The Download Blog

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Last week I mentioned how long it took to sync my iPhone to iTunes and it seems I'm not alone. I think almost all Mac users reported that syncing only took a few minutes, but a lot of Windows users (with some exceptions) were having the same experience as me. Is Windows doing something to muck up the process or is syncing different across platforms? Hopefully, this is something Apple will look into in future updates.

Following your advice, and the advice of other iPhone forums, I restored my iPhone and then used my latest backup to get my information back. Unfortunately, I lost almost all of my apps...it seems Transfer Purchases to iTunes doesn't mean what I think it means. While I redownload all of my favorite apps check out this week's picks.

This week's iPhone apps include a program that lets you create unique presentations with your images and a free-form off-road racer that's surprisingly fun.

Follow the onscreen instructions to create pan and zoom presentations (Ken Burns style)

(Credit: CNET)

Pix Remix ($2.99) lets you take photos with your iPhone camera and present them in three unique ways. You can create a slideshow, a collage, or a slow pan/zoom type of thing (Ken Burns style) which you can then share with your friends via e-mail or post to Facebook or Twitter. Pix Remix is very easy to use, with a fairly straightforward interface, and also gives you onscreen instructions to create each type of presentation.

To start, just pick which type of "show" you want to create. The slideshow is pretty straightforward--just pick all the pictures you want to include, add captions, reorder as desired, and you're done. With the collage option you can pick whatever images you want, and then you're given the opportunity to drag and arrange them how you want on screen. The pan and zoom option might be the most dramatic because you can write captions for each stage, turning one image into a complete story. Pix Remix also utilizes iPhone specific features letting you shake your iPhone to rearrange photos and plenty of touch screen interaction with the interface. If you want a new way to send your images to friends or post on the Web, this app is a fun and unique choice.

Use any path necessary to get to the gates before your opponents do

(Credit: CNET)

4x4 Jam ($3.99) is an off-road racer that lets you drive wherever you want--an ongoing and changing landscape continues in every direction. Steer by turning your iPhone left and right and you have several options for control sets depending on how much control (over gas and brakes) you want. You can choose between a VW bug-like off-road racer or a 4x4 truck, with four skin options for each. You can participate in a couple of different race types with computer controlled players including an Off Road Race (try to beat your opponents to each gate) or a Jam (collect points by passing through more gates than your opponents. Sadly there is no career mode, so there is little to keep you interested if you don't like the race types offered. But there are three difficulty levels to keep things somewhat interesting.

The first thing I noticed apart from the free form racing was the well implemented physics. As you make turns you really notice the centrifugal force and stopping to turn on a dime is pretty much impossible. This only adds to the fun as you and your opponents jockey for position and you even have opportunities to force them away from gates to get an advantage. Overall, 4x4 Jam is an excellent concept with fun and challenging racing action, but the lack of a career mode might be enough of a reason to wait for future updates before spending the money.

What's your favorite iPhone app? Do you have an unique image app that's better than Pix Remix? Is 4x4 Jam worth it even without the career mode? Let me know in the comments!

Late Tuesday night, Google, the company that became a tech giant through search and advertising company, announced that it's branching out into an unrelated direction, the operating system business. It will release next year the Chrome OS, a free competitor to Microsoft's Windows operating system. It will be targeted at Netbooks, a class of small, inexpensive computers, although eventually it will make its way to full-powered notebooks and desktop computers. It will be designed for accessing Web applications (like Google's own GMail and Google Docs), and it will take a lot of design and technology cues, as well as its name, from Google's browser, Chrome.

What does this mean to people who are thinking about buying a new computer now, or next year? Is the Chrome OS something to get excited about, or even wait for?

We won't know for sure what the operating system looks like until it comes out, which answers the second question handily: do not wait. If you need a new computer now, spend the money and get the use out of the machine while Google figures out how and when to get the Chrome OS out the door.

But to the other question: yes, this is very interesting, and potentially could cause some transformations in the computer industry, although they may be more subtle than Google--and Microsoft's detractors--hope.

Who cares about operating systems?

Computers need operating systems. Even computers that do nothing but run Web browsers need one. An Application like a Web browser--Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome--needs to run on top of a platform that gives it access to the hardware resources of the computer (the memory, the persistent storage, access to the networking and communications hardware, the screen, the keyboard, and so on); to peripherals plugged into a computer (printers, cameras that connect, memory cards); to the other software on the the computer (like the system for storing files); and lastly, to you, the user.

Or do they? What if you combined the operating system's functions with a browser's functions, which include accessing and displaying Web pages, keeping track of bookmarks and passwords, and connecting to computer-attached resources like Webcams?

Google is answering that question with Chrome OS. Google is saying, with this product, that the modern computer user spends so much time working with Web-based resources that the main control system for the computer should be the browser, not the operating system. Furthermore, Google sources tell us that the Chrome OS experience will bear little resemblance to existing way that users interact with their computer's main control program. A person familiar with the Chrome OS project told us, "All existing operating systems predate the Web, and the user interfaces are stuck in a desktop metaphor." The Chrome OS, we're led to believe, will be very different.

How? We don't know. It's a safe bet that the Chrome OS will lean more heavily on so-called "cloud storage" products--like Google's own productivity suites, Google Docs--that let users store their data and documents not on their computers but rather on the systems of the Web apps they are running. The great thing about cloud storage is that it's untethered to any individual user's computer. Log in to your Google Docs account from anywhere, and there's your whole workspace, right in front of you. It's liberating.

Google may also take a cue from its own e-mail application, GMail, which blends the traditional idea of having folders for e-mail with the concept of "labels." In GMail, you can drag messages into folders to file them, or you can drag folders (or labels) over messages to categorize them. It's the same thing, but the hierarchy people are used to in operating systems, where a file is in one folder at a time, and the folder may be nested in another folder, is simply not there. Folders and labels are interchangable and far more fluid.

But in Windows 7, Microsoft's next operating system, Folders are also less rigid than they've been in previous versions of Windows.

We can also expect that the Chrome OS will borrow user interface elements from Chrome the browser--like a tabbed metaphor for switching between "apps," and the mind-reading command line (address bar in the browser). It may also evidence Google's traditional obsession with clean (if not necessarily attractive) design and speed. The Chrome OS should be fast.

A ruse by any name

But under the hood, the Chrome OS will still be a traditional operating system. It will be an adaptation of Linux, a free operating system lovingly maintained, in various versions, by a global community of programmers. The Chrome OS will likely borrow the gritty bits of the operating system, the parts that connect to the computer's CPU, the memory, and other hardware. Google's most visible contribution, in addition to the human resources it puts on the project of working at the core of the operating system, will be in the user interface and how the OS handles user data and files.

Will users buy it? They haven't so far. The first Netbooks came with Linux-based operating systems, and users shunned them (or more specially, returned them to their points of purchase) in favor of computers running yesterday's version of Microsoft Windows, XP. Even though XP adds cost to a computer due to the high licensing fee that the manufacturers have to pass on to consumers, those consumers voted to pay the extra money for the familiarity of Windows.

The Chrome OS could well be better than any of the Linux variants that have come before it. It will certainly be cheap--Google says it will be free to manufacturers. Google also says it will be safer, thanks to technologies like "sandboxing" from the Chrome browser that prevent one app from infecting or stealing data from another.

But no matter how much better the Chrome OS is than Windows, users are still accustomed to Windows, and the first target market for Chrome OS, the Netbook category, presents special challenges. First, it's a small market, and second, many Netbook buyers get the machines as secondary, portable computers. They already have a larger laptop or desktop and they want a mini-size, portable accessory to go with it. For those users, a radically different operating system is a stumbling block, no matter how good it is by itself.

The stakes are big enough that it's worth the shot for Google. Google makes money through targeted advertising. The more they know about what you do, the better the ads you get will perform. If Google knows what you do at the operating system level, they can deliver you more specific advertising content. Also, a Google OS would likely lead people to Google services--and not Microsoft's or Yahoo's. Also, this is a long-term game. Google doesn't need to knock Microsoft off its peg tomorrow, or next year. But over time, the company may be able to chip away at Microsoft's pre-eminence as the leading operating system vendor, or at the very least force Microsoft to make its own operating systems more Web-friendly, which benefits the most popular Web service provider there is: Google.

Google needs to start spreading the word on the Chrome OS now, and not a year from now when the product comes out, to get developers and computer manufacturers excited about the platform, and working on compatible products. That takes time. It's also an area where Microsoft has an excellent track record; the Windows company spends a ton of money and energy on developer relations.

The most likely short-term impact the Chrome OS will have on the Netbook market is that it may encourage Microsoft to drop its prices on the Windows 7 licenses it sells to manufacturers. But until developers start writing major software for the operating system (games, photo editors, and major productivity suites like Office), it's very unlikely that Google will have much of an impact on Windows sales.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting that Microsoft is hardly standing still. Its new Bing search engine is actually quite good in comparison to Google's most popular product, Google Search, and the upcoming version of Microsoft Office will have Web capabilities that put it in competition with Google's online word processor and spreadsheet.

A year from now, there will likely be Google Chrome OS Netbooks (and possibly larger laptops) available for sale alongside Windows-powered models. Will people like me recommend them? Maybe, for some users, in particular those on tight budgets and those with no or only limited knowledge of Windows or Apple's OS.

Building an operating system is a major project, but it's only part of the job. Even if the Google OS is fantastic, it will need to steal customers accustomed to using Microsoft and Apple devices. And even if those customers want to be convinced that Google's product is better, they may find it very difficult to make the switch.

Some of us have multiple Twitter accounts that we need to manage. We have an account for work and an account for personal use. In that case, switching between usernames can be a pain. Luckily, there's an easy way to manage multiple Twitter accounts with some basic apps.

We've taken a look at a couple of services that will help you manage those accounts on your computer, but what about when you're away from home?

We have you covered there too. Let's take a look at iPhone apps that help you manage multiple Twitter accounts.

Manage multiple accounts

LaTwit Although LaTwit lets you post updates to multiple accounts, including those from Twitter, Identi.ca, and others, its interface is difficult to get used to. In fact, it detracts from the experience of using the app. If you're looking for other features, LaTwit also lets you post multiple tweets if your update exceeds the 140-character limit. But for $2.99, it might not be worth the price tag.

LaTwit has a convoluted design.

(Credit: LaTwit)

SimplyTweet SimplyTweet comes in two flavors: a Lite version for those who want a free app and a paid version with all the SimplyTweet features, which includes multiple user accounts. Don't let SimplyTweet's name fool you--it's not so simple. The app lets you draft notes, update your stream with iPhone photos, and more. It has a slew of features. The paid version is available for $3.99.

Besides multiple accounts, SimplyTweet also lets you view conversations.

(Credit: SimplyTweet)

TweetDeck TweetDeck is my favorite mobile Twitter client. Like its desktop alternative, the app provides a column view, making it easy to see all kinds of Twitter data pass you by. Plus, it makes it extremely easy to manage multiple accounts, creating a scenario where updating all your accounts will only take just a few seconds. TweetDeck also shortens URLs before you post to your stream. Overall, it's a great app. And since it's free, you'll probably like it even more.

TweetDeck has multiple columns to help you view your tweets.

(Credit: TweetDeck)

The final version of Silverlight 3 has been released to the Web, a day ahead of the product's launch event in San Francisco.

The release, noted by enthusiast site Neowin, marks Microsoft's latest effort to take on Adobe's Flash.

Microsoft detailed Silverlight 3 at the Mix09 event in March, releasing a beta version of the software.

Among the product's new features is technology that allows the software to utilize a PC's hardware to accelerate graphics processing. It also allows for programs that run outside a browser on both the PC and Mac.

NBC has said it will use Silverlight to broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver. The technology will allow the Games to be broadcast in 720p HD quality as well as provide a TiVo-like ability to pause and rewind a live stream.

Selected Search is a new add-on for Firefox that makes it easier to start a search from any page you're on. It works by taking text you've highlighted with your mouse, and then bringing up a small pop-up list of all the search engines you have installed. From there you just pick the one you want and it opens up behind the scenes in a new tab.

Firefox has its own built-in contextual shortcut that does this with whatever search engine you've got set up as the primary. The big difference with this extension is that you can very quickly pick whatever engine you want to search with depending on what you've highlighted.

Selected Search lets you quickly do a search on any text you've highlighted with your mouse.

(Credit: CNET)

What I really like about this tool is that you can continue to do all the normal things with highlighted text you'd normally do, including dragging it off into other programs or open windows, or using keyboard and contextual shortcuts to copy. It also does not always come up when highlighting text that's in a form, meaning you can keep it installed without interrupting your usual work flow, however this was hit or miss. It came up on certain form fields, but not in others.

Another tool that does the same thing with a little more visual flair is Drag and Drop Zones, which lets users drag highlighted text into a grid of search engines and keyboard shortcuts. It's a little more customizable, but may be a little harder to learn than this.

You've got time to cut and save one ringtone on your Android phone, but what about three or ten or twenty? If you're too busy to edit a bundle, check out Sharetones 1.0 beta, a new app that takes a clever twist on the concept of ringtone sales.

We'll leave you to our First Look video for the details, but let's just say it's legal and lightening-fast. Best yet, for a limited time, it's also free.

I have thousands of e-mail messages in my corporate Outlook in-box, and thousands more in Gmail and in my ancient Hotmail account. MailStore Home is a free program that can archive them all locally, and display those archives in an interface that reads like your Outlook in-box.

Why use it? You can clear away old messages and attachments, but easily search to find them again when that inevitable moment arrives. Until universal offline in-boxes like Yahoo's Zimbra Desktop start addressing consumers on a wider scale, MailStore Home is also a good way to read mail offline in areas of spotty Wi-Fi, or to use as a de facto message backup.

MailStore Home's search pane includes attachments and repeat queries.

(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

MailStore Home can archive a pretty impressive list of accounts and protocols, including Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft Exchange, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Gmail, Windows Live Mail, IMAP, POP3. It also supports .EML files. It largely resembles Microsoft Outlook's layout with a side bar on the left--complete with folder tree and search field--and a large reading pane on the right. There are also some small navigational icons along the top that you can use to jump to archiving, burning archives to disk, advanced search, and tools.

The program's management is straightforward. Buttons on the start screen replicate the navigational icons up top, and there are also some stats, like your oldest and newest messages and the total size of your archive. When you archive an in-box, a wizard walks you through special configuration steps and lets you enter folders to archive or exclude if you want some backed up, but not all. MailStore Home skips your spam, trash, and junk folders by default, and it checks for duplicate messages while going about its business.

E-mail search is one feature of note. Using the advanced search screen, you can drill down to specifics--dates, folders, even the contents of e-mail attachments. You can also search for messages with or without attachments, and save queries to rerun the report at a later time. MailStore Home supports Boolean search terms. When you've found your message, you'll have management options like opening, saving, and exporting. Search was speedy and accurate in our tests. Though processing took a few long seconds, we were able to reply to archived Gmail messages via Outlook.

The freeware version for consumers doesn't do it all. There's no auto-archiving or scheduling for starters, so archiving is a manual activity. Initial scanning also takes a long time, and subsequent archives of the same in-box (click "run" to rearchive) start over from scratch instead of offering you the option to pick up from the most recent message date. We'd like to see more, and more nimble, filters on that left sidebar, like to filter only e-mails with attachments. MailStore Home also restricts you to three account profiles, which isn't especially useful if you've got more active accounts than that. Despite these drawbacks, MailStore Home offers a fine free solution for storing e-mail from multiple in-boxes and searching through the archives.

Related story: Three killer Outlook add-ons for office workers

XHTML 2, we hardly knew you.

XHTML 2, a technology intended to build a more powerful Web from the ground up, met a quiet end last week, spotlighting the difficulties of standardization in a fast-moving Internet. Introduced in 2002, XHTML 2 was a centerpiece of standards work at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

But incompatibility with the existing Web and a direction at odds with Web developers' desires doomed it to a slow demise. On Thursday, after a long reconciliation with browser makers who'd struck off in a different direction, the W3C announced that it will wind down development of XHTML 2 this year.

Ultimately, Web browser makers had the upper hand in charting the Web's future.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Instead, the group will channel those resources into standardizing what the browser makers have been toiling on all these years: HTML 5, a sprawling collection of new features to improve the present Hypertext Markup Language. Although elements of XHTML 2 will live on in HTML 5, overall, the browser makers prevailed.

"XHTML 2 was a beautiful specification of philosophical purity that had absolutely no resemblance to the real world," said Bruce Lawson, HTML 5 evangelist for browser maker Opera.

So what went wrong? In short, the Web has many masters, but the ones with final say over its nature are those who build it page by page, not the standards group trying to create a new foundation.

XHTML 2 was designed to reform the Web as a medium for publishing documents, but the developers--and the browser makers who listened closely to those developers--instead wanted a platform for interactive applications. And while that direction prevailed, its incarnation in HTML 5 faces its own set of challenges now.

The consensus for HTML 5 support has been building for years, and the W3C already had been increasing its involvement in its standardization well before it decided to put an end to much of the competing XHTML 2 standard. Although the HTML-XHTML split has been fractious at times, there's inescapable tension between standards groups trying to chart the future and vendors whose products relate to those standards.

"I will not say it's been the smoothest way of doing things, but it's not an unnatural way for things to proceed," said Mike Smith, leader of HTML work at W3C, speaking of the reconciliation process that rejuvenated the W3C's HTML work. "Vendors are the ones who drive innovation on the Web for the most part."

Why XHTML?
So if it's so clear today that HTML 5 is the way to go, why was so much energy, time, and research invested in XHTML 2? It was an attempt start afresh without HTML's shortcomings.

The X in XHTML stands for XML, which in turn stands for Extensible Markup Language. XML is a broad technology that uses a strict set of tags to label different types of content in a document, and XHTML was engineered specifically for the Web. XHTML brought rigor to the loosey-goosey and slap-dash world of HTML, and it would have permitted developers to employ a broader range of computing engines called parsers to digest and process the XML, Smith said.

XHTML "was a cleaner and better-architected version of HTML," Smith said. And in its earlier years, it had support. "At the time when XHTML 2 was first conceived and specified in the early drafts, most everybody thought it was a good idea. A lot of people in hindsight want to look back at it now and make the claim that they knew it wasn't going to have success," Smith said.

XHTML 2.0 made it to working draft stage, but only parts of the specification will live on in HTML 5.

One example of its utility is the tight coupling of textual information with a graphs encoded with the SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics format, Smith said. Another advantage was better browsing with the limited abilities of mobile phones.

One of the big problems with XHTML 2 was that it wasn't backwards compatible, though. Not only could it not be used to display existing Web pages, but Web browsers had to be expanded with an entirely new engine for handling the XML. Notably, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the dominant browser by far, couldn't handle XHTML on its own.

Another problem was that there was plenty of demand for improvements to HTML, which W3C had declared finished with version 4.01 in 1999.

"People were so focused on XHTML 2 that they were substantially less interested in modifying the application model and introducing new features to HTML that developers were clamoring for," said Arun Ranganathan, standards evangelist for Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser. "We felt the standards going on at the time...were disconnected from a large majority of developers.

Microsoft agrees with its browser rival.

"We've never heard a strong request from our developer audience and customers for XHTML 2," said Amy Barzdukas, general manager for IE.

Enter WHATWG
One crucial moment came five years ago when Opera and Mozilla representatives showed the W3C an idea called WebForms for improving HTML. "We jointly presented this paper to W3C, who rejected it," Lawson said.

Mozilla's Brendan Eich and Opera's Ian Hickson were displeased with how things went. "The best way to help the Web is to incrementally improve the existing web standards," concluded Eich, founder of the JavaScript Web programming language, after the meeting in a blog post.

Eich also announced there an Opera and Mozilla plan to take that evolutionary route. They launched an open e-mail list called WHATWG, short for Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. Apple, which offers its own Safari browser, soon began participating, too.

"It became a de facto standards organization without the formality of W3C. It's where we went to figure out what the future of the Web was," Ranganathan said.

Eventually, the Web-application direction won over the W3C. "Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years. It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally," said Web founder and W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee said in 2006.

But Berners-Lee at the time also maintained the commitment to the "well-formed," more rigorous XML-based future: "It is important to maintain HTML incrementally, as well as continuing a transition to well-formed world, and developing more power in that world."

In practice, the W3C world and WHATWG world involve many of the same people. That probably eased the reconciliation to the current state, where WHATWG and W3C operate simultaneously, the first more informal and the second with more careful handling of intellectual property concerns.

Ultimately, HTML carried the day. What began with interest in more sophisticated Web sites such as eBay blossomed with the arrival of Ajax, which used JavaScript to build more sophisticated Web-based applications. And Web applications weren't just theoretical ideas.

"When Gmail and Google Maps and Ajax came along, it became really clear we needed a new set of technologies that made it easier to make those kinds of applications," Smith said.

The transition culminated with W3C's bare-bones news last week: "Today the director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C's position regarding the future of HTML."

Some features of XHTML 2 will be built into HTML 5, so the XHTML 2 work won't have been for naught, assuming a critical mass of browser makers do in fact include the necessary XML parser along the HTML parser.

HTML 5: no walk in the park
Though the W3C-WHATWG dust has mostly settled, the standard is far from finished, and indeed looks a long way off.

The present approach involves a give and take between browser makers trying out new features and the standards group codifying them. Features can't make it to the ultimate W3C state, "final recommendation," until at least two browsers support the feature compatibly, Smith said.

In practice, that means adventurous Web developers who choose to support the new technologies in effect are blessing them even though the technology might well change.

HTML 5 elements came from all over. Canvas, which involves two-dimensional graphics, began at Apple's Safari and now has won over Opera, Firefox, and Google's Chrome. ContentEditable, which lets Web pages be edited in place, came from Microsoft. Google now is working on a faster communication feature called Web Sockets. Programmers for WebKit, the open-source project underlying Safari, are developing DataGrid, which brings spreadsheet-like tables with sorting and editing to Web pages.

"The speed of the web is continuing to pick up in general," Barzdukas said. HTML 5 feature support figures prominently in the browser sales pitches from Google and from Mozilla, with its "upgrade the Web" tag line for Firefox 3.5.

Actual standardization, though, remains distant. Mozilla's Ranganathan hopes for drafts of some HTML 5 elements this year and a draft of the full specification in 2010.

The HTML 5 built-in video situation is illustrative. Hickson, the HTML 5 editor and now Google employee, posted a lament about HTML 5 video last week because browser makers don't agree on whether to support the patent-free Ogg Theora format, preferred by Opera and Mozilla, or the commercially popular H.264 format, preferred by Google and Apple. The upshot for now: HTML 5 is trying to standardize video but doesn't specify which format to be used.

That pace of HTML 5 standardization important, given the importance Microsoft places on supporting actual standards and the company's commanding market share.

"The support of ratified standards (that Web developers) can use is something that we are extremely supportive of," Barzdukas said. "In some cases, it can be premature to start claiming support for standards that are not yet in fact standards."

That Google operating system rumor is coming true--and it's based on Google's browser, Chrome.

The company announced Google Chrome OS on its blog Tuesday night, saying lower-end PCs called Netbooks from unnamed manufacturers will include it in the second half of 2010. Linux will run under the covers of the open-source project, but the applications will run on the Web itself.

In other words, Google's cloud-computing ambitions just got a lot bigger.

"Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small Netbooks to full-size desktop systems," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, said in the blog post.

The move has widespread implications.

One is that it shows just how serious Google is about making the Web into a foundation not just for static pages but for active applications, notably its own such as Google Docs and Gmail. Another: it opens new competition with Microsoft and, potentially, a new reason for antitrust regulators to pay close attention to Google's moves.

The move also gives new fuel to the Netbook movement for low-cost, network-enabled computers. Those machines today run Windows or Linux. Google Chrome OS provides a new option that hearkens back to the Network Computer era of the 1990s espoused by Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy and Oracle's Larry Ellison.

Sundar Pichai, vice president of product development at Google

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google is making sure its standard antitrust rebuttal, that "competition is one click away," remains intact with Chrome OS, though. "All Web-based applications...will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux, thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

Another bit of intrigue comes with the corporate politics. Google has argued that offering its Android mobile-phone operating system isn't a big enough competitive issue with Apple that Chief Executive Eric Schmidt must step down from Apple's board. Offering a full-on PC operating system could intensify the Federal Trade Commission's "discussions" about Schmidt's dual Apple and Google responsibilities .

Google has a track record of upsetting the status quo, though, taking on strong incumbent players and rattling cages well beyond the computing industry. Google Docs competes with Microsoft Office. Gmail competes with Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Hotmail. Google Books aims to digitize the publishing industry. The Android operating system is designed to make smartphones cheap and ordinary.

'Rethinking' the operating system
With Google Chrome OS, the company hopes to start afresh with personal computing.

"The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web," the blog post said. "So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome--the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be."

Among the benefits Google touted are "speed, simplicity and security," Pichai and Upson said. "We are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware, and security updates."

Google is talking to Netbook partners now, and the project will become open-source "soon." It will run on members of the x86 and ARM processor families, Google said.

Google declined to comment on its plans beyond the blog posting.

The company also didn't mention how exactly it hopes to profit from Chrome OS, but it seems likely it's the latest variation on trying to get more people using the Web more often and more deeply--behavior that correlates with more searching and more search advertising.

"Any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet," Upson and Pichai said.

Hints of Chrome OS
Hints of the direction have been abundant, but it wasn't clear Google would go as far as creating a product branded as a full-on operating system.

On the software side, one hint was Gears, a plug-in to give browsers the ability to run Web applications even when offline.

Next came Chrome itself in September 2008. Google said its ambition with the open-source browser was to make the Web a faster, richer foundation for Web applications. Naturally, Gears was built in from the outset, and Google continues to bang the Web-applications drum loudly.

Next came Native Client and O3D, plug-ins that let browsers tap directly into the power of local processors and, if all goes according to plan, match the performance of PC-based applications. Native Client is for the main computing chores, and O3D is for hardware-accelerated graphics, and Google wants to build Native Client at least directly into Chrome.

The other set of clues came from the Web side of the company's operations. Google's cash cow is selling ads alongside search results, but the company has been trying for years to build a portfolio of Web-based applications that people could use for everyday computing. Google Docs offers a Web-based word processor, presentation, and spreadsheet, and Google Apps bundles that along with Gmail and Google Calendar.

For others trying to make a run at Web-based applications, Google offers Google App Engine, a foundation for online Python and Java programs that can run at the scale of Google's own computing infrastructure, though free use is more limited.

One of the primary advantages of Google's cloud-computing approach is that data is available from anywhere you can find a networked computer--or, increasingly, mobile phone. It also permits more natural collaboration, since multiple authors can work on the same document simultaneously rather than e-mailing variations or sharing them on a central server. And with data stored on the Net rather than on a PC, upgrades and laptop theft are relatively painless issues.

The disadvantages are abundant, though. Web applications are slow and primitive compared to those that run on PCs, network access is far from ubiquitous, familiar applications are missing, years of accumulated files and data must be migrated to a new system, and not everybody is prepared to have precious corporate or personal information housed at Google or other companies.

The Net is a different place than when the Sun's JavaOS and network computers flopped in the marketplace, and Google is powerfully profitable. But many of the original challenges remain.

Updated 11:03 p.m. with further details and context.

(Credit: DJ Nitrogen)

Industrious cell phone users can always create their own ringtones, and lazy ones can buy them packaged. Sharetones 1.0 beta for Android, released to the Android Market on Tuesday, falls somewhere in between.

The premise is simple, but intriguingly computational. You create ringtones from songs you already own on your phone. Instead of asking you to do the tedious editing legwork, Sharetones will send your songs to a database of over 65,000 tones and return several options that someone else has created. One ringtone may capture the intro instrumentals; another may clip the chorus.

The key here is that Sharetones isn't shuttling any actual files to and fro. It's sending a musical 'recipe' based off of another user's edit, which tells your song where to start and end to form the ringtone. Once Sharetones receives the timestamp instructions, it will rip a ringtone from your own file on the fly--including fade-ins and fade-outs--and will save it as a separate MP3. It will save the metadata 'recipe,' too.

Since Sharetones deals in formulas rather than files, it can duck the usual legal tar pits of ownership, licensing, and fair use. But that doesn't mean Sharetones is free. It's still providing the service of quickly carving out a ringtone for your use. The app won't charge a thing on Android throughout the beta period, but after that it'll cost you $1.49 for 3 recipes, $2.49 for unlimited use for a month, or 7.49 for unlimited use for a year.

Interface and performance

The application's actual interface is a little sparse. It looks through your library at first launch, displaying how many available ringtones there are for each positively-matched song (remember that ringtone formulas are user-created). You can preview the ringtone, pausing or saving it. The menu button reveals options to sort by title or artist, to re-sync the library, and to view the ringtone, alarm, and notifications library. There is, however, no built-in ringtone editor and no album art. There's also no arrow navigation to scroll forward or backward on the preview screen through ringtone options, nor a way to tag favorite matches from a deep results list.

Those with a little more time on their hands can create ringtone recipes through the Sharetones plug-ins in Audacity or Songbird (links below). Alternatively, Ringdroid is an easy way to make free ringtones yourself.

Sharetones' music-matching is certainly an interesting idea. It might even be one some users are willing to pay for, especially those looking to acquire ringtones in bulk. The interface could use some polish, and we'd like to see a way for users to contribute new ringtones directly from their phones. An incentive program would be even better, where the author of a new ringtone recipe can download a different tone for free.

Sharetones is available now in the Android Marketplace for Android phones running version 1.1 of the operating system or higher. It has been tested for U.S. users, but should work elsewhere. Sharetones is expected to arrive for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry within a few months.

Note: We tested Sharetones on a T-Mobile G1 running version 1.5 of the Android operating system.

Related software
Sharetones for Windows
Sharetones for iPhone
Audacity 1.2.6 (Windows)
Audacity 1.3.7 beta (Windows| Mac)
Songbird browser (Windows| Mac)