Is the upswing in effect? Three industry forecasts are raising their expectations for next year’s ad spend…
Magna Global is predicting a six-percent rise, GroupM just 0.8 percent, and ZenithOptimedia is raising its cross-media global advertising forecast for the first time in 18 months, projecting a 0.9 percent 2010 uplift (up from the previous 0.5 percent growth forecast), buoyed by ongoing internet growth and a TV ad recovery.
The net was the only medium to attract more money in 2009 in Zenith’s figures, though its growth curve is flatter than the early-2000s heyday growth of 40+ percent a year. It’s now on track for more modest but consistent growth pace of 9.5 percent (2010), 12 percent (2011) and 13 percent (2012), in line with that of TV, which will remain the dominant medium.
While those two media will go on attracting more money up to 2012, all others are flat or in decline. Though newspapers now enjoy a 10.9 percent lead over the internet for share of ad dollars, the lead will slim to just 3.8 percent by 2012, when the internet will take 16.2 percent of all spend.
Zenith says: “We expect the internet to overtake newspapers to become the world’s second-largest advertising medium by the time we are half-way through the next decade.”
From Zenith’s forecast: “The downturn has accelerated the structural shift of budgets from traditional media to the internet; in a time when marketing departments have to justify every dollar they spend, the rapid and clear returns offered by internet advertising are more attractive than the longer-term brand-building benefits offered by other media.”
But online’s growth is thanks more to the continuing success of the paid-search model, which attracted 15 percent more money this year and is forecast for the same growth in the next three years, taking 53 percent of all internet spend. Displayadvertising online grew just six percent this year and classifieds just two percent.
—Magna: The most optimistic of the big three ad agency forecasters, Brian Wieser, expects online revenue to reach $60 billion worldwide in 2010, hitting $99 billion by 2015. By that point, online ads will account for 21 percent of all major media spending. Next year, though, that share number will be 16 percent—putting it into perspective, Wieser notes that online’s share was less than 3 percent in 2000. The growth is the result of other media losing share, particularly print, as magazines will have fallen slightly ($40 billion in advertising revenues during 2000, and $35 billion in advertising revenues expected in 2015) and newspapers will be down similarly (from $97 billion in 2000 to $92 billion in 2015).
—GroupM: While talk of even a minimal gains sounds encouraging, any growth in the U.S. and Western Europe will continue to remain fairly weak. The so-called BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China) are expected to lead the recovery, according to a report from GroupM Futures Director Adam Smith in London and the agency’s Chief Investment Officer Rino Scanzoni in New York. Total ad spending in the U.S. is expected to fall 8 percent this year followed by an anticipated 4.3 percent drop in 2010, according to the report.
Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?
That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.
Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”
“Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies,” the company writes.
“Customers may see a listing of records, information or assistance that is available only to law enforcement,” Verizon writes in its letter, “but call in to Verizon and seek those same services. Such calls would stretch limited resources, especially those that are reserved only for law enforcement emergencies.”Verizon took a different stance. It objected to the release (.pdf) of its Law Enforcement Legal Compliance Guide because it might “confuse” customers and lead them to think that records and surveillance capabilities available only to law enforcement would be available to them as well — resulting in a flood of customer calls to the company asking for trap and trace orders.
Other customers, upon seeing the types of surveillance law enforcement can do, might “become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer).”
Verizon does disclose a little tidbit in its letter, saying that the company receives “tens of thousands” of requests annually for customer records and information from law enforcement agencies.
Soghoian filed his records request to discover how much law enforcement agencies — and thus U.S. taxpayers — are paying for spy documents and surveillance services with the aim of trying to deduce from this how often such requests are being made. Soghoian explained his theory on his blog, Slight Paranoia:
In the summer of 2009, I decided to try and follow the money trail in order to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers’ private information to the government. I theorized that if I could obtain the price lists of each ISP, detailing the price for each kind of service, and invoices paid by the various parts of the Federal government, then I might be able to reverse engineer some approximate statistics. In order to obtain these documents, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every part of the Department of Justice that I could think of.
The first DoJ agency to respond to his request was the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), which indicated that it had price lists available for Cox Communications, Comcast, Yahoo and Verizon. But because the companies voluntarily provided the price lists to the government, the FOIA allows the companies an opportunity to object to the disclosure of their data under various exemptions. Comcast and Cox were fine with the disclosure, Soghoian reported.
He found that Cox Communications charges $2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval. It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.
Comcast’s pricing list, which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.
But Verizon and Yahoo took offense at the request.
Exemption 4 of the FOIA refers to the disclosure of commercial or financial information that could result in a competitive disadvantage to the company if it were publicly disclosed. The company claims its pricing is derived from labor rates for employees and overhead and, therefore, disclosing the information would provide clues to its operating costs — regardless of whether these same clues are already available in public records, such as those the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also claims that since Soghoian is trying to determine the actual amounts the Marshals Service paid Yahoo for responding to requests, the price lists are irrelevant, since “there are no standard prices for these transactions.”
But equally important to Yahoo’s objections was the potential for “criticism” and ridicule. Yahoo quoted Soghoian on his blog writing that his aim was to “use this blog to shame the corporations that continue to do harm to user online privacy.”
Yahoo also objected to the disclosure of its letter objecting to the disclosure of pricing information saying that “release of this letter would likely cause substantial competitive harm” to the company. The company added, in a veiled threat, that if the Marshals Service were to show anyone its letter objecting to the disclosure of pricing information, it could “impair the government’s ability to obtain information necessary for making appropriate decisions with regard to future FOIA requests.”
If anyone out there has a copy of Verizon or Yahoo’s law enforcement pricing list and wants to share it, feel free to use our anonymous tip address.
As the name suggests, the First Else's main objective is to be
different. This may sound like a marketing hype but Emblaze seems
serious -- it wanted to create not just another phone, but rather a
brand new mobile user experience (especially the ergonomics, aesthetics
and the content delivery system) to upstage the iPhone and the latest
Android devices, both of which Else considers to be the market leaders.
Eldad Eilam, CTO of Else, explained that this required starting from
scratch and using custom technology where possible (such as its
proprietary graphics engine), while at the same time the technical
details are well-packaged so that they don't intimidate the users (but
not just by wrapping an aging OS with some fancy skin; yes, we're
staring at you, Windows Phone).
Else started with ALP's Linux foundations, and after two years and 33
partner agreements, it unveiled the Else Intuition OS. When asked about
other Linux-based platforms like Android and webOS, Eilam expressed
little concern. "Android's a game-changer... [but] people need to
consider that Android doesn't bring good user experience. Most
[manufacturers] have failed. The Droid is improving, has a great
infrastructure but they treat Android as just a component."
Interestingly, Else didn't comment on webOS -- probably to avoid
stirring up Access's bitter memories of Palm, but it could've been just
a miss.
"The death of main menu"
While there's some good old Linux doing the donkey work underneath, the
First Else's futuristic and intuitive user interface mesmerized us
during the presentation and our hands-on, all thanks to "sPlay" -- a
right-thumb-controlled, sci-fi-like fan menu interface. Else actually
did a live demo on its prototype First Else with no visible glitches,
and when we had our hands on the device we got the same great
responsiveness. Else CEO Amir Kupervas made a good point about how
"smart" phones should actually be adapting to us instead of us having
to adapt to cluttered menu systems, which led the to birth of sPlay and
the fisheye display which provide minimal but necessary information,
while keeping a consistent layout and visual aesthetics across
different applications. At the same time, these features are positioned
within reach of the right thumb, and sPlay takes it further by letting
you easily browse different content by just a simple swipe of the right
thumb. Kupervas went as far as saying this single-hand operation is
"the death of main menu," mocking most other smartphone platforms.
You'll probably appreciate more of what Else is trying to achieve after
watching its presentation (followed by its campaign video which is also
available at the 'Source' link):
Impressive hardware, interesting service integration
While Else's focus is on the user experience, it hasn't compromised on
the hardware front: inside it's got a powerful TI OMAP 3430 processor
(as found on the Motorola Droid and Palm Pre), a brilliant 854x480
3.5-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen, a 5-megapixel camera which
promises to capture 480p video at 30fps, and a 1450mAh battery which
claims to outlast the iPhone 3GS by at least one hour. Oh, we dig the
OLED indicators at the top as well, leaving us some useful space on the
screen. Details on storage capacity are still vague, but right now Else
is only saying anything up to 32GB. There's no word on where the First
Else will make its commercial launch -- all we know is that it'll only
operate on HSDPA and EDGE (sorry, Verizon fans).
Speaking of carriers, Else is also working on a self-branded media
store which will require no credit card details, thus enhancing the
"out-of-the-box experience". How will it do that, you say? Well, it'll
work very closely with carriers in full partnership, and let them
charge you at the end of the month. This isn't totally revolutionary --
with the iPhone it's just a one-off setup on iTunes -- but it's still a
nice touch by Else, and we're sure someone out there will appreciate
this extra effort to create a seamless user experience. Similarly, Else
will be setting up an app store and they'll release an SDK at launch.
We've been told that some big names are already working on the first
lot of apps -- World of Warcraft was mentioned -- and there'll be an
app approval process to ensure that they'll have the same flow as the
handset itself. Good for the users, but probably not so good for the
developers.
Wrap-up
There's a lot of potential here and well done to Else for the work so
far, but there are still many uncertainties: pricing, availability,
carriers, apps, final device specs and, most importantly, usability in
the long run. That's a lot of of unanswered questions -- almost enough
for us to call this vaporware -- but we're optimistic, as we've
actually held and played with a working device in person. We're hoping
to hear a lot more about what Else has in store -- until then, we can
only drool over this final quickie demonstration. Just remember to wipe
up afterwards.
By Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com Thursday, November 19, 2009 10:59 AM
Computers capable of mimicking the human brain's power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to a leading researcher at IBM.
In an era when PCs perform like supercomputers, and supercomputers carry out inhuman feats of calculation, some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley say there are still crucial ways in which a computer can't match the problem-solving abilities of our own brains.
But today, at a supercomputing conference in Portland, Ore., a team of scientists from IBM's Almaden Research Lab and several other Bay Area institutions are planning to announce two developments that could one day lead to a new kind of computer — one that uses specially designed hardware and software to mimic what's inside our heads.
Researchers from IBM and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they have performed a computer simulation that matches the scale and complexity of a cat's brain, and project members from IBM and Stanford have developed an algorithm for mapping the human brain at new levels of detail. Eventually, scientists hope that detailed knowledge will help them build a computer that replicates the more complex working of a human brain.
The developments are early milestones on a long road that could one day yield applications for business, science or even the military. Still, veteran computing analyst Rick Doherty at the Envisioneering Group called the scale and significance of their progress "jaw-dropping."
According to the researcher, Dharmendra Modha, the manager of IBM's cognitive computing initiative, scientists from his company and some of the world's most prestigious universities have already managed to simulate the computing complexity of the feline cortex, a feat that could augur a day not too far off when it will be possible to ramp up to what the human brain can accomplish.
The simulation, for example, did not exactly mimic what a real cat does in catching a mouse. But it surpassed earlier efforts that simulated the much simpler brain structure of a creature the size of a mouse.
Researchers used an IBM supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore Lab to model the movement of data through a structure with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses, which allowed them to see how information "percolates" through a system that's comparable to a feline cerebral cortex.
The work is part of a federally funded effort to study what's known as cognitive computing, starting with what IBM project manager Dharmendra Modha calls "reverse-engineering the human brain," or designing a new computer by first getting a better understanding of how the brain works.
"The brain is amazing," said Modha, a computer scientist who can wax poetic about the capabilities of human gray matter. "The brain has awe-inspiring capabilities. It can react or interact with complex, real-world environments, in a context-dependent way. And yet it consumes less power than a light bulb and it occupies less space than a two-liter bottle of soda."
A key difference between human brains and traditional computers, Modha says, is that current computers are designed on a model that differentiates between processing and storing data, which can lead to a lag in updating information. The brain works on a more complex physical structure that can integrate and react to a constant stream of sights, sounds and other sensory information.
"The data can be very ambiguous. When we see a friend's face in a crowd," Modha said, "she could be wearing a red sweater or a blue dress, or her hair could be styled differently, but we're able to get to the fundamental essence of the pattern and recognize this is our friend."
Modha imagines a cognitive computer that could analyze a flood of constantly updated data from trading floors, banking institutions and even real estate markets around the world — sorting through the noise to identify key trends and their consequences. Or one that could evaluate pollution, weather and ocean data from real-time sensors around the world, to monitor global water supplies.
"As our digital and physical worlds collide, there is a tsunami of information," Modha said. "There is a need for a new kind of intelligence that can sort through, prioritize and extract the most important information, much like how the brain deals with sight, sounds, tastes, touch and smell."
A cognitive computer might also help soldiers analyze and react to chaotic events on a battlefield. The research is the result of a $5 million grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which also funded the forerunner of the Internet. But like that earlier work, scientists say the study of cognitive computing could lead in many unexpected directions.
Stanford psychology professor Brian Wandell, who studies neuroscience, was on the team that developed a new algorithm for interpreting data from a kind of noninvasive brain scan. Using supercomputers, the team has used that data to measure and map the structure of axons, or thin white threads that help carry brain signals.
Understanding these structures could lead to better knowledge of conditions such as multiple sclerosis or autism, Wandell said.
"When you see how something is laid out, you get insights about how something actually functions," he added. "So seeing the wiring diagram of the brain will be helpful for understanding how the brain functions."
Last year, IBM and five universities were awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project aimed at eventually achieving that goal. Just a year later, Modha said, his team, working in conjunction with the universities' scientists, have achieved two major milestones.
The first was a real-time cortical simulation that achieved more than 1 billion spiking neurons, as well as 10 trillion individual learning synapses. According to Modha, that exceeds what a cat's cortex is capable of.
Second, the scientists created a fresh algorithm they are calling BlueMatter that is aimed at spelling out the connections between all the human brain's cortical and sub-cortical locations. That mapping is a critical step, Modha suggested, for a true understanding of how the brain communicates and processes information.
The human brain, Modha said, is fundamentally different from today's computers in power and size, and he and the many scientists he is working with are eager to learn from the brain how to build new kinds of computing architectures. Part of the reason, he added, is that as our world gets more and more complex, a "tsunami" of data is being produced and analyzing those data demands "a new kind of cognitive system, a brain-like system, to make sense of it."
To achieve the goal, Modha and his fellow scientists are combining supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology research to demonstrate what is possible. The work they have done has progressed in just a year from the granting of the DARPA contract to today's achievements.
Modha said that examples of what could be done with computers working at this scale are realistic analysis of the world's water supply systems, or financial systems. The idea is to detect causality behind phenomena, and to make those connections quickly and effortlessly, the way the human brain works. Writing such a program using today's computers would be impossible, he said, but these future computers would be able to quickly distill answers to these kinds of enormous problems.
There is no promise, of course, that Modha and his colleagues will be able to advance the difference between the power of the cat and human cortexes in the next decade. After all, there is a difference of a factor of 20 between the two. But, he sounded optimistic that a decade is a realistic goal.
But, regardless of the timing, the aim is clear: reverse-engineer the human brain and learn its computational algorithms. And then deploy them in a bid to solve some of the world's most complicated computing problems.
We’re here today in Mountain View, CA at the Googleplex for an event during which Google is promising to give a lot of details about Chrome OS. This includes a full product rundown and details about the formal launch, which is expected to occur early next year.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google’s Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS are speaking at the event. And there will be a Q&A session afterwards.
Below find our live notes (paraphrased):
SP: Welcome everyone. We’re here today to talk about Google Chrome OS. We aren’t launching it today and not beta today. But we’ve made progress. As of today the code will be completely open. We’re excited to announce this.
Google Chrome is foundation of everything we’re doing here. Why do Chrome. It’s been a year. We just announced we’re over 30 million users – and now we’re already over 40 million users. We focused on speed, simplicity, and security. It’s 40% faster in JS than IE8. “One is fast and one is slow.” The most common feed back we get is “Chrome is fast.”
In the last year we’ve updated Chrome about 40 times, but most users don’t even notice. And we’re really focused on HTML5. We really want to push the web forward.
Just this year there is tons of new stuff coming:
1) Chrome for Mac will be ready before the end of the year. Very close now.
2) Chrome for Linux is coming along very well. That’s the foundation of Chrome OS.
3) Extensions are coming. We’ve taken our time to do this right. We have more details coming about extensions with certain partners. These update automatically.
HTML5, we want the web to apps as well as they do natively. We’ve been working hard on this. We want web apps to be able to use system resources the same way. Graphics is one example, we need a way to access to the GPU. Audio/video playback is key. And we need apps to work offline. We’re working with the other major browser vendors to make sure HTML5 comes along.
The growth in netbooks is amazing. Growth is exploding despite the
recession. Ultra thin, ultra light computers. The trend is clear that
we’re moving to web applications – not desktop applications. It’s the
most successful platform out there right now. We’re moving from laptops
down to netbooks on the regular computer end. On the other side we’re
going from phones to tablets – these are all computers. Laptops are
becoming more like phones too – always on connectivity.
Is there a better model of personal computing? We believe so. That’s Chrome OS.
We focus on three things. Speed. Simplicity. Security.
We want Chrome OS to be blazingly fast, basically instant-on. Chrome (the browser) on Chrome OS is going to be much faster.
In Chrome OS every application is a web application. There are no native applications. That gives us simplicity. It’s just a browser with a few modifications. And all data is Chrome OS is in the cloud.
This is key, we want all of personal computing to work this way. If you
lose your machine, you just get a new one, and it works. With security,
because everything is a web app, we can do different things. No system
is ever fully secure. With Chrome OS no user install binaries, so we
can see bad things easier. We run completely inside the browser
security model.
——–DEMO———
It takes about 7 seconds to to go the log-in screen. And another 3 seconds to log in to your application. And we’re working to make that faster.
Should be no surprise that it looks like Chrome the browser. We are opening up the project a year ahead of release right now. A lot of the UI will change in that time. But many of the core concepts here will carry over into the final product.
It looks like Chrome but it has application tabs. (Just like the pictures we posted.)
And there is an App Menu. The UI will change a bit, but we want to give
you a way to find your favorite applications. Panels are pesistent
lightweight windows that never move. Buddy lists and chat are great for
this. Or a notepad. And media pops up in little windows.
Demo of a chess game being played within the browser. And you can
allow it to take over the full screen so you don’t realize you’re in
the browser.
And we want you to be able to read books in Chrome OS. And YouTube
videos look great. And there is an all view mode (and the YouTube video
is still playing. You can drag and drop tabs. “It just works.”
What happens if you plug in a camera? It simply opens a window with
the camera’s files. I can pull any picture and open it in a new browser
window.
Microsoft Office launched a killer-app for Chrome OS (laughs). So if you get an Excel doc, it will open in Office online.
People have many types of files with computers right? They need to
get in them. Like PDFs, but these work instantly in the browser too.
———–Time for Matthew Papakipos to go under the hood of Chrome OS—————–
MP: Excited about the tech under the hood. All the code is out in the open now, you can go check it out.
We want this to feel much more like a television than a computer. All Chrome OS devices will be based on solid-state storage.
One of the reasons computers boot so slowly today is that they’re
still looking for things like floppy drives. Does anyone use those
anymore? No. We cut out a lot of the startup processes. And we open the
browser immediately. And we have something called Verified Boot –
Chrome OS auto-updates itself with all the security patches. Everytime
you boot we double check that you’re running what you should be
running. If something fails the cryptographic system check, we reboot
to get a clean image. Basically this is system recovery.
Current OSes allow apps to have the same power as you. They can
modify files, etc. This means a rogue app can do bad things. In Chrome
OS all the apps are web apps, with a different security model. All apps
are treated as if they are hostile at a system level. A web app can
change files on your hard disk, etc.
And we have security sandboxing – same thing we do in Chrome. Every
tab run in Chrome OS is locked down and different from other tabs.
The File System: It’s always auto-updated. There are a few areas of
the hard disk. The root partition is read-only. This is locked down,
which is unusual in OSes today. User data is always encrypted. This is key for safety of your data. So important if you lose your machine.
All user data is synced with the cloud at all times. If you lose your machine, it’s not really gone.
We’re not going to go into too much detail about going to market
today. We’re working on the software right now, but we are also working
with manufacturers on the hardware level. For example, we only support
solid-state drives and certain types of WiFi cards.
You cannot download and install Chrome on any machine. You will have to buy a new one.
End of next year. Before the holiday season.
While netbooks are popular, but some have usability issues. We want
to make slightly larger netbooks with full sized keyboards and big
trackpads.
Again, the code is all open source now. The Linux kernal, Unbuntu,
Moblin have all been important to what we’re doing now. We can’t wait
to see what people do with our code now.
If you are a developer and have the right type of netbook (and a screwdriver) you can get Chrome OS running today.
————Video Demo Time———–
———-Q&A Time———
Q: So many questions. One is what is the focus group for this type
of device? I have an Android device now – can you run Android apps on
Chrome OS? And Android devices are becoming so powerful, so why not
just use this – is there a Chrome server solution?
SP: There are many possibilities. What we are doing across Android
is great because it’s all open-source too. I think we’re going through
a shift in computing, it’s exciting. Time will tell.
Q: Do you know what this Chrome OS netbooks will cost?
SP: You will hear that from our partners. They will be in the price
range that people are used to for netbooks today. But it’s hard to
predict a year from now. Also remember, they will be bigger.
Q: Price target you want to hit?
SP: No we don’t have one.
Q: What netbook are you running this on right now (for the demo)?
SP: That’s an Eee PC.
Q: With the APIs support W3C working group standards? What about docs for partners?
SP: There’s a lot of documentation on our website. And we’ve been reaching out to partners for a while.
MP: For standards, yes we’re working closely with all the standards
group like W3C to standardize as much as we can. But web standards take
a while to be finalized. But it’d be nice to see all this on different
OSes.
Q: Will there be an app store? What about driver certification? What about editing apps – like editing photos?
SP: We will have more details about the idea of an app store down the line. We care about web apps – on the web there are hundreds of millons of applications.
MP: We’re working closely with hardware makers for the drivers.
SP: Back to apps that you can’t use on the web, like powerful
editing. This will be a secondary device, it may be a primary device in
terms of time spent on it, but we expect people to have other computers
too.
Q: Codec support and native client support?
MP: Yes, everything that works in Chrome will work in Chrome OS.
SP: And we’re investing in new tech to make web apps run just like
desktop apps. Chrome OS will also influence Chrome (the browser).
Q: Will you support Silverlight?
SP: Certain select plug-ins we’re trying to work on. But I don’t have a comment on working with Microsoft (laughs).
Q: Other browsers?
SP: Chrome OS is all about Chrome, so another browser can’t really
work here. That said, it’s open source, so other browser makers can
make their own OSes if they want.
Q: Will the system be exclusive to netbooks or other devices too? Any hardware partners you can make?
SP: Hardware details will come in the middle of next year. We are
intially fully focused on netbook-like computers (clam shell). In the
future it will be able to work on anything though.
Q: How big is the whole OS?
SP: Since it’s open source, there’s a lot in there right now. But we’re working hard to make it simple.
Q: Offline access with Gears? What about being on a plane?
SP: WiFi is the use case we have in mind. But having said that,
there will be ways to plug in and play media (listen to music and read
books, etc) And with HTML5 there is offline support.
Q: What WiFi will you use?
MP: We’re focused on 802.11n.
Q: Virtualization, can you run it now?
MP: Sure, you could build it and run it in a virtual machine. That’s a great way to compile and debug.
Q: What about partners like Adobe? So Android’s marketplace is key – what about Android apps on Chrome?
SP: Independent of Chrome OS we’re all about moving web apps forward
– including things like Photoshop on the web. Android apps currently
will not run on Chrome OS.
Q (from Mike): Steve Jobs said the same thing when he launched the
iPhone (about web apps). There will be pressure to get Android like
apps right?
SP: Currently we’re only working with web apps. The iPhone was a bit
different because THEY made their own native apps. We’re not doing
that, we’re doing all web apps for Chrome OS. Netbooks are a better
size for web apps.
Q: What processors will this run on?
SP: x86 and ARM eventually.
Q: So different code?
MP: Not ready to answer that, but basically yes.
Q: What about other machine timeline? What about business model?
SP: We’re just focused on netbooks in 2010. For business model, Chrome OS is free, using the web more benefits us for a company.
Q: Any new ads in Chome OS?
SP: No plans for that. These are all just web apps.
Q: What does Chrome OS do that other browsers on other OSes can’t do?
SP: Most of what we show here you can do in other browser. But there
are new user concepts we’re exposing, app tabs, panels, and there will
be more.
MP: We can do more stuff with the file system and faster boot times.
Q: How do you get people past the cloud reliability? And what about storing this on Google’s servers.
SP: If your cloud is down, it affects every computer now, so this
isn’t really much different. Compare the cloud reliability with what
you have to do – the cloud compares favorably. In terms of trust, it’s
important that users have choice. And things are open so developers can
tell users what is going on.
Q: Is the Signature process – is Google in charge of that?
MP: Yes, we’ll open source that as well.
———Google co-founder Sergey Brin Enters———
Q: Chrome runs JavaScript really well – what about supporting Java?
SP: Technically there is nothing limiting what you’re talking about. But we’re focused on web apps.
Q: Dell has a full laptop but also a small netbook that runs ARM and is instant-on. Any plans to be a second OS on a laptop?
MP: No we’re focused on being the core OS on a machine.
Q: What about running printers or flip cams?
SP: We plan for all standard keyboards, mice, and storage devices.
For printing – we’ll have more to share next year. Yes Chrome OS will
print. We’re working on it.
Q: Is this about moving the community/ecosystem forward again?
MP: Yes definitely, that’s why we’re open sourcing it. Hopefully
this will help other products out there. This makes it easier to work
with hardware vendors too.
Q (from Steve): Realtime notifications on every page?
SB: I think we definitely need support for that in the browser. And
especially in Chrome OS. Hopefully we can solve the problem of chatting
when you’re not signed in to Google.
MP: There is a new notification API standard that is being worked on now.
Q: What about Wave.
SB: Wave will work with that.
Q: What is Chrome’s strategic position for Google?
SB: We really focus on user needs rather than strategies based on
other companies. Netbooks are now $300 or $400 you can buy a bunch, but
there’s no good way to manage a bunch of them — that’s where the web
comes in, and Chrome OS comes in.
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