Posted 11/20/09 at 03:06:30 PM by Bart Salisbury

You curiosity can now be slaked: Google’s Chrome OS is now ready for download and review. The bad news is you’ll need VMWare to run it. The good news is you can run it on OS X, Linux, or Windows.

But will it be worth the effort? If it’s something you really, really got to do, then yes, it will be worth the effort. For the rest of us, with episodes of The Colbert Report to catch up on, maybe not. Our colleagues over at Engadget have tried it out and report Chrome OS is “really a browser with an OS attached rather than vice versa.”

Chrome OS is browser-like in its construction, and Internet oriented. There are minimal app launcher options. And the more interesting apps, says Engadget, required a Google.com account to access. Without one you will be stuck playing with Gmail and Calendar (which Engadget reports suffer from “significant lag and choppiness”).

Still, with a Thanksgiving weekend to kill, Chrome OS might give you an option other than family, food, or football. You’ll find a download link for Chrome OS at gdgt.com.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 02:24:59 PM by Bart Salisbury

Attendees at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles got a sneak preview of IE9 yesterday. From what was presented it’s not really clear what type of personality IE9 will take on.

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, stated Microsoft want’s IE9 to be “a good balance between things we know and have to do and moving the whole notion of browsing forward.” The task of delivering the “most world class browsing experience we can develop,” he added, has to be done “in the most responsible way.” Which suggests IE9 will be brought into line with existing browser potential, but won’t be pushing any cutting-edge technology.

Changes and improvements are plenty. First off, IE9 will use the Trident rendering engine, running on DirectX instead of GDI. DirectX will shift graphic processing from software to hardware, which will boost the display of graphics and text, and provide smoother rendering of animation and video.

While DirectX adds advantages, apparently it also tosses up some roadblocks. Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team, says DirectX is hard to get right: “there's a huge benefit but it takes a lot of work to get all of the details right – like how do controls like Flash work and what about printing?” Being best positioned to “get all the details right”, DirectX helps Microsoft, but may not help out cross-platform browsers, which may not want to make the commitment.

Sunspider JavaScript benchmarks put IE9 about five times faster than IE8. And IE9 scores 32 out of 100 on the ACID 3 test. That’s faster than IE6, but still seems a bit pokey. I’m using my PC-inferior Mac to write this, and Firefox 3.5 scores 92, while Safari 4 hits 100. Steven Sinofsky, Windows senior vice president, concedes: “that’s a test we need to do a better job on.”

IE9 will better support standards, such as CSS, including CSS3. IE9 scores 574 out of 578 on the CSS3 selectors test--much better than the 330 out of 578 scored by IE8. (Again, Safari and Firefox on my Mac both score perfect 578s.)

IE9 is at best a work in progress. Right now there is no canvas or SVG support, and no real commitment to HTML 5 standards. But, with no release date yet announced, and a technical preview not available until sometime next year, it’s a good bet IE9 will evolve into something a bit different than what we’re seeing today.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 12:40:01 PM by Paul Lilly

Better late than never, and while it took a long time, iPhone and iPod touch users can now download Trillian, the multiprotocol IM client, through Apple's App Store.

The $4.99 app comes with many of the same features as its desktop counterpart, including grouped and sorted contacts. Tabbed chat windows also find their way onto the iPhone and iPod touch version, and so does the ability to copy and paste, which is more a credit to Apple than Cerulean Studios, the company responsible for Trillian.

Users can also synchronize content across multiple IM clients, so that changes made on the iPhone version will appear in real-time on the Windows client.

In a nod towards cloud computing, Cerulean Studios says that all chats are stored on the company's server, which means they won't be lost if you suffer a dropped connection. The app can also be set up to send IM alerts when Trillian is shut down.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 08:21:54 AM by Paul Lilly

YouTube's reign as the No. 1 online video site doesn't appear to be in jeopardy, but among the also-rans, Facebook now ranks as the third most popular portal for viewing video on the Internet, according to Nielsen's VideoCensus report.

YouTube leads the way with 6.6 billion streams and just shy of 106 million unique visitors in October, leaving the real battle to be fought for second place. As it stands, the No. 2 spot belongs to Hulu, which served up 632.6 million streams and recorded 13.4 million unique visitors. Facebook trailed not far behind with 217.7 million streams, but had more unique visitors than Hulu with 31.6 million hits.

Not to underestimate the significance, Nielsen noted that the amount of time Web users spend hanging out at social networking sites watching videos increased 98 percent year over year. And viewing of video streams in general jumped by 26 percent, Nielseon said.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 08:04:13 AM by Paul Lilly

In what's turning out to be a game of cat and mouse, Apple last week disabled support for Intel's Atom processor through a Snow Leopard update, a tactic the Hackintosh community insisted would present only a temporary setback. They were right, thanks to a Russian hacker known as "teateam," who says he has restored support for Atom-based Hackintoshes running Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

"The problem originates in a revision to the kernel in 10.6.2. The changes Apple made to the latest mach_kernel removes support for [Atom] processors, leaving updated netbooks in a useless state," InsanelyMac member "blkhockypro19" explained in a forum post.

TeaTeam's hack appears to address the issue, though Jeff Porten of MacWorld warned that performing the crack is not something to be taken lightly.

"You'll need to roll up your Terminal sleeves for a few simple steps here," said Porten. "And, of course, replace the kernel of your operating system -- the fundamental code that underlies everything else in Mac OS X -- with a file you've downloaded from the Internet."

Not only that, but it's only a matter of time until Apple releases another update that, in all likelihood, breaks support again. Apple hasn't been sympathetic to the Hackinstosh community, and even went so far as to serve Wired.com a cease and desist order after the tech site posted a video with instructions on how to hack a netbook to run Mac OS X.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 07:24:20 AM by Paul Lilly

Despite the growing popularity of open source software, there's still the issue of how to make money with it. No easy task, warns Miguel de Icaza, Vice President of Novell, who also heads up the firm's open source Mono project.

"If your livelihood depends on the product that you're selling, until you can figure how you're going to make money on that thing, I say, keep it proprietary," de Icaza said.

The VP went on to say that it's "incredibly difficult" making an open source business. His remarks were in response to an audience member at the Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference), who raised the question of making money via open source. The issue of making money by selling support also came up.

"You need to take those steps carefully in my opinion," de Icaza said. "And support, by the way, is a horrible business. I want to be writing code, and I want to be paid to write code."

The VP did note that if you're a young developer without a lot of obligations, like a family and tuition, then it's far easier to consider doing open source projects.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 01:15:27 AM by Nathan Grayson

In our experience, DLC usually serves as the thin mint after a fulfilling game experience. Problem: At our current rate of progress, we’re on track to finish Dragon Age by next holiday season. But, for those of you who haven’t been diagnosed with chronic slowpoke syndrome, BioWare’s putting a fresh helping of content on your already stacked holiday gaming plate.

The new mini-arc “summons players to a new quest in which they will return to the fateful battleground in Ostagar where the Grey Wardens were nearly wiped out. Players will discover King Cailan’s top-secret political agenda and go behind enemy lines to revisit a place that many feared had been lost to history.”
 
It’s going for 400 BioWare Points, or $5.00. For now, BioWare’s keeping mum on release specifics, only saying to expect the DLC “this holiday season.”

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re actually off to go fight the Blight at Ostagar right now. Oh man, that King Cailan is so dreamy. We sure hope nothing bad happens to him!

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Posted 11/19/09 at 10:35:58 PM by Nathan Grayson

Single-player RTS campaigns are great and all, but matching wits with the CPU’s cold robo-logic is only enjoyable for so long. After the story’s curtains close, we dive straight into multiplayer and never look back. But – if Demigod’s numbers are any indication – we may be in the minority. See, according to Stardock, a pithy 23% of players even tried to march their troops across the information super highway in Demigod. In other words, many never even succeeded in playing a single online match.

“Demigod continues to sell thousands of copies weekly – enough to remain at retail during the Christmas season despite it coming out last Spring – but the number of people available to play online is typically less than 2,000 at a given time. This is in stark contrast to MMORPGs and FPS’s which tend to have very large online communities,” read Stardock’s report.
 
This, of course, is made all the more startling by the fact that Demigod doesn’t even have a single-player storyline. Future Stardock RTSes, however, won’t make the same mistake.
 
“Our conclusion is that strategy games that we make and publish in the future will support multiplayer but will not sacrifice the single player experience to do so,” Stardock noted.

Granted, Demigod was notorious for hobbling out the gate with crippling online issues, so that may have sent a few players back into the CPU’s cold embrace. Still though, the game’s been out since spring, so we doubt those early missteps are completely to blame.

Maybe we’re just so awesome at Demigod that we scared everyone else away. But, uh, we can’t play a match right now. We, er… have turkey in the oven! Yup.

(Phew. Only time of year that excuse actually works!)

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