Thursday, November 19, 2009
Chrome: The End of Desktop Apps

Direct from Google headquarters, Vice President of Product Management Sundar Pichai explains that the company’s forthcoming Chrome OS could signal the end of desktop apps as we know them.

Direct from Google headquarters, Vice President of Product Management Sundar Pichai explains that the company’s forthcoming Chrome OS could signal the end of desktop apps as we know them.
In advance of its shareholder meeting today, Google is holding a press event at its Mountain View, Calif., campus with CEO Eric Schmidt presiding. Also on hand: Dave Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development; Susan Wojcicki, vice president for product management, and Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products and user experience. Hot topics of the day: Google’s and Apple’s interlocking boards, YouTube and the company’s thoughts on the econalypse, AOL and netbooks.
What propitious timing. At a press conference in New York City later this morning, Amazon is expected to announce a new large-screen Kindle designed for reading periodicals and textbooks. And yesterday, on the eve of that announcement, came word that the company had been awarded a patent on the original Kindle design. The patent, #D591,741, is entitled “Electronic media reader” and it makes just a single claim.
Technically, the term refers to the frenzied flow of games and the intensity of the contenders for the NCAA Championship crown. But the NCAA doesn’t have a corner on “March Madness”–those descriptors work well in other instances, too. To wit:

Despite its relatively tame product announcements and the absence of Steve Jobs, Apple’s final Macworld keynote wasn’t without a highpoint or two: changes in pricing and digital rights management for the iTunes store, a new 17-inch MacBook Pro with an eight-hour battery life, and a surprise appearance by crooner Tony Bennett, among them. After the jump, the event in pictures courtesy of ATD’s crack photojournalist, Adam Tow.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.