Google is in the process of rolling out a web browser, called Chrome. The defining characteristics are mostly on the back end, in terms of how it deals with processes and memory addressing. That being said, the foundation is being laid for what ought to be an unusually stable and secure browser.
The whole thing is explained in this comic book. The beta version is available for Windows, but we Mac users need to keep waiting for a while yet.
P.S. Another piece of software I am excited about is Spore. I have been a big appreciator of SimCity, SimAnt, and the like. The opportunity to evolve intelligent organisms on my shiny new computer is one I anticipate eagerly.
You should check out the computer game ‘Creatures’. I just finished reading a very interesting book called ‘Creation: Life and How to Make it’ by Steve Grand who is also the inventor of said game. This game is considered to be the first computer game to use genuine artificial life. One can create one’s own character that will then develop and evolve given feedback loops and a genetic computer code and in response to interactions in its environment.
Creatures (artificial life program)
Until Chrome supports plugins, I won’t be switching.
Chrome Vs. IE 8
By samzenpus on put-em-up
snydeq writes “Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 herald a new, resource-intensive era in Web browsing, one sure to shift our conception of acceptable minimum system requirements, InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy concludes in his head-to-head comparison of the recently announced multi-process, tabbed browsers. Whereas single-process browsers such as Firefox aim for lean, efficient browsing experiences, Chrome and IE 8 are all about delivering a robust platform for reliably running multiple Web apps in a tabbed format in answer to the Web’s evolving needs. To do this, Chrome takes a ‘purist’ approach, launching multiple, discrete processes to isolate and protect each tab’s contents. IE 8, on the other hand, goes hybrid, creating multiple instances of the iexplore.exe process without specifically assigning each tab to its own instance. ‘Google’s purist approach will ultimately prove more robust,’ Kennedy argues, ‘but at a cost in terms of resource consumption.’ At what cost? Kennedy’s comparison found Chrome ‘out-bloated’ IE 8, consuming an average of 267MB vs. IE 8’s 211MB. This, and recent indications that IE 8 itself consumes more resources than Vista, surely announce a new, very demanding era in Web-centric computing.”
For you non-programmers, there’s an Easter egg, too: type “about:internets” into the Omnibox. I’m not going to be a spoilsport by revealing what happens, but here’s a hint: Ted Stevens.
My office won’t let me use Chrome because it’s a beta release. Of course, GMail and Google News have been in beta for eternity. Furthermore, Chrome is probably more secure than the copies of Internet Explorer installed on all Windows machines by default.
Will DRM Exterminate Spore?
“Will an anti-DRM flash mob that’s determined to give EA’s latest sim game Spore a rock bottom rating on Amazon.com sink the game, or will Spore evolve and shed the DRM? Is this the beginning of the end for DRM-laden games? ‘Over the past few years we’ve focused a lot on the music industry and how it has attempted to use DRM to control distribution. While DRM in this market segment has been unpopular, anti-DRM campaigns have largely fallen flat when it comes to attracting widespread public attention because of the fragmented nature of music. Games are a much easier target given the monolithic nature of their release — campaigners only need to spread the word on a handful of specific online outlets to reach a wide audience. A quick read through the Amazon reviews of Spore seems to suggest that the negative comments are already putting people off from buying the game.'”
The hype leading up to Spore was excessive. But then, so is the scope of the game; following the growth of a species from the cellular level to galactic domination was an ambitious goal, to say the least. Bringing evolution into the realm of entertainment was something Will Wright hoped and gambled he could do after the success of the Sim franchise. But rather than evolution, Spore became more about creation – creation that allows a single-player game to include the community, as well. It ties the various parts of the game together to make Spore very entertaining as a whole. Read on for my thoughts.
Tech.view
On the web at warp speed
Sep 11th 2009
From Economist.com
Google goes in search of an instant operating system
Throughout their brief history, browsers have basically done just one thing: serve up pages of information for people to read. But the web has evolved dramatically over the past two decades while browsers have lagged behind. Today, the web is about applications rather than pages. People use the web to play games, download music, buy things, make telephone calls, share pictures and inner secrets, watch videos and television and, oh yes, search for information.
To catch up, the first thing Google did was abandon the browser’s traditional architecture. Instead of uniting the user with the web in a single protected area, Chrome uses a “sandbox” approach that gives each application its own space to play in, which makes it harder for bad guys to wrestle control.
In Chrome, the main part of the program, the kernel, is separated from the various rendering processes that draw the pages on the screen. That way, the browser kernel—which interacts directly with the operating system—is shielded from anything questionable lurking outside. Meanwhile, the rendering engine resides in a special space that controls what resources within the computer can be read or written to. In so doing, viruses, Trojans, key-loggers and spyware are prevented from infecting the computer.
Chrome for Clunkers
Google’s ingenious plan to spruce up outdated versions of Internet Explorer.
By Farhad Manjoo
Posted Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009, at 5:15 PM ET
How do you persuade people to upgrade their browser when they don’t even know what a browser is? You hide the upgrade. That seems to be the ingenious theory behind Chrome Frame, a plug-in for Internet Explorer that Google unveiled this week. Chrome Frame does to IE what spinach does to Popeye—it instantly blesses Microsoft’s browser with the ability to do amazing things.
Chrome Frame does this by replacing IE’s guts. At the heart of every Web browser is the “rendering engine”—the code that processes and displays Web pages. About half the people on the Web are running older versions of IE—Versions 6 and 7—whose rendering engines are antiquated; they can’t process new HTML tags required by the most advanced Web applications, and they’ve got slow JavaScript engines, making it tedious to run complex programs like Gmail or Google Maps. Chrome Frame simply injects Chrome’s rendering engine into IE. After you install it, your browser will be able to do everything Chrome can do—even though you’ll still be using IE.