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Android picking up Chromium practices?

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by Jim Farmer on
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Many have wondered why Android does not feature the Chrome browser, or for that matter, why Google developed Chrome OS alongside and separate from Android.  Thus far Android has simply featured “Browser,” which like Chrome is based on the open source WebKit. Unlike Chrome and its Chromium counterpart, however, Android’s browser comes in only one flavor; closed source.  That is about to change.

We plan to start by setting up a webkit.org build bot that will compile Chromium’s DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK and toolchain. We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the Chromium port to achieve this. We’re fully committed to maintaining this new flavor of the Chromium port of WebKit and having a build bot up and running as soon as possible will make this an easier task. At the same time, we will be removing the existing incomplete Android port. This includes the Android-specific code in WebCore/platform/android, as well as any code guarded by the PLATFORM(ANDROID) macro.

The Android team is committed to releasing a slightly modified Android browser to be fully open source.  Certain Android specific code will likely be removed before that release, but it’s obvious that Google is trying to reunite the projects in a move that could herald the arrival of branded Chrome on Android. Convergence between the Android browser and Chrome is practically inevitable. Aside from Honeycomb tablets bringing a more PC-like experience to browsing, Google TV, soon to be updated to Android Honeycomb, has a browser that sports the Chrome brand. With that pending, how long can Google keep them separate? Besides, having a WebKit based Chrome on Android devices will make work easier for web developers to get content on Android, and of course I’m sure Google would love to see their Chrome browser advertised on every Android device.

[via Techcrunch]

Google adds android.me to its domain collection

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by Jim Farmer on
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Over time, Google has snagged several “.me” domains including google.me, gmail.me, adwords.me, adsense.me, plus.me, blogger.me, orkut.me, and now most recently android.me. “What does this mean for me,” you might ask? At this point it could be the beginning of any number of new things.  Although, much speculation is that, at least in the case of Android, we may get a browser based hub for our phones and tablets, perhaps similar to the HTC Sense website.  The similar hub could include features like find my phone, lock my phone, contacts backup, messages backup, and maybe even something like HTC FootPrints, with the exception of it being more Google Maps oriented.

Such a browser based suite, could potentially have excellent Google Voice and Chrome OS tie-ins as well, but again this is all just speculation. As for the other domains Google has had a few of those from the beginning of “.me” domains so they may or may not have plans in the works for them right now. Many other companies are also registering for .me domains so in light of recent events, Google may be simply stockpiling these domains to protect them from being purchased by another party. Unfortunately it seems someone already owns Chro.me.

What do you think (or hope) will become of android.me?

[via tc]

Intel looks to push into Android tablet PC market.

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by Robert Nazarian on
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According to DigiTImes, Intel is working with 6 to 8 notebook manufacturers to push into the Android tablet PC market. Among them are 2 Taiwanese companies, Inventec and Compal Electronics. It is expected that they will show some of the new devices at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing next Month. If R&D does not go well, they may hold off until later this year at the Computex Taipei.

It was also reported that Intel has been working with Google on the development of  notebooks and netbooks. During the second half of 2011 Intel/Chrome OS solutions will be released. Samsung, Acer, and Asustek will be launching related models.

[via DigiTimes by BGR]

Chrome To Phone App Update Now Available

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by Jesse Bauer on
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chrometophone

An update is now available for the Chrome To Phone App, which essentially doesn’t amount to much other than the addition of a history tab for links previously sent to your device which can now be sorted as Today, Last 7 days, Last month, or Older. As usual with any update, there’s some bug fixes as well, but nothing major in this release.

For those who don’t know, Google Chrome to Phone lets you easily share links, maps, and currently selected phone numbers and text between your computer running Chrome and your phone. You also need to install the Chrome browser extension on your computer, which can be found by searching for ‘Chrome to Phone’ at http://chrome.google.com/extensions/.

Scan the QR code below

chrometophQR

Android Market Link

Chrome or Android – Will Google Merge Them?

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by Jesse Bauer on
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android-vs-chrome

There’s a convergence coming in the mobile OS market with respect to mobile technology, platforms and consumer demand. Google aims to capture the best of all 3 areas. We can see it happening right before our eyes. The popularity of Android OS on mobile devices, the announcement of Chrome OS and Google’s partnerships with manufacturers to build Chrome OS proprietary hardware.

After Chrome OS was announced last year, I’ll admit, I was pretty damn excited….in fact, I may have peed a little. That was right around the time I got an Android device and began to realize how deadly it was, especially after updating to Eclair. Now, I’m not sure that I have a real need for Chrome OS. I mean, won’t it essentially be doing what I’m doing on my smartphone already, with respect to cloud computing and application use?

Read more of this conspiracy theory below…

Will Google’s Chrome tablet be called the Speedbook?

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by Chris Moor on
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Google has just recently filed for a new trademark, “Speedbook”. While no official word has been given as to what device will bear this name, it seems likely that it will go to a tablet device. That leaves us with two possibilities that we know of. First being the Chrome OS tablet we’ve all heard of, rumored to be releasing on Black Friday. The second possibility would be the upcoming Motorola tablet launching through Verizon with Gingerbread inside. As we reported before Google and Motorola were working very closely with this one and it will reportedly be labeled as both a Google and Motorola product. The former seems like the more likely possibility but we’ll just have to wait and see.

[via TFTS]

Chrome to Phone powered by Android Cloud to Device Messaging

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by Tyler Cunningham on
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An often overlooked addition to Android 2.2 is Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM), which enables developers to push small data messages to the phone.  This is the brains behind Chrome to Phone, a Chrome extension which allows the user to send links and other information to their Android device right from their browser.  The process works as follows:

  1. The Android Application registers with the C2DM service and gets a device registration ID for the user. It sends this registration ID along with the user’s account name to the AppEngine server.
  2. The AppEngine server authenticates the user account and stores the mapping from account name to device registration ID.
  3. The Chrome Extension accesses the URL and page title for the current tab, and POSTs it to the AppEngine server.
  4. The AppEngine server authenticates the user and looks up the corresponding device registration ID for the user account name. It then HTTP POSTs the URL and title to Google’s C2DM servers, which subsequently route the message to the device, resulting in an Intent broadcast.
  5. The Android application is woken by its Intent receiver. The Android application then routes the URL to the appropriate application via a new Intent (e.g. browser, dialer, or Google Maps).

Again, this requires Android 2.2, so for all of you who are officially/unofficially running Froyo, you can download both the Chrome extension and the Android APK here.

[via Android-Developers]

Instantly Open URL’s From Your Phone in Chrome

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by Chris Moor on
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Have you ever been checking out a really cool website on your phone and then realized some cool feature would just be way better on a computer? If you have then you probably also realized how much of a pain it is to try and get to that same page from your computer. Sure you can email yourself the link, or something similar, but really there is no excuse for such clunky functionality. Well worry no longer. Android2cloud is an app that fixes this problem quickly and elegantly; once you install the app and the Google Chrome extension and verify both clients, you can simply ‘share’ the page from your phone to the app and it opens the tab on your computer! Pretty slick huh? Let us know what you think in the comments!

[via Lifehacker]

ChrometoPhone app sends URLs, Maps, Phone numbers, and more from your Desktop to your Android Phone!

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by Chris Moor on
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Chrome to phone

I know I have done this many times, and I am sure there are those of you who have done it, too. What am I talking about? How many times have been surfing around and found a site or link to something that you wanted to get onto your Android phone?Maybe it was a download for an app, or a mobile version of a site you want to follow. Before, you would have to turn on your phone, find the browser icon, type it in by hand into the browser and wait… until now.

If you are running Android 2.2 (no support for 2.1) on your phone, there is an extension for Google Chrome called “Chrome to Phone”. This app consists of an extension for your Chrome browser and a receiving application on your device.  Using Google’s cloud service, the extension sends the link or other information to the supporting application installed on your phone, and opens the information with the corresponding application. It does more than shoot links, too:

Features:

  • Send links to browser
  • Google Maps links launch the Google Maps app.
  • Selecting phone numbers in Web pages, launches the dialer with the number pre-populated.
  • Selected text populates the Android clipboard (long-press on text boxes to get paste option).

This little feature will save you time and, if you’re like me, your fingers (Which I run down enough with texting already). If you’re interested in giving it a trym and you are running Android OS 2.2 (Froyo), then head on over to Chrome to Phone to download the files and let me know what you think, because I am interested to see how many people find this gem helpful.

[via Google Code]

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