Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

Chromium OS – First Look

Friday, November 20th, 2009

1) Boot up & Login
You can login using either your regular Gmail account or your Google apps account. You can even sign in when there is no network connection. Presumably you would have had to sign in once with the network on but from there on outwards the OS seems to cache your credentials.

Boot up was under 15 seconds on all attempts with a VMware configured with 256MB RAM and 1 Processor at 2.4 GHz. From login screen to home screen took under 5 seconds on all attempts.

Login

Signing In

2) Inside the OS
Upon the first login, Chrome OS opens up 2 tabs that would be most commonly used: Mail & Calendar. However after resetting the machine chromium only displayed the Google home screen. The homepages are configurable (See configuration options below)

There is a button on the top left that seems to be the equivalent of a “Start” button in windows. However you need a “@google.com” account to access any “Google Short Links” here. Neither my Gmail account nor my Google Apps account worked here.

Homepage

Chrome Button

3) Configuration Options
Configuration options can be accessed from the top right drop down menu. Looks like Google is planning on supporting other browsers besides just chrome based upon the second configuration screen.

Options

Chromium OS

Basics

Personal Stuff

Under the Hood

Google slow to rollout features to Apps for custom domains

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Last Week I finally received the ability to link my AOL Instant Messenger contacts in my Google chat application. I use "Google Apps for your domain" and have found that features are generally first introduced to regular Gmail users and then later rolled out to the Google Apps users. According to Google (03/21/08)-

"Gmail’s faster, more flexible new codebase is now becoming generally available to Google Apps users. This change brings a faster interface and several new features including group chat from the browser, a streamlined contact manager, colored message labels, improved keyboard shortcuts and bookmarkable messages and searches."

I can’t however see my AIM contacts in my Google Talk desktop application. Does anybody have any experience with this?