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<title>Haaze.com / pestcontrolguildford / Published News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:10:52 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA['Atlas Shrugged' pushing high-speed rail]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=atlas-shrugged-pushing-high-speed-rail</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=atlas-shrugged-pushing-high-speed-rail</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:10:52 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pestcontrolguildford</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=atlas-shrugged-pushing-high-speed-rail</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Contemporary high-speed rail seems to have gotten the nod as a plan worthy of pursuit from the makers of the long-awaited film version of &quot;Atlas Shrugged,&quot; Ayn Rand's controversial Objectivist novel in which the railroad industry plays a key role.Production company The Strike released its first trailer for &quot;Atlas Shrugged, Part I&quot; last week. Due out April 15th, the film was directed by Paul Johansson, actor/director of &quot;One Tree Hill&quot; fame.Dialogue in the trailer signals that the book's ideas promoting the value of capitalism, rational self-interest, the intellectually elite, and minimal government interference in society still hold. However, as one might expect, some aspects of the original story appear to have been tweaked for the film version.Train that appears in the &amp;34'Atlas Shrugged, Part I&amp;34' trailer (left) alongside train in an artist&amp;39's rendering of the proposed California high-speed rail line.(Credit:Screenshots by Edward Moyer/CNET)Judging from the trailer, the movie seems to be set in present-day America (the book never specified a year, but it alluded to Depression-era conditions while including 1950s technology). Perhaps the most interesting change, however, is what appears to be a subtle difference in the plot.Rand's book had protagonist Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive, championing train tracks and a bridge made with &quot;Rearden Metal,&quot; an alloy invented by steel magnate Hank Rearden that's supposedly so innovative it's bound to make steel and aluminum obsolete. In planning the construction of a new rail line, Taggart decides to use a diesel locomotive capable of 100 mph for the inaugural trip. But the trailer for the movie seems to have Taggart championing high-speed rail trains of the sort currently in service around the world.The trailer includes footage of old train locomotives breaking down and getting into accidents, and shots of Taggart and Rearden driving what is clearly a new high-speed rail train (see the second video here for a look at real-life examples).&quot;Atlas Shrugged, Part I&quot; could only be more relevant to today's rail situation in the U.S. if the Rearden Metal was not actually metal at all, but something akin to the Recycled Structural Composite (RSC) developed by Axion and Rutgers University.Axion announced recently that its RSC is going to be used to make railroad ties for several U.S. sets of tracks. Like the fictional Rearden Metal in &quot;Atlas Shrugged,&quot; RSC was also initially met with skepticism and scrutiny regarding its strength and durability. A now famous photo of a U.S. military tank crossing a military bridge made from the recycled plastics material, and several military contracts won by Axion, seems to have eased public skepticism of the material's worth.The real-life U.S. high-speed rail project is backed by a combination of federal, state, and private funding. But one could safely assume that the fictional high-speed rail project of &quot;Atlas Shrugged, Part I&quot; is privately funded, in keeping with Rand's original plot and her personal belief that &quot;the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.&quot;Adding a high-speed rail angle to the film might, actually, be the greatest tribute the filmmakers pay to the book's original intent. Its inclusion could result in a film that's of interest to all sides of the political spectrum, and, therefore, maximize its profit potential.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Is it time for an eBay renaissance]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-it-time-for-an-ebay-renaissance</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-it-time-for-an-ebay-renaissance</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:10:47 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pestcontrolguildford</dc:creator>
<category>Business &amp; Finance</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-it-time-for-an-ebay-renaissance</guid>
<description><![CDATA[For a company with more than $2.3 billion in annual earnings and $9.1 billion in revenue, it has been shockingly fashionable to write off eBay. The common refrain: eBay is losing marketplace share. It's so Web 1.0. And eBay can't hang with Amazon. However, eBay has quietly been turning around a few analysts on Wall Street and its powwow Wednesday won a few over. Simply put, eBay has some heady goals between now and 2013. Here's the bottom line outlook: How will eBay get to that revenue goal PayPal will carry the company. Read more of &quot;Is it time for an eBay renaissance&quot; at ZDNet's Between the Lines. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[LS9 raises funds for sugar-to-diesel tech]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ls9-raises-funds-for-sugar-to-diesel-tech</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ls9-raises-funds-for-sugar-to-diesel-tech</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 21 Dec 2010 08:10:38 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pestcontrolguildford</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ls9-raises-funds-for-sugar-to-diesel-tech</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Synthetic biology company LS9 has raised $30 million to help fund commercialization of its process of turning plants into diesel fuel.A diagram of LS9&amp;39's one-step process for converting biomass into diesel fuel.(Credit:LS9)The funding was led by giant global private equity company Black Rock. Money also came from investors Flagship Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and CTTV Investments, the venture capital arm of Chevron, according to LS9.LS9 has developed a fermentation-based process for converting sugar in plants into petroleum replacements using genetically engineered e. coli bacteria. The same process can be modified to manufacture different chemicals as well.Earlier this year, researchers at the San Francisco company published a paper describing the technology which LS9 says can create liquid fuels in one step, making it relatively cost-effective compared with other biofuels technology.With the money, LS9 plans to continue building a demonstration facility in Florida that uses sugar cane to make diesel fuel and to develop its operations in Brazil. To scale up their products, many green-technology companies are seeking money from private equity firms, which typically have more capital available for large plants or manufacturing facilities than do venture capitalists. In a statement, LS9 CEO Ed Dineen said that Black Rock's investment will allow it to speed up plans to deploy its technology.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Study: Blu-ray disc production on the rise]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=study-blu-ray-disc-production-on-the-rise</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=study-blu-ray-disc-production-on-the-rise</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:10:46 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pestcontrolguildford</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=study-blu-ray-disc-production-on-the-rise</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Blu-ray is poised to cement its position in the entertainment space.This year, worldwide &quot;pre-recorded&quot; Blu-ray disc production is expected to reach more than 400 million units, representing a 60 percent increase over 2009 production, research firm Futuresource announced today. But that figure will pale in comparison to Blu-ray shipments just a few years from now.Futuresource said that in 2014, it expects 2 billion Blu-ray discs to be shipped worldwide.Much of the growth in the Blu-ray market is due to &quot;growing player ownership and falling disc prices,&quot; Futuresource senior consultant Michael Boreham said in a statement. Boreham also said that increasing Blu-ray popularity is helping to drive more &quot;copy depth&quot; in retail stores.However, it's the prospect of 3D that could play an integral role in the popularity of Blu-ray going forward.Fiona Hoy, a market analyst at Futuresource, said in a statement that &quot;3D is ideally suited&quot; to Blu-ray, and starting in 2012, the analyst believes there will be &quot;very strong demand for 3D content, which will fuel additional [Blu-ray sales] growth.&quot;Futuresource's prediction wasn't arbitrarily decided. Reports surfaced earlier this week, claiming Panasonic would hold the exclusive rights to the 3D Blu-ray version of &quot;Avatar&quot; through February 2012. After that time, the film will be made available as a standalone product. Futuresource said &quot;Avatar&quot; is already boosting demand for 3D Blu-ray content, indicating that it could have sizable impact on the market after Panasonic's exclusivity deal ends.As successful as Blu-ray is expected to be in the coming years, the technology it's replacing, DVD, won't have the same luck.Research firm In-Stat released a study recently that found total disc sales are expected to drop by $4.6 billion between 2009 and 2014. The research firm confirmed that Blu-ray sales will increase over that period, but they won't grow enough to offset the significant sales declines of DVD.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[The 10 best games of 2010]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=the-10-best-games-of-2010</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=the-10-best-games-of-2010</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pestcontrolguildford</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=the-10-best-games-of-2010</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:GameSpot)For a gaming year that started out with a bang, 2010 has stumbled to the finish line. Of course, it's impossible to ignore the outrageous success of the recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops--but aside from that title, most of the second half of 2010 remains forgettable. A reason for this lull in quality console games is likely the bombardment of motion-gaming initiatives from Sony and Microsoft. In a way, these product launches ostensibly carved out a release window that saw plenty of Kinect and Move-friendly titles but forced conventional &quot;button-games&quot; to take the backseat. Was this the reason for the sharp drop-off in the fall of 2010 The top 10 best games of 2010 (screenshots)  Regardless of when in the calendar year these top-notch games were released, 2010 did see some excellent efforts for each platform as well as few surprises along the way. Like in 2009, sequels seem to highlight our list, with a few new franchises breaking into the top 10, too. We also think portable gaming suffered in 2010, with only a few titles being released that are even worth mentioning. Of course, no top-10 list is complete without honorable mentions, so please click through to view some titles we'd like to recognize but that didn't quite find their ways into top-10 placement. As always, be sure to sound off in the comments section if your list is different from ours! Honorable mention:Bayonetta (360,PS3)Super Meat Boy (XBLA)Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii)NHL 11 (360, PS3)God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP)Fallout: New Vegas (360, PS3)Vanquish (360, PS3)Alan Wake (360)<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Time Warner Cable to test cheaper TV package]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=time-warner-cable-to-test-cheaper-tv-package</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=time-warner-cable-to-test-cheaper-tv-package</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:10:26 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pestcontrolguildford</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=time-warner-cable-to-test-cheaper-tv-package</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Time Warner Cable will soon test a less expensive cable TV package called &quot;TV Essentials&quot; as the company tries to cater to lower income consumers.  Time Warner Chief Marketing Officer Sam Howe provided details of the new low-end video offering for the first time at the SNL Kagan Cable MSO Summit in New York on Thursday. The new package will be offered as a test in New York City starting Monday, where it will cost $39.95 per month. It will also be offered in parts of Ohio, where it will be priced at $29.95 per month. These are promotional offers and the price will go up to $49.99 per month after one year, the company said.The service will include all local broadcast stations and major broadcast channels, as well as 12 of the most popular 20 cable channels. But there will be some notable channels missing in this version of the service including, ESPN, Comedy Central, TNT, Fox News, MSNBC, Fox regional sports, and MSG.The paid TV industry has been losing TV subscribers over the past two quarters. Cable operators have been blaming the weak housing market and the slow economy as a reason why people are canceling cable TV service. In total, taking into account losses and gains between different types of providers, the paid TV market lost a net 119,000 subscribers in the third quarter, compared with a gain of 346,000 during the same quarter last year, according to research released today by SNL Kagan. Specifically, Time Warner Cable reported in the third quarter that it lost 155,000 video subscribers of which about 46,000 were digital video subscribers.Craig Moffett, a Wall Street equities research analyst with Sanford Bernstein, noted in a recent report that 40 percent of U.S. households have no disposable income to pay for services, such as cable TV. And he called on the cable industry in particular to revisit pricing to address the low end of the market.The new &quot;TV Essentials&quot; package is designed to do just that. CEO Glenn Britt hinted at the new scaled-down version of the service during the company's third quarter conference call earlier this month.&quot;We recognize there is a segment of our population and economy under economic duress,&quot; Britt said during the call. &quot;And it's important for the broader industry to be responsive to that. So we have sought in our programming negotiations to get more flexibility [to offer lower cost packages.]&quot;While the promotional pricing of the new service is lower than existing tiers of service, it still may not be low enough. Time Warner Cable's expanded basic cable package costs about $50 per month. And its basic digital cable costs around $60 per month. Prices vary between different markets, and promotions also vary by region.Meanwhile, consumers with broadband services can still get video content for much less. Hulu has just reduced the subscription price of its Hulu Plus service, which provides access to recently aired shows on TVs, to $8 a month. And Netflix subscribers can stream as many movies and TV shows from its on-demand service for $9 a month. These services, when used in conjunction with free over-the-air TV that uses an antenna, would provide a similar breadth of programming to consumers as the new &quot;TV Essentials&quot; package, which excludes most premium live local and national sports broadcasts.But it seems the group Time Warner is really addressing with this offer is not the group of consumers who subscribe to broadband and are looking to cut the cord. Instead, the target audience appears to be consumers who do not subscribe to broadband or phone service, since the new &quot;TV Essentials&quot; package will not be eligible for any of the broadband and phone bundle discounts the company offers.There are other limitations of the service, as well. The Wall Street Journal reports that the service will not include high-definition programming, DVR capability, or free on-demand programming. But it will offer paid on-demand service, such as newly released movies.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[On The Road With Cr-48: The Chrome Notebook Is Both Shiny And&nbsp'Tarnished]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=on-the-road-with-cr-48-the-chrome-notebook-is-both-shiny-andnbsptarnished</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=on-the-road-with-cr-48-the-chrome-notebook-is-both-shiny-andnbsptarnished</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pestcontrolguildford</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=on-the-road-with-cr-48-the-chrome-notebook-is-both-shiny-andnbsptarnished</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Every piece of technology has both good and bad attributes. Nothing is perfect. Not even the iPhone. (Well, at least not until that AT&amp;amp'T exclusivity ends.) But until three days ago, I had never used a product with attributes that are both insanely awesome and shockingly awful at the same time. Welcome into the world, Cr-48.Now, Google has made it very clear that they don&amp;'t intend to release this product as it stands. As such, they&amp;'ve more or less asked those they&amp;'ve sent it to not to review it as a completed product. But it&amp;'s pretty much impossible to avoid talking about the hardware here because for most of us, it is the first and only gateway we&amp;'ve had into Chrome OS. Plus, there&amp;'s a lot of interest in this particular device among our readers, so I&amp;'m going to talk about it.Simply put: the hardware is pretty bad. Actually, maybe not so much bad, as annoying as all hell. But the only reason it&amp;'s so annoying is because Chrome OS, even in its very early, fairlya4srough stage, is that good. Well, potentially that good.While Jason wrote up his initial thoughts after a day with the device, I&amp;'ve been using it as my primary machine for just about three days now. Also, I likely have a different perspective as I&amp;'m currently traveling &amp;8212' something which a Chrome notebook should be perfect for.The DesignInitially, when I took it out of the box, I sort of wanted to laugh at the Cr-48. Jason compared its look to that of one of the old 12-inch PowerBook G4s. But actually, I think it&amp;'s closer to a combination of an old 12-inch iBook and one of the previous generation MacBooks &amp;8212' the one that came in black. In fact, when you open it up and start typing on it, it feels very similar to that MacBook.Of course, that MacBook is also a few years old already. And when compared to the new MacBook Air, this thing looks like a bloated dog. One covered in some kind of rubber blanket. The fact that it has a VGA port, an ugly side grill for the fan, and yet only one USB port, doesn&amp;'t help.But again, this is a prototype device. So we have to cut Google some slack here. As far as I know, they haven&amp;'t said which of their manufacturing partners made this thing, but let&amp;'s hope it was the cheapest device possible for them to produce and that&amp;'s why it exists as it does.I really do hope that&amp;'s the case.The SetupOkay, so I took it out of the box and laughed. But then I opened the lid. Immediately, the thing booted up. No need to press the power button. 15 seconds later, it was walking me through a very easy-to-understand tutorial on how to use Chrome OS. After a few minutes reading it, I was asked to take a picture of myself (for my profile picture) with the built-in camera (above the screen), then I was all ready to go. That&amp;'s it.I signed in with my Google account, and the browser launched. My bookmarks, extensions, and web apps were all automatically synced. I was ready to go pretty much instantly.Now I was impressed. Very impressed. This is absolutely the future of computer set-ups.The TrackpadBut the love affair quickly turned sour when I started using the Cr-48 trackpad. Jason called it a &amp;''turd&amp;'', but I think that&amp;'s being too kind. It&amp;'s maybe the worst excuse for a piece of technology that anyone has created in the past five years. It&amp;'s so much worse than any other trackpad I&amp;'ve ever used in recent memory, it&amp;'s almost unbelievable. Those bug reports from a few weeks ago make sense now.And it also makes sense why Google isn&amp;'t selling the Cr-48 at all, despite the high demand. If they sold this product with this trackpad, Google may not be allowed to ever attempt to make another branded product ever again. If you think I&amp;'m exaggerating, use one.Every time I point at something and click down, the cursor moves below or above where I had originally pointed. I&amp;'ve now taught myself to aim slightly higher or lower than where I want to click. But I have to guess which it will be. It&amp;'s a crapshoot.Trying to double click with two fingers is even worse. If you&amp;'re used to casually doing it with ease on a MacBook, this will be your hell.a4sTo get it to work, you essentially have to lift two fingers about a foot in the air, then bring them down in a perfectly straight line at a rapid speed while making sure that they both hit the pad at the exact same time. Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit there, but it&amp;'s really bad.Two finger scrolling It&amp;'s perfect if you like randomly jumping to various parts of webpages for no reason.Okay, I&amp;'ve made my point. This trackpad is a disgrace. It&amp;'s an abomination. I don&amp;'t know if it&amp;'s hardware or software or both (likely), but it&amp;'s just terrible. I&amp;'m tempted to do the unthinkable: buy a mouse.The KeyboardMoving on. So, the trackpad quickly soured my Chrome OS experience. But after I figured out little tricks to bettera4smaneuvera4s(mainly using the excellent keyboard and its shortcuts), I was back on track. After a day, I was frustrated. But after two days, I was really, really liking Chrome OS. And even certain things about the Cr-48 specifically.For example, every computer should absolutely have a search button in place of caps lock. I can&amp;'t remember the last time I&amp;'ve used caps lock. And yet, there it is, right there in a vital place on the keyboard. On the Cr-48, I think the search button rivals the spacebar for my most-often-hit key. You click it and it launches a new tab reach to search away in the omnibox.a4sIt&amp;'s fantastic.Also awesome are the window-switching and full screen mode buttons on the Cr-48. OS X, with Spaces,a4sessentiallya4sallows you to do this type of window-switching, but I&amp;'d argue that it&amp;'s better on Chrome OS because everything is simplified. If you want to open a new window (as opposed to a new tab), it will reside on another screen. That said, it is a little tricky to navigate if you have more than two windows open &amp;8212' hitting the button will cycle through them in order.Full screen mode has existed on Chrome for some time, but the keyboard shortcut makes it more accessible than ever before. And on smaller screens (like the 12-inch on on the Cr-48), it&amp;'s very nice.The SpeedSpeed is the other major weakness of the Cr-48. It&amp;'s running an Intel Atom chip which is apparently clocked at 1.66 GHz. That may seem like it would be fast enough to run a web browser, but it&amp;'s not. Well, not if you&amp;'re doing anything with Flash turned on.When we initially reported on the Flash issues that Cr-48 users were having, many of our favoritea4scommentersa4s(who may or may not make a living developing for Flash) were quick with the typical &amp;''bias!&amp;'' nonsense. Of course, a few hours later, none other than Adobe themselves admitted the performance of Flash on the Cr-48 was unacceptable, and said they were working on it.Good, because beyond watching a small YouTube clip with no other tabs open, Flash is basically unusable on the Cr-48. And that&amp;'s annoying because Google has decided to bake Flash into not only Chrome, but Chrome OS as well. So extensions like Flash Block are your friend here &amp;8212' or go to about:plugins and disable Flash directly until Adobe gets the mess sorted out.But even beyond Flash, the Cr-48 just feels very slow when compared to any other modern computer. Typing, for example, often lags on sites such as WordPress (which I&amp;'m using right now). And opening new tabs and windows takes a few seconds longer than it would on a normal machine.All of this is would seem to be because Google included only 2 GB of RAM in the Cr-48. But I have a MacBook Air with only 2 GB of RAM and it flies. Google really needs to work with their OEM partners to get this lag sorted out before these Chrome notebooks start shipping. And I have to believe they will.Beyond PrototypeIn fact, in many ways, the Cr-48 reminds me a lot of the G1, the first Android phone Google shipped (with HTC) a couple years ago. They both were clearly step one of a platform that would quickly evolve. And the Cr-48 even sort of feels like the G1 to the touch.I still have a G1. Looking at it now compared to the newer Android phones is pretty humorous. The platform has clearly come a long way. And that gives me a lot of hope for Chrome notebooks as well.As it stands now, two things about this the Cr-48 currently standout: the boot-up time and the battery life. Both are excellent.The Cr-48 goes from being off to the log-in screen in 15 seconds. That&amp;'s slightly above Google&amp;'s stated 10 second mark, but it&amp;'s still very, very good. When you log-in, it takes another 15 seconds or so to load all your profile information and Chrome preferences from the web. So you&amp;'re looking at a total time from zero to working in 30 seconds.For comparison, the new MacBook Air, with its new solid state drives, goes from zero to working in about 18 seconds. But that&amp;'s without booting up Chrome (or your web browser of choice on OS X) and waiting for it to load a page. That adds another 5 seconds or so. So they&amp;'re very close in terms of startup speed between the two systems. And again, that&amp;'s on Google&amp;'s prototype machine.But as I indicated above, the Air runs circles around the Cr-48 in just about everything else when it comes to performance.The one area where the Cr-48 does seem to have the MacBook Air beat is battery life. Google claims 8 hours, but I think it actually may be more. Because I&amp;'m in Europe, I turned off the cellular antenna (since Verizon connectivity obviously won&amp;'t work here) and I&amp;'m seeing closer to 10 hours of battery life on a full charge when connected to WiFi. The MacBook Air has fantastic battery life as well, but Cr-48 is definitely better.And again, just imagine what that will mean when someone actually creates a Chrome notebook that they intend to sell. The Cr-48 is a little bit bulky, but if they trim it down to around Air size, I bet they could still get at least a solid 7 or more hours out of the system. This seems to be one huge benefit of only running a browser.Chrome OSAnd let&amp;'s finally talk about that browser. Quite a few people were shocked when Chrome OS was revealed to be little more than Chrome &amp;8212' and that&amp;'s it. But that simplicity is the OS&amp;'s strength. It removes several layers of junk that most people these days never use on a computer.I know that personally, roughly 95 percent of what I do on a computer these days is in the web browser. Of the other 5 percent, 4 percent of it could probably be done in the browser too (light image editing, taking notes, etc). The other one percent is more difficult but those are mainly things (iTunes media management, Photoshop)a4sthat I only need to do some of the time and can use a desktop machine for.That&amp;'s the thing: Chrome OS isn&amp;'t going to fully replace anyone&amp;'s desktop anytime soon. But it could become a very viable on-the-go computing solution.Even in its current beta state, Chrome OS has definitely been a perfectly adequate travel companion these past three days (Cr-48 trackpad aside). And it&amp;'s only going to get better. And if Chrome&amp;'s (the browser) evolution is any indication, it&amp;'s going to get better very quickly.PanelsAs Jason hit on quite a bit in his post, one of the most interesting things about Chrome OS will be how developers support it. Right now, most Chrome Web Store apps are little more than mildly glorified extensions, or just links to web apps already in existence. Meanwhile, one of the coolest features of Chrome OS, panels, are barely used. Developers can and should change this quickly.PrettificationAnother thing that bugs me about the OS currently is that Google seems determined to maintain some of Windows awful aesthetics. More directly: fonts look like shit.Chrome on Mac easily looks much better than Chrome OS does for this very reason. Hopefully Google will add some polish here as Chrome OS pushes forward.Also, the look and feel of the top toolbar (the area to the right of the tabs) is pretty poor. Google could and should do a much better job here.And while we&amp;'re on the subject, Chrome&amp;'s already dicey themes all look even worse with Chrome OS. Google should just stick to some simple color options and leave out all the BS. No, I don&amp;'t want my Chrome OS to look like an ice cream cake any more than I wanted Windows to look like a hot dog stand. But that, of course, is just my opinion.ConnectivityThe biggest factor holding up Chrome OS is mostly out of Google&amp;'s control: WiFi infrastructure. While WiFi is fairly widespread, it&amp;'s far from everywhere. And Chrome OS is worthless without connectivity. I mean, it&amp;'s completely and utterly useless.That&amp;'s exactly why Google teamed up with Verizon to offer back-up 3G connectivity. But beyond the paltry 100 MB they give you for free each month, that type of connection can get expensive quickly just to be able to simply use your computer.Further, many deals will have to be worked out in various different countries for that level of connectivity. That&amp;'s why my Cr-48 isn&amp;'t fully travel-ready here in Europe, for example (there is no Verizon here).So what happens when you boot up your Chrome notebook without a connection Well, you get an error &amp;8212' a very confusing one. This has happened to me a few times in the past few days. I boot up the computer, enter my password, and it says there&amp;'s a problem with my password. Only that&amp;'s not true. It&amp;'s just that I&amp;'m not connected to the network, so it can&amp;'t verify my password (Google really needs to change the wording there).The problem here is that if you&amp;'re on a network with a password, you have to log-in to Chrome OS as a guest, connect to the network and entire the password, then log out and log back in to your Google account. A pain. And something that a lot of users are going to experience again and again.The Connected ComputerSo while Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the world is now ready for Chrome OS, I think we&amp;'re still at least a year &amp;8212' and maybe a few years &amp;8212' away from this type of system being viable for most average consumers. But I think it&amp;'s fantastic that Google is willing to go out on a limb now to help the transition along.Of course, the payoff for them looks be huge if they lead this new era of computing. And the risk is fairly minimal. Even if Chrome OS takes a while to take off, Google has more than enough capital to keep the project going for a long time a4&quot; just like they did with Android at first.In many ways, smartphones have and will continue to help us with this transition. The assumption of always having a connection to the web is now built into most of our daily lives. What good is a smartphone when you&amp;'re not connected Maybe just for playing some games. Computers will eventually be the same way. Until games are fully online as well a4&quot; something which the Chrome Web Store is trying to make happen.I don&amp;'t think anyone disagrees that computers that are always connected to the Internet are the future, it&amp;'s just that Google is taking it to the extreme right now with these machines. It&amp;'s Internet or nothing. It&amp;'s bold.PriceWhile Google hasn&amp;'t yet stated how much they (and their OEM partners) intend to sell Chrome notebooks for, that price is going to be crucial. It obviously needs to be low. Very low.If Google wants these to compete with Windows machines, sub-$500 should do the trick. And if they can bring them in with better hardware than the Cr-48 for something like $300, I think they&amp;'re going to sell a ton of them next by next holiday season.And Google keeps reiterating that they intend Chrome OS to work on other platforms as well. You can imagine desktop machines running Chrome OS might be perfect for schools and libraries. And Google could of course bundle Google Apps with them. Hell, I could even see them subsidizing Chrome notebook costs to get them available to all students in certain school districts that commit to Google Apps.Actually, a big competitor for the Chrome notebooks may end up being the new MacBook Airs. Both are now trying to redefine just what exactly portable computing is. There&amp;'s no denying that the Air is a much, much sexier device both in look and feel than the Cr-48. But it&amp;'s also likely to be several hundred dollars a4&quot; and maybe even a thousand dollars more expensive in some cases.Again, that&amp;'s why Google needs to nail the price points and nail the execution with their OEM partners on these. I have some doubts as to whether that will happen or not initially, but even a mediocre Chrome notebook should put quite a bit of pressure on low-end Windows machines, at the very least. As I wrote a year ago, it would be the Microsoft squeeze.Back OfflineTo finish up this post, I actually moved back from the Cr-48 to my MacBook Air. One reason is that the typing lag was driving me insane. The other is that image insertion a4&quot; and image management, is still pretty tricky with Chrome OS. So I&amp;'m back to a machine with more than just a browser.This is actually the first time I&amp;'ve extensively used this machine in three days. It&amp;'s a little weird seeing the browser shrunk into a window. And I actually like it taking up the full screen more (that&amp;'s easy enough to do on a Mac or PC with Chrome, the browser). In a slightly weird twist, I actually don&amp;'t like seeing all the, yes, chrome. What&amp;'s the pointOf course, I do cherish the speed of this Air versus the Cr-48. Oh and the trackpad. My god the trackpad. It actually works! It&amp;'s a thing of beauty that I will never take for granted again.So there you go, I&amp;'m pretty divided right now on Google&amp;'s first take at the Chrome notebook. It&amp;'s both brilliant and bewildering. It&amp;'s both the future and a nightmare. But it&amp;'s definitely not boring, which is more than you can say for a lot of &amp;''new&amp;'' technology these days. Watching it mature will be fun. But first the hardware needs to grow up.If I could buy the Cr-48 right now, would I No. But I&amp;'d download Chrome OS and install it on some cheap netbook. Or maybe even this Macbook Air&amp;8230'CrunchBase InformationGoogle Chrome OSInformation provided by CrunchBase<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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