Slightly OT But Interesting: Google’s Chrome OS

[Zane Barker]

I’ve been playing around with it via VMWare myself.

Currently it is buggy and vary limited, but it is still VARY new. However the thing has BIG potential. Because its a web based OS the hardware requirements to run the thing are vary small. When you think about it it would really only need the processing power of in iPhone, and even 16GB of flash memory would be overkill for the thing. I think it is vary possible that we could see ChromeBooks for $200 or less. At that price they would make the perfect little computer for 95% of people out there (most people just use the web on a computer anyway)

Ont think that is way nice is that because it is web based, you can literally log into any ChromeOS system and your settings and things will be the same (you have to log in with your gmail account). For example I set it up in VMware then completely deleted the virtual machine and set it up again. When I logged in every thing was exactly the same.

I’m looking forward to see what this evolves into.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[Tim Wilson]

If you haven’t watched the video full screen, by all means do. It’s a very entertaining piece, and worth considering as a creative work in itself.

Less than a year ago, I was a total skeptic about the cloud. Not anymore.

Storage was the easy part for me to get used to. Having gone through a couple of computer disasters lately, I’ve found that my reasonably up-to-date, reasonably thorough back-ups were a major PITA to get to. As a result, I’ve now been uploading documents to online drives daily.

As is virtually always the way with such things, there are many more alternatives, many of them free on Windows, starting with SkyDrive – 25GB free, compared to 20GB for $99/yr with MobileMe. (Skydrive works on Mac, with some limitations – a lot of the juicy goodness comes from ActiveX.) Lots of free third-party synch and backup utils too. I’ve also started playing with ADrive too – 50GB free! I kinda like free.

In a way, Apple has been moving into the clouds for a while. Out goes Macintosh. (It’s Mac.) Out goes computer. (It’s Apple.) Now have you noticed how hard it is to find “OS” at apple.com? TRY to find it, and tell me how many clicks it takes. What OS does the iPhone run? As far as most customers are concerned, it only runs apps. Nobody asks “Is it compatible with Windows?” – even though the staggering majority of iPhone users primarily run Windows. It’s irrelevant.

Apple is more than happy to rule your world through devices. Netbook, thy name is iPhone, and iPod, and whatever the tablet thing is going to be called. They want to sell computers for as long as anyone is buying computers, but the real money’s in the cloud.

Google is going further, faster, because they have no stake in sales or support of either hardware or software. They’ll let you run the Chrome OS on a modified version of your high school ring.

That little movie has it nailed, though – the “click click click COME ON ALREADY” response is really for getting online. Every other aspect of the OS, every individual application, takes a back seat.

I’m still a little skeptical about full-scale applications online….although I’m wavering. At this point, the only REAL limitation of Google Docs for the word processing I do every day is that it doesn’t support Word’s Track Changes feature – still, by far the best on the planet.

(One man’s bloat is another man’s “there’s no point even trying to do my job without this feature.” MSFT isn’t evil or stupid. It’s relentless, and has to carry the weight of 97% of the world on its shoulders.)

I could definitely do pretty much all of my photo editing on the web. The big issue is that none of the online editing applications do much with CMYK or non-screen resolutions. If they did, I’d be done with Photoshop in a minute. I live for the day.

(I complain about P-shop being bloated, but in fairness, the same thing I said about Office is true here – there are so many people who need THAT ONE feature that it has to carry the weight.

In both cases, I could easily run a local version of a web-hosted seat. Run the app offline for X days, reconnect to sync files and reinitialize the license. Subscription-based MP3 players have been doing this for a decade. (Thirty days is the typical max time you can go without getting back online to renew the license.)

The logjam there is the actual license. Having gone through a bunch of reinstalls of late, Adobe has taken a long lead in the activation annoyance race. When did they start having longer serial numbers than Msft? That is of course not the REAL problem, which is another story.

Anyway….

I used to thing that video editing would be one of the big things that wouldn’t transfer to the web. I’m obviously already wrong about that. With just a few more tweaks to existing tools, we could easily step into a world where the bulk of “offline” editing is done online, and the bulk of “online” editing is done offline! Rough cut on the web, send a link to the equivalent of an EDL, finish on a desktop system.

We’re certainly already in a world where the heaviest-duty editing and finishing is done on dedicated workstations – I’m just talking about steps in that direction that are already being taken. Editing finishing boxes will return from whence they came – very focused. You can buy a tractor with a GPS in it, but if you only need GPS, the tractor is pretty much dispensable, right?

In practice, thin clients can be a pain. But compared to the decade that it took for nonlinear editing to evolve onto desktops, those problems are being solved at a lightning pace.

The true horizon: your iTunes library. Once you can access the entire thing from every web-enabled device, NOW we’re talking.

Wait – you can do that now! Poke around. You can use Shared Folders on your main iTunes box, log in via the standard IP and folder hierarchy, and use free software like Simplifymedia to stream music and movies from your home Mac or PC into any web-enabled device (iPhone, Blackberry, high school ring).

NOW we’re talking! I love the cloud. The cloud loves me.

Yr pal,
Timmy

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

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[Ron Lindeboom]

Many of the points you make, Tim, are the very things that will drive people to the cloud and away from the ownership of software, etc. (And yes, recent court rulings have sided with the customer in “You can’t sell the software because we only licensed it to you and you do not own anything but the right to use it” cases. Autodesk was flamed by a judge for disallowing a customer to sell their software. So companies like Automatic Duck and others who also cite that kind of policy, better take note.)

But one of the things I have seen coming for a while, Tim, is the whole ASP model of serving software online. This is where companies who want to license the use and rent-by-the-hour usage of their software will get away with it — and we will let them.

Why?

Because we are getting tired of crashes, hangs, blown-out licensing credits that the customer service people at Adobe and others refuse to renew for many, saying that their credits are all used up.

Me, I think that this is one of the main reasons that we are getting the “you used to be a customer that we cared about but now you are going to need to buy a new license” — but hey, “I am NOT a pirate and the reason I am out of credits is because my OS ate my lunch and my homework, again — and didn’t allow me the grace of not exploding until AFTER i had deactivated my license credit back onto your server, again.”

We will grow increasingly tired of this and will prefer to just log-in to Apple.com or Adobe.com or Autodesk.com and use the software we want, as we want — just charge the usage to my credit card, thank you.

Google will compete with them all for free.

They are getting there.

The days when we could buy and own software and update our computers once a year or so — remember those days?#@!? — are gone.

Personally, I think it will be a lot nicer and much easier when we do not have to have software on our machines and instead, we merely use it off the cloud.

Good post, Tim. As ever, I am proud to be your friend.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[Tim Wilson]

[Ron Lindeboom] “Good post, Tim. As ever, I am proud to be your friend.”

Likewise, my man.

The peeps should know that Ron has been talking to me about the cloud for a long time, and I’ve been dragging my feet. The more I think about it, though, and the more I start to explore there, the more I find myself being swept away. Very provocative stuff.

[Tim Wilson]

The app I mention in my first post, SimplifyMedia isn’t free anymore – now $6. And while it has a desktop client, its main use is as a very cool way to connect to your desktop iTunes library via your iPhone/iPod. Worth the dough if that’s what you want it to do.

However, there’s a free alternative, using Winamp, called Winamp Remote. Mac users may well not know WinAmp – check it out. There’s a pro version that includes some features that iTunes includes for free, but has a bunch of free features that iTunes doesn’t including thousands of plug-ins, some quite wonderful.

One of the cool free features is the aforementioned Winamp Remote. It sets up incredibly fast – in less time than it will take you to read this sentence, it installed, scanned my entire drive for music, and made it available from any browser, anywhere. Seriously, you won’t believe how well and how quickly this works.

Now, the thing is, this is more about the network than the cloud. There are a number of free, cloud-based services for streaming your own media – my current favorite is at Lala.com – but you have to upload your music to it! A good idea, but not for a huge library. Still, not a bad way to load up what you really NEED to have in the cloud.

I’m rambling, but the point is that I’m keeping less and less EVERYTHING locally, or solely locally, and loving it.

tw

[Ty Ford]

Um, dumb terminals?

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ron Lindeboom]

Dumb terminals are … well, dumb.

Cloud computing and the whole concept of “truly networked computing” is far and away quite beyond what dumb terminals have been.

One of the key points Tim made helps illustrate it best: “Apple is more than happy to rule your world through devices. Netbook, thy name is iPhone, and iPod, and whatever the tablet thing is going to be called. They want to sell computers for as long as anyone is buying computers, but the real money’s in the cloud.”

Best,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ty Ford]

if ya don’t have programs on your computer because they are on/in/under the cloud, that sounds like a pretty dumb terminal to me.

If the smarts are somewhere else (cloud, network, etc.), then where you are has got to be dumb, no?

Regards,

Ty

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[Ron Lindeboom]

Yes, but the whole idea of The Cloud is far beyond what traditional dumb terminals have been up to this point.

Cloud computing is dumb terminals on steroids — hence, really dumb terminals.

Maybe like Ah-nold, the Governator, or somethin’.

Ron Lindeboom

[Ty Ford]

Ah, thanks for clearing, er, clouding that up!

Regards,

Ty Ford

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