Chrome

We like to ascribe secret designs--nefarious and otherwise--to software vendors. Super-secretive Apple, in particular, tends to excite endless rumor-mongering as to what it's up to. It seems to me, however, that Apple and its top competitors, including Google and Microsoft, are increasingly transparent about their plans. We simply don't pay attention to the signs.

Let's start with Apple. The big rumor at present is the company's alleged work on a tablet computer, kicked off by The Wall Street Journal's bold declaration that "people familiar with the situation" suggest Apple is working on "… Read more

A judge has determined that violating terms of service is bad, but it's not tantamount to unauthorized access of a computer system. Good news for jailbreakers and hackintosh perpetrators. Also Opera 10 is out. I know. I know. But some of you really do care.

Confirmed: eBay has a deal to sell Skype http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10322833-94.html http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2009/09/a_new_chapter.html http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090901005931&newsLang=en… Read more

Google promised earlier this year that a major computer maker would start to ship its Chrome browser.

Sony's the one.

Sony's Vaio line has begun carrying the browser in the U.S., the Financial Times reported late Monday.

According to a Dow Jones report, all Vaio-branded PCs are now using Chrome as their default browser. A Sony representative told Dow Jones that there are no plans to add Chrome to Vaios outside the U.S.

Vaios will continue to come with Microsoft's Internet Explorer in tandem.

The Financial Times also reported that other companies are in talks … Read more

Google released an update for Chrome to fix compatibility problems with Snow Leopard on Monday, which along with other fixes shows the gradually maturing state of the Mac OS X version of the browser.

Chrome 4.0.203.4 for the Mac is only a couple notches up the version ladder than the version 4.0.203.2 it replaces, but there are some significant changes in the developer-preview software. For Snow Leopard compatibility, programmers fixed a garbled text bug, said Jonathan Conradt, a Chrome engineering program manager, in a blog post Monday.

Google began Chrome on Windows but has … Read more

Google has fixed two high-severity vulnerabilities in the stable version of its Chrome browser that could have let an attacker remotely take over a person's computer.

With one attack on Google's V8 JavaScript engine, malicious JavaScript on a Web site could let an attacker gain access to sensitive data or run arbitrary code on the computer within a Chrome protected area called the sandbox, Google said in a blog post Tuesday. With the other, a page with XML-encoded information could cause a browser tab crash that could let an attacker run arbitrary code within the sandbox.

Chrome 2.… Read more

While the open-source crowd gets (rightly) excited by Linux's growing market share, three companies are pulling the rug out from under the feet of traditional operating systems.

Red Hat is winning in Linux while IBM cleans up the Unix market. But those are increasingly yesterday's markets as Microsoft, Google, and VMware create different breeds of operating system, each tuned to the strength of its product portfolio.

The easiest to understand are Google and VMware. Google, with its Linux distribution Chrome OS, is placing secondary emphasis on the operating system and primary emphasis on where it takes you: the … Read more

Google has begun work on a 64-bit version of Chrome for Linux, a move likely to whip Linux loyalists into a lather of excitement.

"The V8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port. After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I've had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks," said Chrome engineer Dean McNamee in a mailing list message Thursday.

V8 is Chrome's engine for running programs written in the JavaScript language common on the Web. Chromium is the open-source project behind Google's branded and supported Chrome browser, and McNamee shared instructions for programmers to build 64-bit Chromium.

Virtually all PCs today come with 64-bit processors from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices, but for desktop computing, 32-bit operating systems and software are common. The transition to 64-bit software is well under way--notably with Linux and Mac OS X--but the change isn't simple. In the browser world, for example, it can be problematic running a 64-bit browser with a 32-bit plug-in such as Adobe Systems' Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight, or Sun Microsystems' Java. … Read more

Some selected Chrome users who want to synchronize browser bookmarks with their other browsers now can get a start.

Xmarks, whose browser addition can keep bookmarks synced across Firefox, Internet Explorer, and the Mac OS X version of Safari, has released an alpha version of a Chrome extension to selected testers.

"We've been swamped with requests to create a version of Xmarks for the Google Chrome browser. We're hard at work on that and, thanks to some new APIs (application programming interfaces) from Google, are pleased to report that we have Xmarks synchronization working in the Windows … Read more