Hasta La Gadget!

When Amazon launched Kindle for the Web earlier this year, we all cried “what?!” The service let you preview small snippets of Kindle ebooks in your browser, and that was about it. It kind of proved itself as a way to promote books on other sites, thanks to embedding features, but it remained a curiosity.

Now Amazon has announced an update, bringing the full Kindle experience to the browser, and also to Google’s new Chrome Web Store, meaning any notebook running Google’s Chrome OS. You’ll be able to read entire books on any web-connected device, and if you embed books on your site and people read them there, you’ll earn affiliate fees.

Kindle seems to be the default option for reading ebooks: There’s a Kindle app for pretty much everything, and Amazon has the biggest catalog, too, especially if you live outside the US where things like Apple’s iBooks Store are crippled. I spend almost as much time in the Kindle app on my iPad as I do in Safari.

Putting the Kindle on the web is smart, and shows that Amazon is way more interested in selling Kindle books than selling Kindle hardware. Hell, even the Barnes & Noble Nook has a browser. Maybe you could even read Kindle books on that?

Kindle for the Web [Amazon]

Every Website Can Now Be a Bookstore [Amazon press release]

See Also:

• Five Things Google's Chrome OS Will Do for Your Netbook
• Google Chrome OS Not Ready for Primetime Yet
• With Chrome OS, Google Doubles Down on the Cloud

We’ve long been proponents of subscription music, but it’s always a rocky relationship: Rhapsody‘s excellent selection but bad app and terrible web player (you call that a bitrate?), Zune‘s beautiful UI but Windows-only-ness, and Spotify‘s continued inability to work in the US. Eventually, this particular writer drifted over to MOG, which was initially a $5 a month web-only service, best known for its high bitrate and decent selection, with a more recent move to Android and iPhone apps (including offline play) for a still-palatable $10 a month price. Unfortunately, all this time we’ve had to put up with the indignities of a pop-up, window-based Flash player for our main MOG experience, which crashes any browser on a Mac at least once a day — like most Flash things on the Mac. Which brings us to today: MOG is a featured app on Google’s new Chrome Web Store, and once “installed” it offers an all-new luscious, speedy, HTML5 UI for MOG. Better yet, the web app also works in Safari at mog.com/chrome. Under the hood there’s still a “headless” Flash playback element for DRM purposes, but everything else is a vast improvement. The only thing that could make us happier would be some sort of exfm-style Chrome extension for adding music we discover on the web to MOG playlists. You know, as long as we’re getting lifelong dreams granted like this, might as well go for broke.

MOG hits the Chrome Web Store, cools our Flash fever with a nice cool HTML5 washcloth originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve had plenty of pre-knowledge on this, but surprisingly this is our first actual glimpse of Google’s new unbranded “Cr-48,” the very first Chrome OS laptop. Google will distribute the laptop through its Chrome OS Pilot Program, in a sort of public beta. You actually have to apply to join the program, and there are going to be a limited number of the laptops available — retail Chrome OS models from Acer and Samsung will be available in the middle of 2011 for the masses. Google’s doing a number of little promotions to give away the devices to interested users and businesses which will provide feedback, and it looks like there’s no way to actually pay money for one right now. Now, for the specs:

• 12.1-inch screen.
• Full size keyboard.
• Oversized clickpad.
• Qualcomm Gobi 3G chip for Verizon data in the US, your carrier of choice internationally.
• 802.11n dual-band WiFi.
• 8+ hours of active use.
• 8+ days of standby.
• Webcam.
• Flash storage.

The keyboard is the one we uncovered last week, with no function keys, but a full row of Apple Keyboard-style actions. The caps lock key has been replaced with a search button, which will enrage internet trolls and screenwriters alike. Branding-wise… there is none. The “Cr-48” refers to an isotope of the material chromium, there’s no logo and no design frills on the laptop itself, and it only comes in black. It seems Google is going out of its way to make it clear that this isn’t a mass market device, with Chrome OS still in the beta stage, and no apparent intentions to compete with third parties in the hardware space. Still, we gotta say: we wish more manufacturers would take a page out of this no-frills book. The murdered out Cr-48 looks like pure sex to us.

Google unveils Cr-48, the first Chrome OS laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google just demoed Chrome OS running on a piece of reference hardware at its event in SF. It just takes four steps and less than a minute to set up a brand-new Chrome OS machine — it pulls all your Chrome themes and settings from the cloud, so it’s ready to go almost right away, and changes can propagate in less than a second in some cases. The reference machine demoed was able to come back up from sleep almost instantly — Google says the limiting factor is actually how fast the user can move their hand. (It wasn’t that fast in the demo, but it was still really fast.) The OS also supports multiple accounts with a guest account that runs in Incognito mode, and all user data is encrypted by default. The OS itself is loaded on read-only memory that can’t be altered without physical access — a tech which enables verified booting. (A “jailbreak mode” switch on the developer units lets you install whatever you want, but we’ll see what the final machines support.) What’s more, the OS will be automatically updated every few weeks — the goal is for it to get faster over time, not slower.

There’s also offline capability — Google Docs was demoed running offline, with changes synced when the machine reconnects. It seems like that’s an app-specific feature though — apps on the Chrome Web Store have to be built for HTML5 offline to work, obviously. Google also demoed Google Cloud Print, which allows you to print on your home printer from anywhere. Chrome OS devices will also be able to use new Verizon 3G plans for offline access — you’ll get 100MB of free data per month for two years, and then plans start at $9.99 for a day of “unlimited access” with no contracts required. (There will eventually be international options, but those weren’t detailed.)

There are still some unfinished bits though — there’s no support for the USB ports on the machines yet, and there are still some performance tweaks and bug fixes to come. (Don’t expect ever being able to connect a printer, as the company thinks its Cloud Print service is a better option.) The OS will come on Intel-based machines from Acer and Samsung in mid-2011 — and “thousands of Googlers” are using Chrome OS devices as their primary machines. An unbranded 12-inch reference machine called Cr-48 will be available for developers — read more about that here.

Overall, Chrome OS is very much a modern riff on the “thin client” idea from the 90s — an idea that Eric Schmidt himself pioneered while at Sun. Indeed, Schmidt took the stage at the event to explicitly draw the connection, saying that “our instincts were right 20 years ago, but we didn’t have the tools or technology.” That’s a pretty wild statement — and now Google has to deliver.

Developing…

Google Chrome OS gets detailed, first laptops from Acer and Samsung coming mid-2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What do you do when the web’s 500-pound Googorilla decides to muscle in on your action? Amazon’s answer, apparently, is to work with said primate. Instead of making pouty faces about Google eBooks, the Kindle purveyor has unwrapped a new version of its Kindle for the Web browser-based reader and is rolling it into Google’s Chrome Web Store. Up until now, this web offering only ever permitted the consumption of book samples in its short beta existence, but that’s a limitation that Amazon is lifting with its new software, promising to “enable users to read full books in the browser and [enable] any Website to become a bookstore offering Kindle books.” And hey, since it’s on the web, you shouldn’t have any trouble accessing it on Chrome OS, either! Coming to a Web Store near you early next year.

Continue reading Amazon demonstrates new Kindle for the Web, coming to Chrome Web Store early next year

Amazon demonstrates new Kindle for the Web, coming to Chrome Web Store early next year originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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