Hasta La Gadget!

The headline pretty much reveals the brunt of it, but indeed, it looks like next week Google is going to start talking about how its Chrome operating system is coming along. Multiple sources have told us that Google will be holding some sort of event on Tuesday, December 7th — we’re not sure if it’ll be a live event, a webcast, or something else entirely — and that the shindig will see the launch of that Google-branded Chrome OS netbook we’ve been hearing about. Again, we’ve heard that the Atom-powered laptop isn’t going to be a mass market device — there will only be around 65,000 units available to Google’s closest “friends and family” — and that the Cloud-based OS is still very much in a beta, non-consumer-friendly state. It’s a bit odd that we still haven’t received an invite to this planned event since it’s purportedly days away, not to mention it conflicts with the All Things D: Dive Into Mobile Event, but at the time of publishing this post we had yet to hear back from Google’s PR team with an official comment.

Of course, this all lines up with TechCrunch‘s report that Google will be launching its Chrome Web / App Store very soon, as well as yesterday’s launch of Chrome 8, which supports those aforementioned Chrome apps. (Companies like TweetDeck have already started demoing their browser apps.) Don’t forget that those apps are going to be a large part of the OS, so it would make sense for Google to talk about ’em in tandem. The pieces sure do seem to be fitting together quite well, and while we still have lots of unanswered questions, we’re feeling confident that we’ll be getting some official answers on all this Chrome-ness very soon.

Update: AllThingsD has also heard a similar December 7th launch date of the Chrome Web Store. The evidence seems to be mounting here…

Update 2: Well, there you have it, Google just sent out invites for its December 7th Chrome event! We will be there!

Image note: As we said last time, that picture above is just our own mockup of what a Chromebook may look like. We even added a Chrome key!

Sources: Google-branded Chrome OS netbook to launch on December 7th originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Hey, Adobe’s finally figured out how to make Flash secure — have Google do it! The guys behind your favorite search engine have updated their latest Dev channel release of Chrome to include a new sandboxing facility for Flash Player content. It’ll serve to limit access to sensitive system resources and make Flash’s operation a generally less threatening proposition than it currently is. This also marks the fulfillment of a longstanding promise from Google to give Flash the same treatment it’s afforded to JavaScript and HTML rendering for a while, and should be welcome news to Windows users eager to minimize “the potential attack surface” of their browser. Sorry, Mac fans, you’re out in the unsecured cold for now. Of course, the Dev channel itself is one step less refined than beta software, so even if you’re on Windows it might be advisable to wait it out a little bit.

Chrome sandboxes Flash Player in latest Dev channel release for Windows originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  Chromium Blog  | Email this | Comments

The World Wide Web Consortium — you know, the team responsible for certifying and standardizing HTML5 — has put together its first table of official conformance test results, giving us an idea of how well prepared each of the most popular browsers is for the oncoming web standards revolution. The data show Internet Explorer 9 as the most adroit performer (again), though Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari don’t seem to be too far behind in their HTML5 compliance, either. Of course, these checks don’t cover the entire spec, which in itself isn’t even finalized yet, but they provide us with a glimpse into a brave new world where Microsoft actually cares about coders keen on maximizing interoperability by adhering to web-wide standards. Good stuff. Check out the full results at the source link below.

[Thanks, Mehran]

W3C tests HTML5 browser compatibility, crowns IE9 the champ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Register  |  W3C  | Email this | Comments

If you’re interested in being an early adopter of Google TV, for now you can choose a separate passthrough box like the Logitech Revue or Sony’s Blu-ray player, or plop the whole experience into the display with Sony’s new Internet TV line. We spent some time with the Sony Internet TV NSX-32GT1, and we’re a bit surprised to find that it could feature the best implementation of the Google TV experience of them all. But is that enough? After you’ve digested our impressions of the platform as a whole, check out our review of the Internet TV to find out.

Continue reading Sony Internet TV with Google TV review

Sony Internet TV with Google TV review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

We know Google mentioned it would be a “good citizen” and allow Hulu to block its browser ID, but that doesn’t mean you have to be one too. By default, accessing the website from a Google TV device yields a prompt hoping you’ll wait for the two to work out some kind of agreement on Hulu Plus access, but with a Flash enabled browser at the ready, we’re sure all you want to do is press play. The fine folks over at GadgetWhore first discovered that by digging deep into the advanced settings of the Chrome browser app and changing the browser ID to “Generic” or any custom string one may prefer, Hulu streams immediately start playing with no problem (users may want to change back to default afterwards to make sure other pages render properly.) That’s one benefit of having a “run-of-the-mill” desktop browser integrated into your set-top box, so w while early adopters may only be moments away from discovering the dark side of Google TV, it seems like a few easy browser tweaks may take care of most issues — let us know if you’ve run into any others.

Playing Hulu on Google TV is as easy as changing one setting originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink GTVHub, Simply Google TV  |  GadgetWhore  | Email this | Comments