Wednesday, October 2, 2013

22% of US School Districts Now Using Chromebooks


Its looking more and more like the future of the PC is in the cloud, or is it just Chrome OS? Chromebooks are pretty cheap, unless you're looking at the Chromebook Pixel. The Acer and Samsung Chromebooks are $199 and $249 respectively. Making it very easy for school districts to use them for teaching.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Don't Like the New 'New Tab' Page in Chrome? Here's How To Convert to the Old Version


A new version of Google Chrome began rolling out this week. It brings plenty of changes, but the most noticeable one is the fact that the new tab page is completely different. It has all your most popular web pages along with a search bar. Instead of apps and websites, along with the "recently closed" section at the bottom. Which is what I'm particularly missing. It's actually pretty easy to get it back and here's how:

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Google Gives Us a New Logo and App Launcher on their Homepage


One has to admit that over the past few years, Google's design has really gotten much better. Late last week, Google began rolling out an update to their homepage, google.com that brings a new logo and a new app launcher.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

New Chromebooks Announced last Week Does NOT Mean the Pixel Won't Get Updated


When Google introduced us to the Chromebook Pixel earlier this year, we were in love. That was until we saw the price of it. We had all gotten used to Google pushing out great devices at dirt-cheap prices. Like the Samsung and Acer Chromebooks, not to mention the Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. Last week, Intel announced that there are four new Chrome devices from ASUS, Acer, Toshiba and HP that will be running on their new Haswell chips. Many people took that as meaning that we will not see a Pixel 2.

This idea surfaced from a PC World report last Thursday:

“While the new Chromebooks are expected to be flagship products for their respective brands, don’t expect a repeat of the Chromebook Pixel that product, which paired an Intel “Ivy Bridge” Core processor with an incredible 2560-by-1700 pixel touch display, was a “prototype” to show off the power of the Chromebook platform and will not be repeated, Caesar Sengupta, director of product management at Google, told a small roundtable of reporters on Wednesday.”

This would have really made a few people upset, not to mention everyone who attended Google I/O this year and got a Chromebook Pixel. The Pixel is a great device which we'd hate to see be a one-and-done device. The folks at GigaOm reached out to Google for a comment on this matter:

"We did not say that Pixel will not be repeated; we don't comment on the future or unannounced products. At launch we said Pixel was designed to bring together the best in hardware, software and design to inspire the next generation of Chromebooks, and to work with the ecosystem to continue  to push the experience forward for touch and high-DPI web. We see that playing out."
So while Google didn't say the Pixel was done, they also didn't say if we'd see a new Pixel. Although it sounds pretty promising that we will see another one probably sometime in 2014. Hopefully they will release two versions, one that's a bit cheaper would be nice to see.

Chrome Beta for Android Updates to Build 30.0.1599.50


I know we're a bit late posting this, but on Thursday the Chrome team pushed out a new update to the Beta channel of Chrome for Android. It addresses plenty of fixes and is available on Google Play right now. Here's the changelog from the Chrome Releases Blog:

QuickOffice Goes Free and Offers Up 10GB of Google Drive Storage


It seems like lately Google has really been trying to push Google Drive and get more people using it. With the Chromebooks last year they offered 100GB of space, and the Chromebook Pixel offered 1TB. While the Moto X actually offers 50GB of space, which isn't bad.

Chrome 30 Lands on iOS 7 With New Design


This week, not only did Apple release a brand new designed version of their mobile operating system. But many of their app developers released iOS 7-designed apps. One of those developers was Google. They updated the Chrome app for iOS to fit in with the design of iOS 7. Of course, the latest update isn't just about the looks, it's also got improved integration with Google's other iOS apps and has also been greatly improved.