perfect, at least for a trial run. The custom and extension-compatible Firefox build seems just a bit snappier.
It's a relative measurement, of course, to note that Pale Moon, built and compiled specifically for Windows operation, tests out 25 percent ahead of Firefox in certain SunSpider rendering and scripting tests. As we've noted in our browser speed tests, browser testing suites can be subjective, and don't always translate to real-world experience. Then again, using Pale Moon for the better part of a morning, I could guess at feeling pages like Gawker.com and Slashdot loading a tad faster than in Firefox, which I kept open for side-by-side testing. Pale Moon should work with most of your extensions, too, and if you install it in a non-portable fashion, it picks up your existing Firefox profile and runs with it.
Pale Moon is a free download for Windows systems only. Tell us how it performs for you in the comments.
(CBS) I didn't get into F.E.A.R. until the sequel, F.E.A.R. 2 (F2), two years back; and aside from being occasionally creped out at times, I enjoyed my experience. Admittedly my initial reactions to the first "Alma" sighting was much like a grade school student seeing their parent naked for the first time unintentionally. Though a bit squeamish at the outset I played through F2 with renewed zeal to conquer my fear of the dark.
In some instances of the game I was reminded of specific scenes from the movie "The Ring". Alma, the ultimate antagonist in this franchise, struck a very striking resemblance to Samara, the little girl who's voice you would he auspiciously hear after watching a tape and would presumably kill you in 7 days time.
F.E.A.R. 2 had a very interesting ending where we know Alma lives since the last image Becket, the protagonist, has is her being pregnant. Those of you have played the game to the end know the scene being referenced so we won’t discuss who the - ahem - father is. That said it was only logical that there be a third iteration. But like many other games that follow this path, will F.E.A.R. 3 pale in comparison to its predecessors?
Based on the press release that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE) sent out today, that might not be the case. The next version of the game will introduce a cooperative (co-op) mode. This could add some interesting play elements but only time will tell. Check out the following press release
As reported before, Adobe’s fifth iteration of their professional (and outrageously priced) Creative Suite product would be released today. And so it has.
The new suite focuses “on interactivity, performance and maximizing the impact of digital content and marketing campaigns”. Plus, there’s the new Adobe Flash Catalyst 11 program added to the suite. The update also includes the new Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2 components.
CS5 comes in five flavors: Master Collection, Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, and Production Premium. These flavors will cost you $2599, $1899, $1299, $1799, and $1699, respectively.
You can learn more by reading the full press release here.
Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director of Epic Games was the featured guest today on Jimmy Fallon’s late night television show. Not only did we learn some personal things about Bleszinski, but we learned that he has played a big role in the development of Gears of War 3, just as he did for Gears of War 2. The world-wise premier trail is called, “Ashes to Ashes”—featuring incredible graphics and gameplay. The amount of detail and particles in the trailer is just amazing.
Gears of War 3 is expected to be unleashed April 8th, 2011. There are many updates, of which few are known—some include a woman character, and a new mutating creature. The trailer shows us an ash-world, where the battle continues between the Locust and Marcus Fenix with his squad. Heron Blue by “Sun Kil Moon” is the charming theme song to the trailer, a bit more of a sad tune than most war games, but who’s complaining. Check out the video and screenshots below for your own experience.
Enjoy the world premiere below.
Trumpets playing, bloody moons, seas of fire, cats cohabiting with dogs, and Windows 7 running on the Apple iPad right on the day it launches. That's how the Universe ends, my dearly beloved, and you can blame Citrix for it:
It turns out the 9.7 inch display on the iPad with a 1024x768 screen resolution works great for a full VDI XenDesktop. Windows applications run unmodified and securely in the data center, and even multiple applications at once.
The iPhone restrictions of screen size and small keyboards are overcome with the iPad. The iPad looks to be an ideal end-point device that can empower users to be productive wherever they are and IT will be able to safely deliver company-hosted virtual desktops and apps without worry.
Those are the wet words of Chris Fleck, the vicepresident of virtualization and remote software company Citrix. And what you are seeing above is Windows 7 running on the iPad SDK simulator, thanks to Citrix Receiver and XenDesktop 4—running meaning that it's executed on a server and remotely displayed on the iPad at full resolution.
Fleck sounds excited on his blog, and points out that the software will be ready for the launch of Apple's JesusTablet. Personally, I can't wait for other remote desktop applications to be adapted for the iPad full resolution. [Citrix via PC World]
Crysis was, and is the most graphical and resource intense game that has ever been released. Thanks to the folks over at InCrysis, there is now some credible screen shots and a spoiler (if you dare) of Crysis 2. The ultimate benchmarking tool is back. The screenshots came from PCGamer’s Top 10 games of 2010 (PDF), and the high-resolution scans from German PC Games.
Follow the sources to find more screenshots and high-resolution scans, as well as the spoiler.
The world’s richest man joined Twitter last week to a flurry of media coverage, which became the very first topic of discussion on his recent appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show.
Host Jon Stewart amusedly asks Mr. Gates about his TwitterTwitter
habits and followers while off-handedly remarking that, “I don’t Twitter, I’m busy!”
The man behind @BillGates, who was once regarded as a prime example of the socially awkward geek, is exceedingly relaxed, personable, and downright witty in his interview segment, embedded below.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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[via Switched]
Microsoft Earnings Saved By Windows 7, Its "Fastest-Selling Operating System in History"
Microsoft made a record revenue numbers last quarter, but only its Windows division did substantially better than last year. In fact, practically every other aspect of Microsoft's business did worse.
Don't get me wrong, revenue of $19 billion is extremely impressive. But other than the Server business—which was basically flat—all of the growth came from sales of Windows 7. And I'd be willing to bet that a large percentage of that growth came from netbooks. Bing must have been especially disappointing for Ballmer, with online advertising revenue actually decreasing 2% in the same time period when Google saw its revenue increase 17%.
To date, Windows 7 has sold 60 million copies, making it the fastest-selling operating system in the company's history. Of course, a large part of the reason for Windows 7's success is that so many businesses and individuals decided to pass on Vista. Microsoft's essentially been picking up two refresh cycle's worth of business here.
We'll listen in on the earnings call, and will let you know if there are any more interesting details or fun Ballmerisms ahead.
This isn't the first time we've seen changes to the "new" Firefox 4.0 theme. The new iteration of Strata has recently received an updated mockup, and it's likely that it isn't the last either. DeviantART member and Strata40 theme developer SpewBoy recently discovered PSDs lurking about the Internet, and released them for all to see as nice, non-PSD images. Read on to see the refreshed mockups!
While it does not incorporate any completely new features, it's good to see Mozilla make progress with the next version of the popular web browser.
Tabs on bottom:
Tabs on top:
The two images clearly show the fairly new Firefox button in the top left corner, which replaces the previous Page/Tools buttons, along with refreshed graphics, a new Help icon, and a generally shorter tab bar. Plus, it incoroporates a refreshed version of the site's verification feature, and a colored URL beside it.
The mockups were later released by Mozilla here, though these do not include the bookmarks bar in the mockup images. As noted earlier, these mockups are likely to change. You can also expect SpewBoy to update his wonderful Strata40 theme for Firefox to match the new mockups.
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Days away from the supposed launch of the Apple tablet, we know almost nothing about it. While we can't say for sure which rumors are true, we can definitely say which, over the past decade, were just plain dumb.
If you think galleries are dumb, too, click here for a single page.
Joining very few titles such as Guitar Hero III and World of Warcraft, Call of Duty MW2 has also hit the billion dollar mark. Activision’s game made an estimated $550m in its first five days and sold more than 4.7 million copies in its initial 24 hours of release.
Previously the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare sold around 14.4 million copies in 2007, MW2 has surpassed this figure already with over 15 million sales.
According to industry body ELSA, the success of COD : MW2 has meant the game has won the best-selling videogame of 2009.
“The phenomenal success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was undoubtedly one of the leading entertainment stories of the year and firmly established videogames as one of the leading forms of entertainment in the UK,” said Michael Rawlinson, of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association
It's no secret that Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo are always expanding their reaches, slowly but surely adding new products and services into their line-ups. The New York Times's Nick Bilton took a step back and surveyed their empires.
It doesn't come as much of a surprise to see how much these four behemoths overlap, and I doubt anyone will be surprised when these companies continue to fill in this grid in 2010.
Looking at the empty spaces reveals where we might look for these companies to grow. There have been grumblings of a Google music store for a while, and it seems entirely possible that Apple's Tablet will at least in part emphasize its capabilities as a gaming device.
As the companies stretch and grow, some of their endeavors will prove more successful than others, but until then this chart is an interesting reminder of how vast their reaches already are. [New York Times Bits]
James Cameron's Avatar is unstoppable: It topped the U.S. box office for the fifth straight weekend in a row, raised its domestic take to about $491.8 million, and overtook Star Wars as the third-highest-grossing movie of all time domestically.
The Associated Press estimates that the sci-fi epic will top $500 million domestically by the end of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday.
Globally, Avatar's total is now an estimated $1.6 billion, second only to Cameron's Titanic ($1.8 billion).
The first Star Wars movie took in $460.9 million domestically in its original run and several reissues over the years. (Star Wars is still ahead of Avatar in terms of tickets sold.)
Meanwhile, The Book of Eli opened strongly in second place, with about $31.6 million domestically.
We've all heard allusions to Cameron's massive sets, motion cap system and 3D/virtual cameras used to create Avatar, but this 22-minute clip actually shows us these techniques. (So don't watch this video if you don't want the magic spoiled)
Hit up about 16 minutes in to see CGI characters layered into live action scenes in real time—which is essentially augmented reality making its way into filmmaking. [Sci Fi Wire]
According to BusinessWeek, Microsoft and Apple have been undergoing talks that could have Apple replacing Bing with Google as its default search engine. According to ZDNet's Rachel King, these talks were brought upon by Google's Nexus one being a direct competitor to the iPhone 3GS.
Presumably, the default search mechanism within the iPhone browser would be replaced with the Bing API, and the default search app in the dashboard would be replaced with Microsoft's new Bing iPhone App.
Last week, some enterprising fans created a visual guide to the Apple Tablet rumors. Today, the French website Nowhere Else has done something similar for the next generation iPhone. The image highlights the various rumors surrounding the next version of the iPhone (the iPhone 4G if you will) into one annotated graphic.
An OLED display, 5-megapixel camera and a release date between May and July appear to be the most likely rumors (and we agree that those all sound like very distinct possibilities). Also ranking high are rumors of a front-facing camera, dual-core processor with more RAM and a touch-sensitive case.
As for the removable battery rumor, 60% likely or not, we don’t see that happening. Apple has moved its portable line to built-in batteries; it seems unlikely to us that they would add a removable battery to the iPhone.
You can check out a larger version of the image directly at Nowhere Else. What do you think of this roundup? What features would you like to see in the next iPhone? Let us know!
[source: mashable]
I mean, just imagine the adorable little iMac stand that third parties would make for this phone! I'm getting cute overload just thinking about it.
Of course, I could do without the iMac's flickering, yellow screen. But that's just me, and authenticity might be the better way to go here.
![imac-windows7[1]](http://www.geeksmack.net/content_media/AppleLetsWindows7GraceTheirMachines_F0A7/imacwindows71_thumb.jpg "imac-windows7[1]")
Today, Apple finally got with the program (nearly a month late) and released an update for their Bootcamp software. Bumping the version number up to 3.1, this update provides full Windows 7 compatibility. Supporting both x86 and x64 platforms, this update has full support for the Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate versions of Windows 7.
Included in the update are “fixes” for the trackpads on their Macbooks, and their new wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse. Windows 7 drivers for all of the hardware in the relevant iMac and Macbook models are also available. The update and the included fixes add up to a 381MB download for the x86 version, and 275MB for the x64 version.
There are a couple of catches, however, to installing and using this update with Windows 7. First, you must be running either Windows XP or Windows Vista inside of Bootcamp to install the update. A second requirement is that you download and run the “Bootcamp Utility for Windows 7 Upgrade” which will safely un-mount the read-only Macintosh partition from Windows Vista, prior to upgrading.
After running the above utility and upgrading your version of Bootcamp, you can safely and easily upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 with full support for all of Apple’s hardware. It’s a bit late, but late is better than never.
Source: [AppleInsider]
Realtime Singlish is a free, highly customisable transliteration software for MS Windows. All you should do is to type according to the scheme that is provided.
For more
Birth of an AVATAR from Peter Ammentorp Lund on Vimeo.
There are few more lazily fulfilling practices in this world than to watch someone else Photoshop in time lapse. In this clip, a guy turns himself into a Na'vi (Avatar smurf). Papyrus credits included. [fubiz via DVICE]
