A new “Image Burner” page has been added to Chrome OS to help users getting a USB drive ready for recovery mode. The installer will do the following:

1. Prompt the user to choose a target storage device to use as the RSD.
2. Verify the storage device is large enough.
3. Download the appropriate recovery software (recovery kernel + recovery root filesystem) and save it to the RSD.
4. Download the appropriate recovery data (Chromium OS firmware + kernel + rootfs + recovery configuration data) and save it to the RSD.
5. Prompt the user to remove the storage device and plug it into the netbook.

6. 

   Chrome OS ImageBurner

The page links you to the recovery mode information on Chromium Code. Have a look here for more information. I will have this page updated as soon as I get to play with this.

Handler Settings Page

Another addition to the browser and the OS last week was the new settings page for custom handlers. With this new setting, you will be able to explicitly say to your OS to handle a specific protocol and mimetype with Chrome. This will be helpful for developers and users as well. Follow the discussion here for more info.

Handler Settings

Handler Settings

CR48 or Chromebook User ? Try This One !

This works only on Chromebooks and Cr48s, “Master Your Touchpad” Let me know how this works. I couldn’t try this because I am on a PC.

Did you find any interesting stuff recently ?

Thanks http://peter.sh and François Beaufort.

I thought Nokia will slowly drop Symbian because they have a deal with Microsoft now for Windows 7 phones, but to my surprise, they dropped a beta version of “Chrome To Phone” plugin called “Nokia Drop” today.  It has almost the same functionality as android or iPhone.

Changing Phone’s Wallpaper From Chrome ?

Yes, yes, sound cool, I know !

I loved the idea of changing the phone’s wallpaper remotely from your computer, to an image that you saw on your computer browser. Well, that sounds truly awesome !! I have had so many situations where I wanted to change my phone’s wallpaper to the image I found on flickr. Hmm someone knows about such functionality in Android ? help !

Supported Phones

Nokia Drop is compatible with S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 devices. Nokia Drop has been tested to work with X6-00, 5228, 5230, 5235 Ovi Music Unlimited, 5530 Exp Music, C6-00, N97, N97 mini, N8-00, C6-01, C7-00, E7-00, 5233, c5-03, 5800 (PR4+)

Download the Application and Extension from here.

via thenextweb

New Tab Redeisgn Chrome

Remember the Chrome OS Tablet concept from the official Chromium OS portal ? Cr48 is going the direction Google wanted, and news about commercial Chrome OS computers are here, perfect time for to look back at the tablet concept and concentrate more on it ?

Looks like it is.

Chromium pages recently saw a new design for the “New Tab Page” which might be a sign of Google’s plans to improve the tablet friendliness of Chrome and may be even a Chrome OS tablet too. The redesigned new tab page will behave like the iPad or android tablet menu while sliding from one page to the other.

I am guessing that the plan is to replace the current option to switch between recently closed, apps and most visited items with a tablet like UI. However, things are yet to take shape. I will watch this closely and bring you more updates soon !

But wait, there is something more to this tablet story, there is a new user-agent string showing up on Chromium Code which shows the use of a Chrome OS Touch device.

for TOUCH_UI builds of ChromeOS. This lets websites that are already customizing for tablet experiences easily adapt to support tablet ChromeOS devices.

In particular, this will result in UA strings like the following:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS Touch x86_64 10.4.0) AppleWebKit/534.24 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/11.0.692.0 Safari/534.24

So, do you think Google will produce a reference hardware like CR48 for Chrome OS Tablets to show everyone how they want the tablet to look like ?

Will Chrome OS succeed on a tablet as much as it is on a netbook or a notebook ?

via Google System and Peter.Sh

Google had promised us some commercial Chrome OS devices in Mid 2011. The time is almost here and we have started seeing more and more rumors of Chrome OS devices. Latest is Sony Vaio notebook with Chrome OS.

Rumored Specs

• Nvidia Tegra 2 (250) platform
• 11.6″ (1366×768) LCD display
• 1 GB of Memory
• 16 GB eMMC memory card
• Ultra-low power GeForce GPU
• Wireless WAN
• Wide Keyboard (18mm), similar to that of the Google Chrome Cr-48 laptop
• Dimensions: around 19.9 mm thick; 298 mm wide and 215 mm deep
• Bluetooth and GPS to be enabled later
• Around 2.2 lb (1kg)
• 8 hour battery life

Looks like Chrome OS fans are going to have some good choices in the  for laptops sometime in mid 2011 when Chrome OS is out. Do you remember reading about Asus’s Chrome OS netbook plans ?

via sonyinsider and cloudhighclub.com

ps: sorry for the delay in updating this !! I was travelling last weekend was completely offline !

Asus Chrome OS

Asus, the company which made netbooks popular is getting ready for something bigger now. After taking a hit from the growing smartphone and tablet PCs, its time for them to re-think their netbook business model.

Digitimes, is reporting that they are planning to bring the prices down to $200, and take advantage of either Android 3.0 or Chrome OS.

Affected by tablet PCs, a 10-inch single-core Atom netbook with a price below US$280 has already appeared in the retail channel, while dual-core models’ ASPs are only at around NT$12,000 (US$405), and as more tablet PCs are set to launch in the near future, market watchers are conservative about netbook’s future.

However, as Asustek will launch a model with a price of US$200-250, it should help the company avoid direct competition from tablet PCs, which are priced at around US$299-499.

The sources believe that Asustek’s new netbook should either adopt Google’s Android 3.0 or Chrome OS in order to achieve such a price level, and the new model is expected to attract consumers who only need to perform office work and Internet browsing.

Now, Chrome OS or Android for a netbook, may be a confusing question for Asus, Android is already popular and used on all kinds of devices. Chrome OS is still a baby, and things are not so stable out there.

However, Google has clear plans for Chrome OS and Android. They have made it clear that Chrome OS will initially ship on Netbooks or Notebooks. Or, as their ex CEO said, Android is for devices with a touchscreen, and Chrome OS for devices with keyboard.

Google is getting ready for world domination with Chrome OS, they have Acer and Samsung with us ( if things succeed, everyone else will join, we know what happened with Android ) so, having Asus, a leader in Netbooks on their side will do only good things for them. I think they will convince Asus about the netbook way.

What do you think ?

via Engadget

I remember watching videos about Flipboard App for iPad and thinking that I may buy iPad only because of this app. Flipboard presents content of your social media network in a magazine like format and it looked really cool.

Layers App

Is there something similar for Chrome ?

Layers is something close to this experience. Even though I didn’t find it so polished, Layers does things pretty neat. If they had created a magazine format instead of that scrolling bar kind of UI, I would’ve loved it much more.

But still, Layers is a going to give you a totally different experience consuming the content from your facebook and twitter friends. It also has options to post messages to Facebook and Twitter and also share content while browsing in the Layers style.

Try this app from here and let me know your thoughts !

Scribble is an interesting note taking app for Chrome, and that works offline too. The first thing you notice after installing is this, there is no save button ! I was confused, I asked the developer and he said, the app saves your note character by character.Yes, the note gets saved with every keystroke.

Who is the best person to tell you about the app ? Developers, right ? So here is Kishore NC from wreally.com talking about his app, Scribble.  Thank you Kishore and Jason !

Scribble App

Scribble was borne out of a personal frustration. Despite trying multiple to-do list applications, I realized that I was often going back to the world of .txt files (using Notepad or TextEdit) to jot down stuff and externalizing random things off the top of my head. This also meant that I often had multiple text files being scattered on my desktop. I wanted the best of both worlds – some kind of system which offered me the simplicity and flexibility of text files, and the order and control of GTD applications.

If you have a habit of saving .txt files to your desktop as reminders, notes, thoughts and random ideas – Scribble is for you. You can now manage all those notes in one place – clutter free. Scribble allows you to be organised without enforcing itself on you.

With Scribble, you can:

- Take down notes quickly without scrambling to store them in text files
- Write peacefully – letter by letter auto-save
- Attach reminders (desktop notifications) to specific notes
- Drag, drop and arrange the notes however you want
- Store todo lists, grocery items, phone numbers, email templates
- Access your notes even when you are offline – yours notes are stored locally

Since the launch of the Chrome webstore more than 1,500 users have installed Scribble, and looking from the reviews we have been getting – a lot many of them love it.

I urge you to give it a try, and let us know what you think: Get It Here

The Cloud War is on. Google Chrome + Google Docs now gives you offline support too. One more reason to bring your life to the cloud. Here is the official note from the Google docs blog.

In addition, at the event today, we were excited to demonstrate a feature that we expect to deliver early in 2011 — the return of offline support for Google Docs. For those who used offline, we are bringing back the much improved feature by taking advantage of advancements in modern browser technology like HTML5.

Together, the web app plus the upcoming offline feature will make it even easier to access your docs everywhere you are.

Install the Free App Here.

Quick Launch

You can not have your most visited thumbnails and apps thumbnails at the same time on new tab page. I said thumbnails, because you will always have most visited and apps as links, even if you minimize one of the two.

I kind of start missing my most visited thumbnails after started using apps on the new tab page.

May be you also felt the same, and may be this Googler felt the same, and he created a Chrome Extension that lets you launch apps from your toolbar.

Click on the GO icon added by this extension and it will give you your apps in a list. Launch them from there !

Would you like to test this ? Grab the extension from here and let me know if you liked it. I started using this !!

James complaints that I ignored Chrome Web App store and Web Apps completely. I have admit that. I got carried away with Chrome OS and CR48 Chrome Notebook.

I am sure that you all read about Chrome Web App Store already. So I thought its better to give you something with a little different. So, here is 7 Chrome Web Apps with offline support. Btw, Google Docs too will soon get offline access with a Chrome Web App.

The New York Times App for the Chrome Web Store

NYT App

This was one of the featured apps during the launch. People from NYT introduced their app. The NYTimes app for the Chrome Web Store is a sophisticated HTML5 application that leverages advanced browser features to deliver a unique and compelling reading experience that can be read online or offline, says developers.

Install It from here.

Google Calender

Google Calender App

No introduction required here. Google Calender app from Google. This works offline too. With offline access, you can view a read-only version of your calendar no matter where you are.

Install It From Here

Ajax Animator – Free Simple Animations From The Browser

A html5 powered web-based animation suite. Its original goal was to be a usable Flash IDE alternative, but has evolved into a cross-platform/cross-format animation tool. Works offline.

Get It Here

Fiabee

Fiabee

Access, share and search across all files contained in your devices, even offline. And drop files into your Android from Chrome!

Get It Here

NotePub

A easy note taking app that works offline too. Install it fro here.

Solve a Cipher – With 3000 puzzle possibilities.

Test your wits with these cipher puzzles! Learn to break ciphers. Over 3000 puzzle possibilities.  Free, from the American Cryptogram Association. Get it from here.

Salon for Chrome

Offers an easy-to-browse chronological view of Salon’s award-winning coverage of news, politics and popular culture. Install it from here

Graphic.ly Comics

Comic app

The Google Chrome edition of Graphic.ly provides an immersive reading experience and marketplace around digital comics optimized for the browser. With over 700 comic book titles, the Graphic.ly Chrome app allows new users to quickly get into reading without registering or signing in. Previews are available for all non-free content titles and offline reading is fully supported in fullscreen mode for any book a user owns

Do you have more apps you use / love / made ? Let me know !