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Chrome Remoting Is Live: It’s A PC Remote Control! | ConceivablyTech

October 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The speculation about the feature set of Chrome Remoting ends as Google has released the software as a beta extension for Chrome. Think GoToMyPC: Remoting is available as the Chrome Remote Desktop that enables a user to remote control another PC that runs Chrome. Microsoft and Mozilla, this is a killer feature that should not be underestimated.

Google released the extension last Friday and says that it is experimental at this time and it is offered to collect user feedback. We first noticed “host remoting” in Chrome more than a year ago in Chromium 7 versions. Last May, Google decided to remove remoting as a core feature from Chrome and offer it as a plug-in and later as an extension. Compared to GoToMyPC, the feature is not quite as convenient, but it is free and can be used on any computer and OS that runs Chrome.

via Chrome Remoting Is Live: It’s A PC Remote Control! | ConceivablyTech.

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First Firefox 7 Beta Promises Dramatically Lower Memory Use | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

August 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 7, and the first to implement Memshrink, which can cut Firefox’s memory usage by almost fifty percent.

The new Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux is available for download, and users who are already running the Firefox beta will be automatically updated. Separately, Mozilla also released a beta version of Firefox for Android.

On Aug. 16, Mozilla Firefox 6, as it moves to a rapid-release schedule;it brings very little that end users will notice—the big interface changes all came along in version 4, according to the PCMag.com review. According to Mozilla’s Wiki page, Firefox 7 is scheduled to be released on Sept. 27.

Memory use has been a thorn in the side of Firefox, so the new beta revision may be welcome to many users. The new beta is the first to use Memshrink.

“Firefox 7 uses less memory than Firefox 6 (and 5 and 4): often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less,” Nicholas Nethercote, who has worked on the Memshrink program for Mozilla, wrote on Aug. 9. “In particular, Firefox 7′s memory usage will stay steady if you leave it running overnight, and it will free up more memory when you close many tabs.”

via First Firefox 7 Beta Promises Dramatically Lower Memory Use | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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Mozilla delivers Firefox 5 beta on schedule – Computerworld

May 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Mozilla last Friday shipped the beta of Firefox 5, the latest step in its move to pick up the release pace of its open-source browser.

Firefox 5 is slated to wrap up on June 21.

The company’s developers merged the changes made over the last several weeks in Firefox 5′s less-polished “Aurora” channel to the beta on May 17, as planned.

It takes Mozilla time — in the case of Firefox 5′s beta, three days — to run automated quality control tests and prepare distribution mechanisms after merging the code, the company noted earlier this month.

As befits the more frequent release schedule that Mozilla staked out last month, Firefox 5 sports relatively few major changes.

The two that Mozilla called out in a blog post Friday were support for the CSS (cascading style sheets) animation standard — which has yet to win formal approval from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards group — and the inclusion of a “channel switcher” that lets users flip between Firefox’s three editions of Aurora, Beta and Release.

via Mozilla delivers Firefox 5 beta on schedule – Computerworld.

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Chrome 10 Beta Supercharges Performance | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

February 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Just when it was looking like Google Chrome couldn’t get any faster, a new beta shows up and shatters that impression. On Thursday, the search titan announced a new Chrome 10 beta that boosts JavaScript performance by a substantial 66 percent, as measured by Google’s own V8 benchmark, and implements GPU-accelerated video playing. The beta also changes the way users set options, and lets them sync passwords.

In my own speed tests on a 2.6-GHz dual-core laptop, Chrome 10 beta showed significant improvements on Google’s VE benchmark and Mozilla’s Kraken, but on Webkit’s SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, it was nearly identical, and still trailed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate’s 231ms. Here are my results, showing how Chrome 10 improves on 9:

Benchmark Chrome 9 Chrome 10 Beta Percent Change

Google V8 v6 (higher is better) 5164 8294 +61

Mozilla Kraken (ms—lower is better) 15657 8541 +45

SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms—lower is better) 286 284 >1

via Chrome 10 Beta Supercharges Performance | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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YouTube Quietly Launches Live Beta With New Partners – NYTimes.com

January 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

YouTube may be getting closer to launching a new live offering to partners that want to stream video in real-time, as it’s ramping up new tests of its live streaming technology. Despite a rocky start on its first round of live streams deployed on its own infrastructure, YouTube says it has worked out many of the kinks that held back its earlier tests and is coming back with an offering that’s much improved.

Last September, the online video site launched an alpha test of its YouTube Live service to great fanfare, highlighting two days of live streaming events with four content partners. But those tests didn’t go as smoothly as planned; none of its partners generated very many views during the alpha run, and viewers that did show up were often struck by low-quality, jittery streams. In short, even though it was YouTube’s initial test of a new technology, the site’s first foray into running live streams on its own architecture ended up being a bit of an embarrassment.

So one can understand why in its second round of tests, the online video powerhouse has to remain mum, allowing partners to take the lead on announcing their own live streams instead. While YouTube isn’t talking up these beta test of the live technology, it’s currently working with partners for another round of tests.

The latest round of new partners using the updated YouTube Live technology included the Vlogbrothers, which streamed their Project 4 Awesome live show on YouTube before the holidays late last year. But the biggest test of the YouTube Live infrastructure will come next week, when Revision3 live streams its ultra-popular DiggNation show live from its studios on Tuesday, Jan. 18 at 6:00 p.m. PT/9:00 p.m. ET.

via YouTube Quietly Launches Live Beta With New Partners – NYTimes.com.

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First Look: Will the RockMelt Browser Rock the Social Web?

November 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Between a Rock and a Social Space

RockMelt is a new browser, just launched in limited beta, that offers an easier social media experience on your browser. It shows off its social colors right from the start as you login with your Facebook account details. Before the program runs, you choose the Facebook details that you will allow RockMelt to access — actually showing a good degree of sense over privacy issues.

Play Nicely With Friends

Down the left hand side, your Facebook avatar is displayed, with all active friends listed below. The list is customizable, allowing you to choose which friends you want to see and arrange the list to suit your needs. When you hold the cursor over an icon, you can see your chosen friends’ status updates.

On the right of the screen, you can add other social networking sites, like Twitter, all done with a simple pop-up sign in. As the services update, the number of new messages/stories appears next to the appropriate icon. You can also interact with posts and respond quickly in the panel.

In fact, you can add any site with an Atom/RSS feed and keep an eye on it as it updates. When you click on the icon, you get a pop-out that shows the latest stories. If you choose to click on a story, it will appear on either your browser pane or in a new tab, depending on your preferences.

via First Look: Will the RockMelt Browser Rock the Social Web?.

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Skype 5 launches with Facebook integration and group video calls | VentureBeat

October 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

After a beta test which lasted since May, Skype today has officially released the next version of its Windows client, Skype 5.0, which brings with it group video conferencing and Facebook integration.

Group video calling is a feature the company slowly ramped up throughout Skype 5’s beta. It first offered the ability for five-person video chats in May. At the time I argued that group video chat would become the next killer webcam feature. In September, the company extended group video chat to support 10-person conversations. Eventually, Skype will charge for group video chats, but for now users can try out the service for free.

We reported at the end of September that Facebook and Skype were partnering up, and the official release of Skype 5 is the first time we get to see Facebook’s integration into the software. You can now log in with Facebook Connect in Skype to instant message, call, and text your Facebook friends. You can also view your Facebook News Feed from within Skype, post status messages, and synchronize your status messages with Skype’s “mood message.”

via Skype 5 launches with Facebook integration and group video calls | VentureBeat.

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Chrome Beta 6: Simple, Speedy and Full of Add-Ons – PCWorld

August 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Google has beefed up the latest beta of its Chrome Web browser by simplifying its features, boosting page-load speed, and packing it tight with many useful add-ons to enhance your browsing experience. Chrome Beta 6 is now available to download.

Speed Boosts

Chrome boasts impressive speed boosts. Beta 6 hits a “15 percent speed improvement on the V8 benchmark, and a 15 percent improvement on the SunSpider benchmark, both of which measure JavaScript performance,” according to the Chrome blog. Google says the browser also improved by 64 percent on Mozilla’s Dromeao DOM Core Tests (click on the images for a closer look at the graphs).

In its blog, Google doesn’t claim to have the fastest browser on the market — a hefty declaration that most other browser manufacturers make. When Opera 10.5 was released in March, it was supposedly the fastest browser available. But Apple said Safari 4 Beta owned that crown — a claim that was later shot down by tests. Internet Explorer 9 — often the slowest of the bunch — beat everybody in HTML5 tests (Chrome scored a distant last). It’s difficult to tell who is the fastest — which would explain why some people have a slew of browsers downloaded onto their computers.

via Chrome Beta 6: Simple, Speedy and Full of Add-Ons – PCWorld.

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Google rolls out encrypted Web search option | InSecurity Complex – CNET News

May 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Google began offering an encrypted option for Web searchers on Friday and said it planned to roll it out for all of its services eventually.

People who want to use the more secure search option can type “https://www.google.com” into their browser, scrambling the connection so the words and phrases they search on, and the results that Google displays, will be protected from interception.

The beta service of the secure Web search option begins in the United States on Friday and will be rolled out over the next few days to users around the world, said Murali Viswanathan, a Google search product manager.

Friday’s announcement makes Google the first major search engine to offer this privacy-protective feature. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft currently do not.

via Google rolls out encrypted Web search option | InSecurity Complex – CNET News.

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AT&T tethering screen in iPhone OS 4 beta gives users hope

May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

AT&T users may finally get the option to tether their iPhones to their laptops in order to share the data connection—at least if hints from the latest iPhone OS 4 beta are to be believed. A new version of the beta software was distributed to developers Tuesday night, and those with access (such as MacRumors) dug up a new configuration screen that indicates AT&T users will be able to set up tethering on their accounts by either calling AT&T or going to its website.

Apple first announced that iPhone users would be able to tether in June of 2009 at WWDC. There was a catch, however: it would only work with participating global carriers, and AT&T was not one of them. The carrier claimed it would offer such a feature along with multimedia messaging (MMS) capabilities at a later date, but MMS was the only one to arrive before the end of 2009. Last month, AT&T said that it wanted to ensure that it could offer better network performance before allowing iPhone tethering.

via AT&T tethering screen in iPhone OS 4 beta gives users hope.

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