There’s not long to go now before Apple fans get another dose of The Jobster [who's not actually dead] in action and rolling out new software and gadgets for the faithful.
A new iPod nano is on the cards and, if what has been leaked [or completely fabricated from absolutely no hard evidence] can be believed, then the above shot could be what the new one looks like.
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As Google prepares to blow out the 10 candles on top of its birthday cake this Sunday, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin can be forgiven for cracking a wry smile as they reflect upon the fire they have just lit under Microsoft.
The conflagration that has the creator of Windows running for the fire extinguisher was caused by Google’s launch of its own internet browser. The arrival of Chrome, announced in typically idiosyncratic style through the medium of an online comic strip this week, represents more than just a challenge to Microsoft’s market-leading Internet Explorer. It represents a fundamental fight over the future of the computer.
Microsoft, as so many potential rivals have found over the years, has a stranglehold over the market for the software that runs computers thanks to its hugely successful Windows operating system. So Google has taken heed of the old adage that if you cannot win, change the game.
The rise of broadband internet access has finally created an environment where applications such as word processors or spreadsheet programs do not need to reside on a computer. Instead they can be run on the internet and the documents created can be stored on web servers so they can be accessed from anywhere a person can get online. In a world where such web-based applications abound, it does not matter what operating system a computer runs because all it needs to have is an internet browser and an internet connection. In that world, a user could even opt for a free operating system.
It’s a change that Bill Gates himself foresaw when 13 years ago he wrote an internal memo in which he assigned the “highest level of importance” to the internet and warned his colleagues that it was a potential “tidal wave” that could fundamentally alter the rules.
That memo mentioned then market-leading browser Netscape as having the potential to “commoditize the underlying operating system”. That infamous memo was one of the catalysts of the browser wars of the late 1990s, which ultimately saw Internet Explorer crush Netscape Navigator, and it also included a line about ensuring that makers of computers ship their machines with a Microsoft browser pre-installed. That practice landed Microsoft in court and led to the effective split of the company. But by then the damage was done and Netscape ended up in the hands of AOL before disappearing all but completely.
When Gates testified as part of the anti-trust case brought against the company 10 years ago he was asked what that line about “commoditizing the operating system” had meant. He replied: “They were creating a product that would either reduce the value or eliminate demand for the Windows operating system if they continued to improve it and we didn’t keep improving our product.”
Firefox cub
Ironically, Chrome, which has been roughly two years in the making, builds upon innovations made in browser technology by Microsoft’s rival Mozilla, custodian of the Firefox browser, some of whose technological DNA comes from Netscape Navigator.
But the browser wars of a decade ago do not live on just within the technology of Chrome, but in Google’s decision to create it in the first place. The search engine’s chief executive admitted after the launch that “the browser wars of 10 years ago were right: the browser matters”.
Brin added that “operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world. They have become kind of bulky … We [web users] want a very lightweight, fast engine for running applications. The kind of things you want to have running standalone are shrinking.”
That is bad news for Microsoft, which makes a significant chunk of its revenues from its Windows operating system and Office suite of software, both of which sit upon the computer itself.
Google, of course, makes pretty much all of its revenues from online search. It has gone from a doctoral project at Stanford University to the world’s largest search engine in 10 years, blasting through the traditional media and advertising industries on the way. It is now one of the world’s most trusted and recognised brands.
Over the past few years, the company has moved into online applications and services such as email, word processing, calendars, instant messaging, maps, spreadsheets and even bought the online video phenomenon YouTube.
But ultimately everything it does is about persuading people to do more with the internet. The more time people spend online, the more likely they are to search for something and the more likely they are to generate revenues for Google or queries that help improve its search algorithm. So why would it want to dabble with browsers?
Firstly, the sense that Google’s executives have given over the past few days is that if the rest of the industry had produced good enough browsers, there would have been no need for them to create Chrome.
Announcing the launch of Chrome - which was leaked after a Google staffer posted a copy of the 38-page comic that heralded the move - the company said on its website: “People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they’re doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.
“We realised that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.”
Android attack
Chrome, according to early testers, is certainly faster than many of the browsers already in the market - especially the current version of Internet Explorer - and it has been engineered so that if one website being visited freezes up, the entire program does not crash.
Google has moved into another area - mobile phones - for roughly similar reasons. The creation of its Android operating system for mobile phones - the first device that runs it is expected in time for Christmas - owes much to the fact that the mobile internet has been promised for years but the industry’s love of proprietary systems has held back its arrival.
The first gadget to deliver on the promise of the mobile web, Apple’s iPhone, owes some of its success to the fact that it is an “open” platform, so anyone who uses common web standards can create applications for it. Android is also an open mobile platform, in the same way as Chrome is an open browser platform.
But Chrome is also a crucial defensive play for Google. If you rely - as it does - on people having access to the internet to make your money you not only want to make it as simple as possible but ensure no one gets in your way.
The new, eighth version of Internet Explorer, which is due out soon, includes the ability to view web pages anonymously. Erasing a user’s online footprints would make it harder for Google to collect the data about visitors that it uses to improve search results and serve relevant adverts.
Chrome also has an anonymous browsing mode - which has quickly been dubbed “porn mode” because it hides details of where the user has been from other users of the same machine - but Google will still know what that user has been doing online.
Then there is the fact that browsers increasingly contain search boxes within them, raising the risk that a popular new browser could slowly squeeze Chrome out of the market by signing up with a rival search engine.
Google has already been hedging its bets. It has a deal with the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit-making organisation that funds the development of Firefox, the web’s second most popular browser, to have its search box within the browser itself. Just last month Google extended that deal - which has recently generated more than three quarters of Mozilla’s revenues - until 2011. Google’s toolbar is already standard on Apple’s Safari browser and can also be downloaded and installed on Internet Explorer.
Chrome has excited the tech world but ultimately it
all comes down to money and for Google that means more people searching more often. As Citigroup put it in a note to clients this week: “Given that search has become such a fundamental part of internet usage, anything that impacts overall internet usage is important for Google.”
Google is either more than 12, nearly 11, exactly 10 tomorrow or not quite 10 years old, depending on which event is taken as its birth. While still at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working on technology that would become the forerunner of Google by January 1996. It was called BackRub, because it analysed back links - essentially the links to a site from other sites.
BackRub was “let loose” in March 1996. Brin and Page had created an algorithm that ranked pages by importance - PageRank, which is still at the heart of Google today. The bigger the internet got, they reckoned, the bigger the search engine would get, which led them to name it after googol, the term for the numeral one followed by a hundred zeros. Google was launched in August 1996
Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, invested $100,000, making the cheque out to Google Inc, which did not exist. So on September 7 1998 Brin and Page incorporated Google as a company.
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The technological progress has given us several feature rich gadgets to facilitate our various requirements. People are becoming more dependent on various gadgets for their day to day works. However, this serious effect can be described in both negative and positive manner. These tiny feature rich widgets support the people in their various ways and [...]
I am a small, private donor to a developing world charity helping a village with no electricity. So far I have been able to give them a clockwork radio and torch. Are there any cheap computers designed for this market?
Chris Berg
JS: The most widely publicised device is the MIT-inspired XO-1 laptop, which has been developed under the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. You can donate a laptop for $200, but you can’t direct it to a particular village (laptopgiving.org). Alternatively, have a look at UK-based Aleutia (aleutia.com). This company has developed the low-power E2 Mini Computer (£199), which can be powered by a foldable solar panel, and is suitable for use in Africa. The project started after Mike Rosenberg, the founder, set up a cybercafe in Takoradi, Ghana, to work with street children. The site’s wiki says: “We package the E2 with low-power LCDs, folding solar panels, and rugged batteries to form a 3kg, $900 kit that can be dispatched anywhere and set up in minutes, and is used by aid workers in the field.” (wiki.aleutia.com).
The Ethical Superstore may suggest some cheaper non-computer ideas: ethicalsuperstore.com.
I have accidentally deleted some photos (grandchildren, special events etc) that I thought were backed up on my slave drive. I used Active File Recovery to undelete them, but I cannot open them. Irfanview says “cannot display header”.
Tony
JS: Try using PhotoRec, which is designed for “digital picture and file recovery”: it’s not guaranteed to work but at least it’s free. Image Recall may be even better: it costs £24.99, but there’s a demo version. Programs that will try to reconstruct damaged image files include Pix Recovery and EasyRecovery Pro.
I’m seeing much more spam with zip attachments. The messages are carefully crafted to induce any busy office worker to click on them without thinking, and often seem to be targeted at individuals within the company. I’m not about to click on one of these, but if I did, what would happen?
Roger Wilson
JS: This is a common way of distributing botnet-controlled Trojan files, such as the ZBot banking Trojan, ideally a variant known as Prg. The basic idea is to capture and simulate all the keystrokes used to access your (preferably commercial) bank account to perform a fraudulent money transfer that is almost indistinguishable from the real thing. ZBot can also attempt to disable your firewall, steal credit card numbers, takes snapshots of your screen and download extra components as required. Anti-virus software should block it, including online scanners such as Kaspersky. However, anyone who finds it would also need to change their banking and other passwords.
Email alerts
In the film Sleepless in Seattle, an onscreen alert box popped up every time a new email was received by one of the characters. I use Hotmail, Gmail and the Microsoft Vista successor to Outlook Express, but none of them seems to offer this convenience. Why not?
Michael McCarthy
JS: It’s one of those things that sounds like a good idea but can easily become really annoying. Still, many, if not most email programs have some form of alert, including Windows Live Mail, and you can set a sound for New Mail Notification in the Control Panel’s Sounds and Audio Devices applet. If you have Windows Live Messenger, you can get email alerts that, if clicked, will launch your Windows Live Mail program. For Gmail, you can use the Gmail Notifier - still in beta - but if you install the Google Talk client, you will get email alerts automatically.
There must be dozens of email alert programs and add-ons, many of them free. You can browse a selection. Otherwise, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks starred in both Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, and I have not seen either.
Richard Cooke wanted a PC to edit native AVCHD hi-def movies with Pinnacle software. Neil says he edits it with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. There is a free trial version of the Sony software at Softpedia.
Annie Hall wanted to send newsletters from her Talk Talk mailbox. According to comments on the Ask Jack blog, Talk Talk can send an email to up to 50 recipients, but kds1767 reckons Talk Talk will solve the problem by soon offering Hostopia’s Announcer service. AttendantLord says: “My partial solution is to send bulk emails using the email facility of the hosting company for my website (Vision Internet).”
Last week, I mentioned Windows Easy Transfer Companion but Microsoft has withdrawn it. A Microsoft staff member said in a forum: “I think the download link is removed because [it] is not compatible with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or Windows XP Service Pack 3.”
Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk
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The Canon IXUS 75 is an incredible digital camera with some of the most admirable features that make photography a joy. The camera is equipped with great facilities that give the photographers complete satisfaction. This innovative camera comes with highly user friendly functionality. The various users can easily use the device and take amazing pictures [...]
Brazilian employers beware! Having had weeks of their nation’s employees squandering valuable work time by watching Brazil scrape a bronze in Olympics football, they will have to deal with a new distraction from today as Gizmodo invades Brazil.
We’d just like to say welcome to our new gadget-obsessed cousins who will no doubt do a fine job of dragging the Brazilian productivity rate into the dirt, while simultaneously showing Brazilians the fastest way of wasting their hard earned cash on the coolest gadgets out there.
Makes a change from thongs and volleyballs. The new site goes live later today.-Martin Lynch
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If things have been spirited out of your house lately, it’s about time to try your spying skills with the latest gadgets. You can test your perseverance and ingenuity at the same time. Mind you, spies are not born. They are made and perfected with practice.
When Your Home is Under Siege
The home is supposed to [...]
It’s been a long time since DVD players were considered cool and even longer since they gave off even a whiff of sex appeal, but LG has certainly injected a little heat into the now bland DVD arena with its DVS450H DVD.
Aside from the crappy name, the player is a real design treat, standing thin and tall with a glossy black finish and minimalist controls. It can stand horizontally or vertically and is suitable for wall mounting, just so everyone can ‘ooh’ over your gadget sense of style.
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The MP3 player watch is a novel idea that has finally become reality. It is a perfect combination of watches and mp3 players. Just plug the MP3 player watch into your computer’s USB port to transfer music files and data. You can listen to Music and Record Conversations wherever you go. All stored in your [...]
Nokia has enhanced its mobile phone range with the introduction of the N95 8G mobile phone. Among the features of the Nokia N95 8G mobile phone is the latest RealPlayer media player. This real player media player is the most suitable for full screen video playback. The users will really like the Nokia N95 8G [...]