Google held an event this afternoon to showcase its upcoming Chrome OS software for notebooks. Chrome OS is basically an operating system based around the Google Chrome web browser. It’s designed to surf the web and run web apps rather than native apps — although users will be able to run some web apps such as Google Docs even when there’s no Internet connection available.

Chrome OS won’t be ready for the public until next year, but today Google emphasized several key features. That includes the speed of the OS and the browser, with enhancements like “Crankshaft”, graphical acceleration that can take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration and WebGL. The company also stressed the simplicity of design and use, and security of the upcoming Chrome 9 and OS platform.  The Chrome OS even supports a guest mode that runs in Incognito mode to ensure privacy and a new user account can be set up in under a minute, even on a freshly installed system.

Additional features like Chrome Sync will let you sync everything now, bookmarks, extensions, and other data. Google says it will take less than a minute to set up a new Chrome OS netbook, since you just have to login to your account to retrieve your data.

Google also unveiled the Google Web Store today, which will let users “install” web apps in Chrome. The store appears to have a well designed interface and potentially very useful apps, such as NPR, Amazon Windowshop and New York Times apps and games like “Poppit.” While app purchases are naturally tied to your Google account. It remains to be seen how Google’s web store will compare to other app stores like the iTunes App Store or Google Android Market — especially since the apps can all be run in any modern web browser that supports the same web standards as Chrome, but the apps look intriguing .

The Web Store is actually already open for developer that want to submit apps. It should be available for end users soon as well.

The first notebook to run Chrome OS will be the Cr-48, a notebook Google will be rolling out in small quantities as part of a pilot program. Next year Acer and Samsung are expected to launch the first commercially available Chrome OS notebooks.

Or if you don’t want to wait that long to use an operating system designed around web apps, you could always download Jolicloud 1.1, which was released today.

While Google is officially positioning Android 3.0 Honeycomb (due out next year) as the first truly tablet-friendly version of Android, the company has added support for “extra large screens” to Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Gingerbread was officially launched yesterday, and in the developer guide there’s information about coding apps to fit multiple screen sizes. That includes everything from smartphones with 320 x 240 pixel displays to larger tablets with 10 inch screens and resolutions as high as 1280 x 800 pixels.

That’s good news, since tablet makers clearly aren’t waiting for Honeycomb to release tablets with large displays. A number of models including the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Archos 70, Archos 101, and Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor are already available in various parts of the globe with 7 to 10 inch displays and resolutions as high as 1024 x 600 pixels.

While the basic Android interface already scales pretty well to these larger screens, many apps aren’t currently optimized for higher resolution displays. That means you sometimes end up viewing the apps in small windows in the center of the screen surrounded by thick black borders. It also means that apps that do scale up to the larger display might not really take advantage of the space properly. For instance, eBook readers could have a two-page view for tablets and a single-page view for smartphones.

Hopefully developers will start to follow these guidelines so that we’ll see some good third party tablet apps even before Honeycomb tablets start to hit the market next year.

via Android Tablets

QML Parallax Layer Desktop is a user interface for tablets and other devices running MeeGo Linux. It’s one of the most unique re-imaginings of the computer desktop I’ve seen in a while. Instead of simply giving you a 2 dimensional, or even 3D palate for app icons and widgets, Cybercom‘s  software gives you a series of layers.

In other words, you might have 4 or more overlapping layers of widgets, icons, and other items. You could arrange shortcuts for all of your multimedia apps in one layer, and your business apps in another. You can then switch layers by scrolling through a carousel on the left side of the screen — but you can see all the layers at once on your desktop.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure that Parallax Desktop is useful, but it’s certainly cool looking. You can check it out in action after the break.

via MeeGo Experts

Xmarks has been saved from the brink of extinction. The popular bookmark synchronization service allows users to install a browser plugin and keep their Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer bookmarks synchronized across multiple computers. Millions of people have used the service over the past few years, but Xmarks never really managed to come up with a profitable business model and was ready to close up shop.

Today the company announced that Xmarks has been acquired by LastPass.

This is pretty awesome news for anyone who has ever used Xmarks or LastPass. Over the past few months, LastPass has become my go-to source for browser password synchronization. I regularly use Google Chrome and Firefox on my primary computer, and with LastPass I can generate secure passwords for new accounts with any web site in one browser, and they’ll automatically be available on the other browser.

Things get even better when I switch to another computer, since I can either install the LastPass plugin or just visit the LastPass web site to access a listed of my saved sites and accounts and auto-login to any site without having to remember a secure, hard-to-recall password.

In fact, in some ways LastPass has replaced Xmarks for me, since it not only remembers passwords, but provides a quick and easy way to login to many of the sites I visit most frequently. But Xmarks fills in the blanks by keeping all my other bookmarks up to date, and integrating with the bookmarks menus of any browser I use.

There’s certainly a bit of overlap between the services Xmarks and LastPass offers. Both offer secure password sync for instance. But I’m really looking forward to seeing what the future holds for these apps. For now they’ll continue to operate as independent apps, but eventually the two services will merge.

LastPass operates on a freemium model, where you can create and use the basic service for free on most desktop or laptop computers, but you pay $12 per year for a Premium account which lets you use LastPass on mobile devices including an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone, or Symbian device.

Xmarks will now transition to a similar model, where you can use the basic service for free, or pay $12 per year for extra features including priority support and access to mobile apps. You can also pay $20 per year for Premium LastPass and Xmarks accounts. Unfortunately, some features that used to be free, such as synchronizing open tabs, will now only be available to premium users.

Splashtop has been cranking out a light weight operating system for netbooks and larger notebooks for a few years. The idea is that PC makers can customize and load Splashtop software on a computer alongside Windows, giving you a choice of booting into Windows or Splashtop when you hit the power button. The advantage of booting Splashtop is that the OS tends to load in 10 seconds or less, letting you surf the web, listen to music, chat over Skype, or perform other actions without waiting for Windows to load.

Up until now the only way to get Splashtop has been to buy a computer with the software preloaded. But now the company has begun testing a new version of its software called Splashtop OS, which anyone can download and install on a Windows computer.

The installer is just 2MB, and once installed, you’ll be able to boot into an even lighter version of Splashtop which basically runs one app: A web browser. While older versions of Splashtop used a Mozilla-based browser, Splashtop OS beta uses Google Chrome. And that’s pretty much it.

At boot, you’ll see thumbnail icons for four frequently visited sites, recently closed tabs, plus a search bar. There are also a few browse plugins including Adobe Flash Player 10.1.

The OS is supposed to boot in about 5 seconds, while taking a few more seconds to connect to a wireless network.

Right now Splashtop has only been tested with a handful of HP laptops including the HP Mini 110 and 220 netbooks and several Pavilion dm and dv-series notebooks. When I tried installing Splashtop OS on my Asus laptop, I got an error message telling me that I didn’t have a supported model and I should check back in a few weeks. Your results may vary.

If you have a supported notebook you can download the app from os.splashtop.com. Or you can just check out the brief demo video after the break.

via Laptop Magazine

Until today, my iPod Touch (and your iPhone) has lacked a proper notes application. There are approximately one gazillion note-taking apps in the iTunes Store, but none of them has yet managed to make it ea sy and simple to create, search and – mo st importantly – sync notes with your computer. With a new update, and some rather well chosen partners, Simplenote has just fixed all that.

Simplen ote as an iPhone app has been around for a while. It launches fast, and ignores fancy organizational features and other cruft in favor of simplicity. You click the plus-sign to make a new note and you type in the search bar to whittle d own the list, one letter at a time, just like live-searching in iTunes. It would even sync to a web page so you could access, search and make notes from any browser.

The problem was this web app. I use Simplenote on my iPod Touch, but I have given up on the sync. The login is flakey, and browsers never get triggered to save your username or password, something that every other web login does. Worse, there is no way to scroll the list to see all the notes — you have to use arrow buttons to page through your notes a few at a time. Finally, resizing the window (so you could have a small note-window open at all times) doesn’t resize the actual list so you end up cutting the sides of it off.

These problems are still there. But a new version of Simplenote, just released, adds a few features tha t paradoxically mak e it easier to use, and also plays nice with not one but two real desktop notes applications. This last is what now makes it the killer note-taking app for the iPhone.

The new in-app features are nice. There is iPhone 3.0-style in-app emailing, support for links, email addresses and phone numbers (tap to navigate, mail or call, respectively), an option to chose how the list of notes is sorted, and auto-sync upon close. Those using the iPhone version of Textexpander will be happy to see their typed abbreviations expanded i nto full snippets.

But while these are welcome improvements, the syncing to desktop is the big deal. The semi-official partner application (Mac-only) is called JustNotes, and does exactly the same as Simplenote. Create, search and sync. You have keyboard shortcuts to creat e and navigate and the pretty HUD-style window pops up when you need it and then gets out of the way. A se arch bar will narrow the entries, just li ke Simplenote, and syncing, although not automatic, is done w ith a single click or keystroke.

Simplenote also has an option for a premium subscription at $10 (the app itself runs at $2), which buys a year’s worth of RSS feeds and the ability to mail notes into Simplenote from anywhere. JustNotes, the companion application, is free. And in bonus news, fans of the ultra-simple note-taking application for the Mac, Notational Veloci ty, will be able to use it in sync with Simplenote in a futuer (and not-too-far-off) update.

If you are a heavy note taker on the iPhone, you should chec k this out. And if anyone has found other applications that work with Simplenote, especially for Windows, let us kno w in the coments

Product page [Simplenote]

Simplenote for iPhone [iTunes]

Jus tNotes [Selfcoded]

Adobe has released a public beta of Lightroom 3, the company’s tool for processing and organizing cameras’ RAW images. While still an early release, Lightroom 3 l ooks to be a worthy upgrade tha nks to impressive speed improvements and baked-in image sharing tools.

For Lig htroom 3, Adobe completely rewrote much of the underlying co de. The result still looks like Lightroom, but it’s considerably faster than previous releases.

Large image libraries in Lightroom 2 frequently meant blurry, pixelated previews that took a few seconds to resolve into sharp thumbnails. At times Lightroom could feel like a web-based editor for how much trouble it had rendering thumbnails.

Thankfully, pixelated previews are a thing of the past with Lightroom 3. We loaded up an 8,000+ ima ge library into the new beta and not only were the thumbnail previews sharp no matter how many images we scrolled through, common tasks like switching from Library view to Develop view and exporting images to Photoshop were noticeably faster.

Speed isn’t the only thing new in this beta. Lightroom 3 will also bring integrated support for publishing your photos to the web. In the beta, that means built-in syncing with Flickr.

To use the Flickr syncing tool simply authorize Lightroom to access your Flickr account. Once that’s done, publishing your images is a drag-and-drop task. Even better, the syncing is two-way: Lightroom 3 will pull down and update your metadata with any changes made on Flickr and will also grab any comments on the image.

Lightroom 3 now imports comments on your photos from Flickr.

For those with Flickr Pro accounts, it’s even possible to edit and update images that you’ve already posted on Flickr.

The new publish tool also allows you to export image s to folders on your desktop or an external drive. It’s a nice backup feature, but it also means that you can now use Lightro om to manage your iPhone photos — just publish your Lightroom images to a folde r and tell iTunes to sync photos from that folder.

While on the surface mo st of Lightroom 3 looks just like Lightroom 2, the import dialog has been radically revamped. Not only is the import tool muc h faster, it now offers full-resolution image previews and the ability to de fine import templates.

Lightroom 3's import dialog is faster.

The other standout feature in the Lightroom 3 beta is the new set of sharpening and n oise reduction tools, which makes it a snap to get rid of noise in high ISO images.

The new algorithm managed to get rid of a significant amount of color noise without overly softening the images we tested it with. Although the results weren’t perfect, Lightroom 3 did a much better job than its predecessor. The noise reduction tools will be particularly useful for those who’ve upgraded to some of the new, extremely high ISO cameras from Nikon and Canon.

Addicted to hi gh ISO levels? Lightroom 3 can h elp reduce the noise.

On the f lip side of the noise spectrum, Lightroom 3 sports a new “fil m grain” tool that allows you to simulate the look high-ISO film grain without using an external editor. So if graininess is your thing, you can put it back in as easily as you can take it out.

So far Adobe has not set a releas e date for the final version of Lightroom 3. If you’d like to test Lightroom 3 you can grab a copy from the Adobe Labs website. Be careful though, this is a true beta with kno wn bugs. We definitely don’t recommend using it for production work and highly recommend making a backup copy of any images you plan to import.

Just weeks after going on sale here in America, Creative’s underwhelming ZEN X-Fi2 portable media player is already seeing its first firmware u pdate. If you’ll recall, we found the unit darn near unusable back at IFA, and even now it’s being panned for forcing users to mash the screen too oft en and wait too long for things to happen. Reportedly, the 1.10.04 update solves those responsiveness issues, and it also brings about colored icons (yeah, seriously), accelerometer usa ge (but only for photos), a Sudoku g ame and a “press and hold” behavior for powering the unit on or off. The most interesting aspect here (in our humble opinions) is the Sudoku bit, as it certainly hints at more titles being possible in future firmware refreshes. Hit the Read link to get that download going, and hop on past the break if you need any video convincing.

At this point, it’s hard to quantify the effect that Sony’s v1.10 software update will have on Sony’s X-series Walkman: the firmware’s only now hittin g the intertubes. But the simple fact that it’s only feature-point say s, “displaying and navigating Web sites will be improved,” should be enough for X-series owners to give it a go. Japan’s Impr ess AV Watch provides some insight into improvements that include faster page load times, improved scrolling speeds, and more faithful page renderings to the originals. The update also apparently adds a link to Microsoft ’s Bing search engine as well as the ability to search local music folders. Now get to it buster, that 3-inch OLED DAP’s not going to update itself.

We gadget nerds have to e ndure unspeakable atrocities in order to slake that early adoption jones: first-run gear shipped DOA, buggy pre-release software, and months of waitin g after a product leaks only to be greeted by a jacked-up price premium at launch. So we feel your pain, original Kindle owners, after Amazon announced a major firmware update that brings native PDF support to the 6-inch Kindle 2 and DX readers with the promise of a staggering 85% increase in battery life to all Kindle 2 devices — if you haven’t already received it OTA, the 2.3 software update is now available for download and installation via USB tethering. At least owners of “some earlier versions of Kindle” (quote from the press release) will receive native PDF support whenever the 1st generation firmware upd ate (currently at version 1.2) is released. It’s worth noting t hat Amazon’s PDF reader lacks a zoom function which makes many PDF s entirely unreadable on the device. Good thing Amazon’s store is chock full of easily zoomable books in a proprietary format then, huh?