Don't catch a Chromebook cold

In "A new kind of computer: Chromebook", Google announced for June 15th the first Chromebook computers from Samsung and Acer.



Big G claims 160 million Chrome users, and that's more likely Chrome the browser than Chrome the OS. The new devices are supposed to take 8 seconds to boot. How long to catch a virus that may leave you with a useless piece of metal desesperatly knocking on the cloud's door ?

mot-bile 2011

Paul Allen v. Rest Of The Web : NTP Redux ?

Paul Allen's Interval Licensing is suing a few Microsoft foes : AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, YouTube.

The charges : patent infringement regarding 4 patents owned by Interval Licensing - as the name suggests, an empty shell meant to make as many bucks as possible out of
Interval Research "creations".

In this case, the patents protect : a "Browser (...) With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data", an "Attention Manager", and a system to "Alert(...) Users to Items of Current Interest".

Now this episode definitely became an "item of current interest" in a sector still shaken by the NTP/RIM battle over patents.

What puzzles me is to see Paul Allen, who only left the board of Microsoft in 2000, claim a leadership in browsers : Microsoft copied all major user interface disruptions from Apple, starting with the "windows" concept, and the company didn't believe in the internet, joining the bandwagon very late, starting the Internet Explorer project two years after Mosaic was created. Why not sue Mosaic then ? And IE for exploiting it ?

You may win your lawsuit, just like NTP did. But do you want to go down in history for that last caricature of Microsoftian Evilness ?

You'd better stick to rock'n roll, Paulie.

mot-bile 2010

Google Chrome : more open source, less open space ?

Enough piggybacking on IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera & Co : Google Chrome beta for Windows is launched tomorrow (see "Fresh take on browser" on the Google blog).

What can be said of it ?
- many things that could have been guessed : Chrome is based on Open Source, suggests websites, and leverages on browsing history...
- some non-disruptive user friendly innovations : Google Chrome puts the tabs on top of the search box, allows to split tab series
- the brand is a disaster. Chrome is about showing off, not about substance. More SUV than Prius. A heavy leaded browser rather than an agile tool. The only comic part of the comic book released as a teaser : don't worry, there won't be too much Chrome. To kill a mockingbird ?

Last week, IE8 Beta announced an intimate space for the user. Today, Google suddenly shrunk our Google-free space.

More than IE, Chrome threatens other competitors, and first of all the main innovator Firefox / Mozilla. This new Google platform is less likely to boost diversity than to endanger it.

Internet Explorer 007 - licence to kill

Fox hunting season in Redmond, Washington : tired of being snatched whole market shares, Microsoft hired IE double-o-seven to whack Mozilla Firefox. IE7's main "innovation" ? The very tabs system invented by its competitor. An unprotected specie, just like the windows concept invented by Apple before MS turned it into its most valuable brand.
Internet Explorer already proved leathal against Netscape. Not thanks to its own virtues but thanks to Microsoft's dominant position in the OS field. The time for justice to nail the murderer, it was too late for Sun... now a major promoter of open source softwares.
Microsoft can cry the EU rivers, and invest millions to prove communicating their codes would endanger their capacity of innovation... I guess it would cost them much more to prove this very capacity of innovation still exists.

Happy birthday, happy new year of the foxy dragon

History tells us Tim Berners-Lee invented the WorldWideWeb back in 1989 at the CERN.
Headline news tell us the first web page was published 15 years ago on time for Christmas 1990. The first web page could be published because the key to the web had been created.
15 years later, competition seems to revive in the browser area. Thanks to mobile access but also thanks to a cute penguin and a foxy dragon.
My stats for december 2005 show that Firefox snatched 15% of the traffic for this excuse for a blog (+ 1% for Mozilla). Safari hunted another 2,5% while Konqueror ruled over 1%. Opera charmed yet another 0.3% to which Netscape added 0.2%. MSIE claimed 80% of this humble pie. Down from 90% 3 months ago.
If Netscape is almost dead, Mosaic is still alive. Behind the question mark on your Internet Explorer toolbar, that is. MSIE was not brought to you by Microsoft inventors since Microsoft never invented anything but virtual cash cows ; IE is based on NCSA Mosaic (TM), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I happened to visit the Urbana-Champaign campus back in 1989 on my way from Chicago to New Orleans. Instead of trying a few lousy pitches in the stadium that Fighting Illini built, I mighta coulda shoulda... sent better pitches.
But I waited till 1993 to use the web on a regular basis and join a online gaming company.
The thing is OS and browsers are not much fun to me. Even with a cute penguin or a foxy dragon.