This edition sports some familiar longtime Gangsters, including Ziff Davis Enterprise and ITBusinessEdge editor Mike Vizard and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, who promises not to agree to time limits on his next bets. Alert listeners of the old RSS-bound version of The Gang will recall Calacanis bet a sushi dinner that Google would launch its own OS. I pinned him down to one year, and unfortunately the bet was joined 3 or 4 years ago. Even if you accept the idea that ChromeOS is a real OS, then the next bet might be when Silverlight merges into the new Windows. Robert Scoble says no Silverlight Office for 5 years. I say 2 years tops.

More recent regular Kevin Marks continues to party down on the notion that HTML 5 will hit the mainstream shortly. Kevin sees Microsoft’s announced support for Silverlight video transcoded to Apple streaming format for the iPhone as a validation of HTML5, but there’s no getting around Microsoft’s aggressive use of Silverlight to push the market ahead of HMTL 5’s progress in the video area. Scoble says that’s not Silverlight on the iPhone, but if you combine the video hack with Miguel De Icaza’s Moonlight recompiling hack to iPhone primitives, it adds up to a porting path for Mac, PC, iPhone, and Android. Sounds like another sushi dinner for me. A feast of possibilities to ponder on a happy Thanksgiving Day.

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While people have been developing extensions for Chrome for a little while now, none were officially supported. But now that Google is reaching out to developers to start making these for real, we’re already hearing about some good ones. One such one was sent to us tonight by Aviary, makers of browser-based creativity tools.

Aviary’s new Chrome extension is simple, but very useful. Once you install it, it adds a little icon to the right side of the URL bar. Clicking on this icon gives you a drop down menu of options. Most give you easy access to Aviary’s suite of tools, but the first option is key. It’s the one that allows you to capture the visible portion of any web page you are on with one click. From there, the image is loaded into whichever Aviary tool you set as the default editor.

So, for example, if I use the Aviary Image Markup tool as my editor, I’ll capture the web page, and be moved into the editor in seconds. From here I can manipulate the screenshot and easily save it to Aviary. More importantly, I can save it to my desktop without having to save it to Aviary at all. This makes for one extremely fast and easy screen capture tool.

But the best part of Aviary’s extension is that it doesn’t slow down Chrome. While the actual Aviary editor takes up some of your CPU, the extension itself ads no bloat to the regular browsing experience. I actually have three extension installed right now and none are slowing Chrome (Chromium) at all. This gives me great hope.

A few notes about Aviary’s plug-in: First, it’s not available yet only because Google has yet to launch its Extension Gallery. Supposedly, that’s coming soon for end-users but for now extension support is limited to developers being able to upload their creations. Second, the extension works fine in Chrome for Windows (and I believe Linux), but to use it on the Mac you have to be using the latest build of Chromium (the newest dev build of Chrome for Mac doesn’t support it yet).

Aviary also makes a similar extension for Firefox, that has seen over 100,000 installs, we’re told. That version also features two features the Chrome extension doesn’t yet: Full page captures (not just the visible part of the page) and Flash capture support. We’re told both will be coming in an update to the extension.

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If you are a developer working on an extension, you can simply agree to Google’s terms and upload your extension to the gallery right now. One of those terms is that Google has the right to review your extension before it’s published, but they are saying they will only do that if it includes “include an NPAPI component and all content scripts that affect “file://” URLs.” Google goes on to note that “For security reasons, developers of these types of extensions will need to provide some additional information before they can post them in the gallery.” Fair enough.

As we noted a few days ago, there are already some Google-made extensions that are working in Chrome now, such as a Gmail Checker, which is handy. These were mainly made to be examples in helping walk developers through the extension creation process. You can find their documentation on that here. Google promises the whole process (both creating and updating extensions) is simple.

Extensions are important to the growth of Chrome as they are one of the most popular features of Firefox, the browser that has been able to best combat Microsoft’s Internet Explorer over the past several years. Of course, Google is the biggest backer of Firefox-maker Mozilla, so the growing rivalry between the two is interesting.

Last Thursday, Google also showed off Chrome OS, it’s operating system based on the Chrome browser, for the first time. And in the next few weeks, a beta version of Chrome for Mac is slated to launch. It’s worth noting that the test extensions already work in the dev builds of Chrome for Mac.

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Google is aiming Chrome OS right at the bottom of the market. That is to say, cheap computers, netbooks. Apple, of course, takes the opposite approach, targeting the high end of the market with their high-quality and high-margin machines. If Google is successful with its Chrome OS netbooks (let’s call them ChromeBooks), what we could see is the squeezing of Microsoft, an idea I first laid out a month ago. With attacks from the top and bottom, Windows will be relegated to the middle. And ultimately, if Google has its way, marginalized.

There are a number of problems with being in the middle. First and foremost, the middle is average, boring, bland, etc. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, unless you’re a company like Microsoft with an image problem. After years of taking hits, Microsoft is trying to revamp its image with expensive ads, new stores, and a new OS, among other things. But the middle is hard to sell. It’s neither the cheapest nor the best. It’s the thing people have to settle on.

Microsoft, of course, is also in the netbook space with Windows XP and now Windows 7. But after being a sector on fire for much of the year, signs point to a slowdown in sales. While you might think that would be bad news for both Microsoft and Google, Google’s ChromeBooks are really a new category altogether. As Google said during its event, they’re working with specific hardware manufacturers to make machines set to a certain standard. This means that they’ll have larger keyboards and trackpads than most netbooks, among other things. In other words, they’ll be better, from a hardware perspective, than most netbooks.

And they potentially serve a different purpose. A couple days ago, Daring Fireball wondered if the real key for Chrome OS (and netbooks) may be to serve as your secondary computer. But there’s really no need to wonder, Google’s VP of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, said as much during the Q&A session. “This will be a secondary device. It may be a primary device in terms of time spent on it, but we expect people to have other computers too,” he said when asked about more powerful editing software not being able to run on Chrome OS.

People aren’t buying $300 computers with the expectation of running Photoshop (which costs $700) on them. They are buying them mainly to get an extremely portable machine that can surf the web. Google’s promise with Chrome OS is the fastest way to do that.

And that’s what a lot of critics are missing (but we’ve been saying since July). Google isn’t trying to compete with a standard OS, they’re trying to help users realize that for the majority of computing they do, they don’t need one in the first place. Maybe you have a desktop computer at home for those few tasks that need dedicated native applications, and maybe that runs Windows or maybe that runs OS X. But maybe the machine that you use most of the time is your cheap, fast ChromeBook.

Though they get criticized a lot for not making a netbook, Apple also competes in this highly mobile space — their “netbook” is the iPhone. While unlike Chrome OS, the iPhone can run native applications, it speaks to a similar point: Increasingly, for most of your computing, you don’t need Windows.

The point is that consumer computing is shifting to a place where speed and mobility are paramount. The reason people are so excited about products like the CrunchPad and Apple’s tablet isn’t because they can run Photoshop — they can’t — it’s because they offer an easy way to use the Internet. Same thing with the iPhone. Same thing with Android phones. And it will be the same thing with Chrome OS and the ChromeBooks.

The difference is that these ChromeBooks will be the first devices that actually look like the traditional computers we’re used to. They will look like they could be Windows machines, but they won’t be. That’s a powerful stereotype to break. And if Google breaks that at the bottom of the market, with Apple continuing to break it at the top of the market, Microsoft will begin to feel squeezed.

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Skype CEO Josh Silverman can’t stop smiling in this video interview we recorded in Menlo Park this morning. And no wonder – despite serious legal and spinoff drama, Silverman has managed to close his multi-billion dollar spinoff of Skype from eBay. His legal troubles have evaporated. Skype is growing like a weed. And he’s managed to keep his job running the business. Life is good.

All he has to do now is manage board meetings with two of the more forceful personalities on the planet – new investor Marc Andreessen and cofounder/new investor Niklas Zennstrom.

Well, that and keep this train on the tracks. Skype has exploded to over half a billion users, and is adding 300,000 new ones every day, Silverman says in the interview. 1/3 of usage is video, despite the fact that video calls can only be 1-1. Voice calls are multi-party. And revenue is cruising along at $185 million/quarter with 24.2% margins. Up to 20 million people are using Skype at any one time.

We talk a little about Skype’s business in the interview. But most of the focus in 2010. “You’ll see Skype become a lot more ubiquitous in a lot more places, both mobile devices as well as embedded devices,” he says, adding “expect to see us on a lot more platforms.”

We also spoke about Skype as a developer platform. Extras is now long gone, but Silverman reiterated that soon Skype will push far more powerful developer tools that can turn Skype into a service. That means Skype can run outside of the Skype client. That doesn’t necessarily mean Skype in the browser, they still say Flash isn’t powerful enough to run Skype in browser. But perhaps we’ll see Skype code being build directly into browsers.

We also spoke briefly about Chrome OS. Google’s new operating system doesn’t let users install software, meaning Skype is out. Flash is the only third party plugin Google will say will be included. Things like Silverlight and Skype are in limbo unless and until Google decides to include them. Silverman ends the interview with “If the Google folks are interested in building Skype into Chrome we’d certainly be interested in having that conversation.”

I hope they do have that conversation, soon.

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I’ve been on stage, heckling participants on the marketing panel, I’ve been Tweeting from the audience, I’ve been following the live-blogging of the panels. Generally I’ve been living the real time dream – which probably explains why I haven’t done any actual work all day.

And now I’m twenty minutes away from my deadline, and I still have to read a week of TechCrunch and figure out everything that’s happened this week.

Oh, and to make matters worse, Arrington has filled my work room with dogs.

Welcome, then, to a completely – and appropriately – real-time edition of This Week On TechCrunch.

From first glance, it seems that the entire site has been outsourced to India, with both Lacy and Vivek reporting from the ground. And at one point on top of a camel. On Friday evening Sarah kicked things off with a useful primer on why ecommerce has been slow to take off  in the country, and how travel sites like MakeMyTrip.com are acting as a gateway drug to get Indians shopping online, starting with ex-pats.

Vivek went one stage bigger, asking whether India has the potential to ‘take on’ Silicon Valley. His conclusion: yes. He’s wrong of course, but it’s a fascinating discussion. As Vivek headed back to the US, Sarah headed to Delhi, and the slums made famous by Slumdog Millionaire. But what she discovered couldn’t be more different from what we saw on the big screen: surrounded by grinning children, she met NIIT, a for-profit company that’s introducing the poorest children to computers by, well, leaving kiosks lying around and letting human curiosity take its course.

Meanwhile, back in the Valley, Arrington was starting his working week with rumours that MySpace was on the verge of buying imeem; a rumour that he gleefully confirmed two days later. A million dollars in cash, with half of imeem’s 55 employees (27.5 people) moving to MySpace – and the others looking for new jobs.

Speaking of people looking for new jobs, Robin reported on AOL’s appeal for 2,500 employees to voluntarily hand in their notice as the company heads for IPO. The alternative, according to CEO Tim Armstrong? They’ll just be fired. This just a week after the company announced 1000 involuntary layoffs. Cast aside like so many unwanted sign-up discs.

Hey, but at least Don Dodge got a new job.

What else?

In real-real time presidential news, Obama admitted that he has never used Twitter, but – as MG puts it – he’s adamant that  people in China should have the right to.

In real-time celebrity news, Shakira used UStream to stream her new album to 95,000 live viewers and a further 400,000+ watching the reruns over the next 24 hours. (Incidentally this story saw Jason narrowly missing out on the Headline Of The Week award for: “Shakira’s Stats Don’t Lie“. I mean, seriously Jason? “Stats?”. The correct title of course is “Shakira’s Hits Don’t Lie”. Better luck next time.

In real-time things that I’m already bored of even though they’re not launching until at least next year news: Google previewed their new Chrome OS and rumour has it they’re on the verge of launching a new Google phone. It’s ‘very real‘ says Mike. And it may even be VoIP-only. Splendid.

Which brings us nearly to the real-time event. It’s still going on right now, so it’s too early to say what the highlights are – tune in next week, etc – but newsworthy segments include the creator of Gmail admitting that he hasn’t used Wave, an interesting discussion on how to monetize ‘real-time’ and, of course, MG’s Headline of the Week: Google And The Amazing Technicolor Search Options.

And that’s just about it. The after-party is calling, and I’m eager to talk to Scoble more about his ‘Super Tweet‘ idea. I have no idea what it is, but it sounds like the future.

Have a great week!

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First, a few caveats: we didn’t create the Chrome OS build ourselves — it was downloaded from BitTorrent. In theory it could possibly have been tweaked by some malicious hacker to steal your Google account information (this is unlikely, but who knows). There’s an easy fix if you’re worried though: just go make a throwaway Gmail account, and use that to play around with the OS. Also note that because this is running in a virtual machine, you’re probably not going to be seeing great performance (like that 7 second boot time). But it’s more than good enough to get a feel for the OS for yourself.

First, you need to get an image of Chrome OS. You can do that using this torrent. You can also try out the build that GDGT has uploaded, which worked fine in our test as well. If you get the torrent version, you’ll see it’s in a .BZ2 format. You’ll need to extract it. Macs should be able to do this automatically, but for Windows you may need a tool like Win Rar.

Once that’s done, download a version of VirtualBox for whatever OS you’re running on here and install it. After registering (or declining to) you’ll be met with a screen like this. Click the button that says “New” in the upper left hand corner. We’re going to be making a new virtual machine.:

You’ll enter a wizard like this. Hit next.

Go ahead and title the OS whatever you’d like. For the operating system, choose Linux, with Ubuntu as the version (other setups could potentially work, but this is the only one we’ve gotten working).

Choose how much memory to allocate to this virtual machine. This will be dependent on how much memory you have in your computer. The more, the better, but if you choose too much your real computer will become unstable/very slow.

Here’s the tricky part (fortunately it isn’t very tricky). You don’t want to create a new hard disk, instead, you want to use an existing hard disk. Don’t choose one from the drop down menu either — you’re going to want to hit the folder icon just to the right of that to enter the ‘virtual media manager’.

Hit the ‘Add’ button.

Now you have to find the Chrome OS image you downloaded earlier. This is probably on your desktop or in your downloads folder. Once you’ve found it, hit ‘Open’.

Hit ‘Select’ once you reach this window.

Almost there. Make sure ‘use existing hard disk’ is checked. Hit next.

Hit ‘Finish’

You’re done! Hit Start. Hopefully the screen will go black, but only for a little while (this could be anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute or so, depending on how fast your computer is).

Once you’re in, you’ll see a splash screen for ‘Chromium’ (which is what Google calls dev builds of Chrome). To login, you’ll need to enter a valid Google Account ID. Your standard Gmail account should work, but as we said before, this build of ChromeOS came from bittorrent, so you may want to use a throw away account like we did in the screenshots below (you can make one here).

You’re in. Now time to explore. To be honest, everything looks quite similar to Google’s Chrome browser, but there are a few key differences. Note the battery life indicator and options menu in the far upper right. Also try playing around with the ‘New Window’ functions — you’ll find that it’s difficult (if not impossible) to navigate between multiple windows. And be wary of the Bookmarks manager. As far as I can tell, there’s no easy way to get out of it — you’ll have to manually create a new bookmark, which will kick you back into the browser mode once you click it. Oh, and good luck finding the ’shut down’ button, because we sure can’t.

You probably won’t need it, but the shared user password for this install (which you’d need for functions like sudo) is ‘chromeos’ according to the torrent’s listing on ThePirateBay.

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Ever since Google started talking about its Google Chrome OS, developers, competitors, and observers have been wondering why Google needs two operating systems: Android and Chrome OS. At today’s chrome OS briefing, Google was asked whether Chrome OS would support Android apps. The answer is no.

Of course, as Michael pointed out during the Q&A, Steve Jobs said the same thing when he launched the iPhone without apps, and then when he was ready, it was all about the apps. But Google had a good response: they want to make web apps work well on Chrome OS and therefore will only be focusing on those. Later on Sergey Brin touched on the same theme when he said, “Call us dumb businessmen, but . . . we believe the Web platform is a much simpler way.”

Here’s the initial exchange from MG’s live notes:

Q: So Android’s marketplace is key – what about Android apps on Chrome?

SP: Currently we’re only working with web apps. The iPhone was a bit different because THEY made their own native apps. We’re not doing that, we’re doing all web apps for Chrome OS. Netbooks are a better size for web apps.

And here is what Sergey said to a different question at the end of the session:

Call us dumb businessmen, but we really focus on user needs rather than think about strategies relative to other companies and whatnot

We believe the web platform is a much simpler way, where the machines are essentially stateless, more cache-like, but can still be performant. And yet much easier and simpler for individuals to use. Since that is a very important need in the market right now, that is what we are trying to fill.

Rather than support Android apps and other sorts of apps, there is only one kind of app Google is interested in: the Web app. Chrome OS is all about making Web apps the only apps you will ever need. Which kind of makes you wonder how long we’ll need Android apps, or iPhone apps for that matter, because you know it is only a matter of time before a phone comes out running on Chrome OS.

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Check out the video below.

And here’s a video Google just posted showing off Chrome’s UI:

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Still not sure why Google is building its own operating system? It created this animated video to try to explain why the Web needs a new OS, and why that OS should be Chrome. Google just showed the video at its Chrome OS press event which MG is liveblogging.

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Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google’s Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS are speaking at the event. And there will be a Q&A session afterwards.

Below find our live notes (paraphrased):

SP: Welcome everyone. We’re here today to talk about Google Chrome OS. We aren’t launching it today and not beta today. But we’ve made progress. As of today the code will be completely open. We’re excited to announce this.

Google Chrome is foundation of everything we’re doing here. Why do Chrome. It’s been a year. We just announced we’re over 30 million users – and now we’re already over 40 million users. We focused on speed, simplicity, and security. It’s 40% faster in JS than IE8. “One is fast and one is slow.” The most common feed back we get is “Chrome is fast.”

In the last year we’ve updated Chrome about 40 times, but most users don’t even notice. And we’re really focused on HTML5. We really want to push the web forward.

Just this year there is tons of new stuff coming:

1) Chrome for Mac will be ready before the end of the year. Very close now.

2) Chrome for Linux is coming along very well. That’s the foundation of Chrome OS.

3) Extensions are coming. We’ve taken our time to do this right. We have more details coming about extensions with certain partners. These update automatically.

HTML5, we want the web to apps as well as they do natively. We’ve been working hard on this. We want web apps to be able to use system resources the same way. Graphics is one example, we need a way to access to the GPU. Audio/video playback is key. And we need apps to work offline. We’re working with the other major browser vendors to make sure HTML5 comes along.

The growth in netbooks is amazing. Growth is exploding despite the recession. Ultra thin, ultra light computers. The trend is clear that we’re moving to web applications – not desktop applications. It’s the most successful platform out there right now. We’re moving from laptops down to netbooks on the regular computer end. On the other side we’re going from phones to tablets – these are all computers. Laptops are becoming more like phones too – always on connectivity.

Is there a better model of personal computing? We believe so. That’s Chrome OS.

We focus on three things. Speed. Simplicity. Security.

We want Chrome OS to be blazingly fast, basically instant-on. Chrome (the browser) on Chrome OS is going to be much faster.

In Chrome OS every application is a web application. There are no native applications. That gives us simplicity. It’s just a browser with a few modifications. And all data is Chrome OS is in the cloud. This is key, we want all of personal computing to work this way. If you lose your machine, you just get a new one, and it works. With security, because everything is a web app, we can do different things. No system is ever fully secure. With Chrome OS no user install binaries, so we can see bad things easier. We run completely inside the browser security model.

——–DEMO———

It takes about 7 seconds to to go the log-in screen. And another 3 seconds to log in to your application. And we’re working to make that faster.

Should be no surprise that it looks like Chrome the browser. We are opening up the project a year ahead of release right now. A lot of the UI will change in that time. But many of the core concepts here will carry over into the final product.

It looks like Chrome but it has application tabs. (Just like the pictures we posted.) And there is an App Menu. The UI will change a bit, but we want to give you a way to find your favorite applications. Panels are pesistent lightweight windows that never move. Buddy lists and chat are great for this. Or a notepad. And media pops up in little windows.

Demo of a chess game being played within the browser. And you can allow it to take over the full screen so you don’t realize you’re in the browser.

And we want you to be able to read books in Chrome OS. And YouTube videos look great. And there is an all view mode (and the YouTube video is still playing. You can drag and drop tabs. “It just works.”

What happens if you plug in a camera? It simply opens a window with the camera’s files. I can pull any picture and open it in a new browser window.

Microsoft Office launched a killer-app for Chrome OS (laughs). So if you get an Excel doc, it will open in Office online.

People have many types of files with computers right? They need to get in them. Like PDFs, but these work instantly in the browser too.

———–Time for Matthew Papakipos to go under the hood of Chrome OS—————–

MP: Excited about the tech under the hood. All the code is out in the open now, you can go check it out.

We want this to feel much more like a television than a computer. All Chrome OS devices will be based on solid-state storage.

One of the reasons computers boot so slowly today is that they’re still looking for things like floppy drives. Does anyone use those anymore? No. We cut out a lot of the startup processes. And we open the browser immediately. And we have something called Verified Boot – Chrome OS auto-updates itself with all the security patches. Everytime you boot we double check that you’re running what you should be running. If something fails the cryptographic system check, we reboot to get a clean image. Basically this is system recovery.

Current OSes allow apps to have the same power as you. They can modify files, etc. This means a rogue app can do bad things. In Chrome OS all the apps are web apps, with a different security model. All apps are treated as if they are hostile at a system level. A web app can change files on your hard disk, etc.

And we have security sandboxing – same thing we do in Chrome. Every tab run in Chrome OS is locked down and different from other tabs.

The File System: It’s always auto-updated. There are a few areas of the hard disk. The root partition is read-only. This is locked down, which is unusual in OSes today. User data is always encrypted. This is key for safety of your data. So important if you lose your machine.

All user data is synced with the cloud at all times. If you lose your machine, it’s not really gone.

———Back to Sundar Pichai——-

This is all about offering a choice for users.

We’re not going to go into too much detail about going to market today. We’re working on the software right now, but we are also working with manufacturers on the hardware level. For example, we only support solid-state drives and certain types of WiFi cards.

You cannot download and install Chrome on any machine. You will have to buy a new one.

End of next year. Before the holiday season.

While netbooks are popular, but some have usability issues. We want to make slightly larger netbooks with full sized keyboards and big trackpads.

Again, the code is all open source now. The Linux kernal, Unbuntu, Moblin have all been important to what we’re doing now. We can’t wait to see what people do with our code now.

If you are a developer and have the right type of netbook (and a screwdriver) you can get Chrome OS running today.

————Video Demo Time———–

———-Q&A Time———

Q: So many questions. One is what is the focus group for this type of device? I have an Android device now – can you run Android apps on Chrome OS? And Android devices are becoming so powerful, so why not just use this – is there a Chrome server solution?

SP: There are many possibilities. What we are doing across Android is great because it’s all open-source too. I think we’re going through a shift in computing, it’s exciting. Time will tell.

Q: Do you know what this Chrome OS netbooks will cost?

SP: You will hear that from our partners. They will be in the price range that people are used to for netbooks today. But it’s hard to predict a year from now. Also remember, they will be bigger.

Q: Price target you want to hit?

SP: No we don’t have one.

Q: What netbook are you running this on right now (for the demo)?

SP: That’s an Eee PC.

Q: With the APIs support W3C working group standards? What about docs for partners?

SP: There’s a lot of documentation on our website. And we’ve been reaching out to partners for a while.

MP: For standards, yes we’re working closely with all the standards group like W3C to standardize as much as we can. But web standards take a while to be finalized. But it’d be nice to see all this on different OSes.

Q: Will there be an app store? What about driver certification? What about editing apps – like editing photos?

SP: We will have more details about the idea of an app store down the line. We care about web apps – on the web there are hundreds of millons of applications.

MP: We’re working closely with hardware makers for the drivers.

SP: Back to apps that you can’t use on the web, like powerful editing. This will be a secondary device, it may be a primary device in terms of time spent on it, but we expect people to have other computers too.

Q: Codec support and native client support?

MP: Yes, everything that works in Chrome will work in Chrome OS.

SP: And we’re investing in new tech to make web apps run just like desktop apps. Chrome OS will also influence Chrome (the browser).

Q: Will you support Silverlight?

SP: Certain select plug-ins we’re trying to work on. But I don’t have a comment on working with Microsoft (laughs).

Q: Other browsers?

SP: Chrome OS is all about Chrome, so another browser can’t really work here. That said, it’s open source, so other browser makers can make their own OSes if they want.

Q: Will the system be exclusive to netbooks or other devices too? Any hardware partners you can make?

SP: Hardware details will come in the middle of next year. We are intially fully focused on netbook-like computers (clam shell). In the future it will be able to work on anything though.

Q: How big is the whole OS?

SP: Since it’s open source, there’s a lot in there right now. But we’re working hard to make it simple.

Q: Offline access with Gears? What about being on a plane?

SP: WiFi is the use case we have in mind. But having said that, there will be ways to plug in and play media (listen to music and read books, etc) And with HTML5 there is offline support.

Q: What WiFi will you use?

MP: We’re focused on 802.11n.

Q: Virtualization, can you run it now?

MP: Sure, you could build it and run it in a virtual machine. That’s a great way to compile and debug.

Q: What about partners like Adobe? So Android’s marketplace is key – what about Android apps on Chrome?

SP: Independent of Chrome OS we’re all about moving web apps forward – including things like Photoshop on the web. Android apps currently will not run on Chrome OS.

Q (from Mike): Steve Jobs said the same thing when he launched the iPhone (about web apps). There will be pressure to get Android like apps right?

SP: Currently we’re only working with web apps. The iPhone was a bit different because THEY made their own native apps. We’re not doing that, we’re doing all web apps for Chrome OS. Netbooks are a better size for web apps.

Q: What processors will this run on?

SP: x86 and ARM eventually.

Q: So different code?

MP: Not ready to answer that, but basically yes.

Q: What about other machine timeline? What about business model?

SP: We’re just focused on netbooks in 2010. For business model, Chrome OS is free, using the web more benefits us for a company.

Q: Any new ads in Chome OS?

SP: No plans for that. These are all just web apps.

Q: What does Chrome OS do that other browsers on other OSes can’t do?

SP: Most of what we show here you can do in other browser. But there are new user concepts we’re exposing, app tabs, panels, and there will be more.

MP: We can do more stuff with the file system and faster boot times.

Q: How do you get people past the cloud reliability? And what about storing this on Google’s servers.

SP: If your cloud is down, it affects every computer now, so this isn’t really much different. Compare the cloud reliability with what you have to do – the cloud compares favorably. In terms of trust, it’s important that users have choice. And things are open so developers can tell users what is going on.

Q: Is the Signature process – is Google in charge of that?

MP: Yes, we’ll open source that as well.

———Google co-founder Sergey Brin Enters———

Q: Chrome runs JavaScript really well – what about supporting Java?

SP: Technically there is nothing limiting what you’re talking about. But we’re focused on web apps.

Q: Dell has a full laptop but also a small netbook that runs ARM and is instant-on. Any plans to be a second OS on a laptop?

MP: No we’re focused on being the core OS on a machine.

Q: What about running printers or flip cams?

SP: We plan for all standard keyboards, mice, and storage devices. For printing – we’ll have more to share next year. Yes Chrome OS will print. We’re working on it.

Q: Is this about moving the community/ecosystem forward again?

MP: Yes definitely, that’s why we’re open sourcing it. Hopefully this will help other products out there. This makes it easier to work with hardware vendors too.

Q (from Steve): Realtime notifications on every page?

SB: I think we definitely need support for that in the browser. And especially in Chrome OS. Hopefully we can solve the problem of chatting when you’re not signed in to Google.

MP: There is a new notification API standard that is being worked on now.

Q: What about Wave.

SB: Wave will work with that.

Q: What is Chrome’s strategic position for Google?

SB: We really focus on user needs rather than strategies based on other companies. Netbooks are now $300 or $400 you can buy a bunch, but there’s no good way to manage a bunch of them — that’s where the web comes in, and Chrome OS comes in.

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In a couple of hours, Google is going to share more details about its upcoming operating system Chrome OS at an event in Mountain View that will most likely be covered from start to finish by TechCrunch writers (and then some) as well as a slew of other media outlets. Jolicloud, that other OS for netbooks that is completely built for people who live and work on the Web from the ground up, has in the meantime been running fine on my own netbook for the past couple of months.

So in light of the upcoming GOOG buzz, Jolicloud founder Tariq Krim got in touch with me to share some of the things he and his team have been working on. Since the subject lies rather close to the premise of John Gruber’s great The OS Opportunity blog post, it’s worth reading that before continuation.

Done? ok.

Krim realizes full well that he’s going to have to tell a pretty compelling story to get people to pay attention to what Jolicloud is building, considering the appeal Google has in terms of branding and its history of putting stuff out there that are impressive on a technological level. Even if Google’s OS proves to be ‘good enough’, it’ll be tough for Jolicloud to compete with. But it certainly helps a lot to have a great product that’s unique in its own regards, and the Jolicloud OS is definitely worth a look if you agree that the Web is “the most important software platform in the world today”, as Gruber puts it.

Jolicloud is currently a bit of a drag to install because it involves putting the installer on a USB stick and try to get it up and running that way for every type of netbook out there. The release of Jolicloud Express, however, is going to change all that: you’ll be able to simply download the system from the startup’s website, install and run it alongside whatever else you have as OS on your netbook (usually Windows XP or 7). It will keep the Windows partition and data safe, so you can always switch back to Windows, but if you’re anything like me chances are you won’t. Jolicloud Express will be introduced at the Le Web conference in December.

Jolicloud’s Pre-Beta release, which is currently going out to testers and will be the new upgrade for all users next week, will support native resolution for Intel Atom z500-series netbooks (including the Dell Mini 10, Mini 12, the Acer Aspire One 751, Asus EeePC 1101 and many more) with the GMA500 chipset. I’d explain why that’s a rather big deal, but Jolicloud’s Adam McDaniel blogged about the how and why much more eloquently and in much more detail than I ever could. (McDaniel, by the way, is the guy who cooked up EeePC support for Ubuntu and built the Array Linux kernel.)

Biggest plus of Poulsbo (GMA 500 codename) support: compatibility with 720p HD video.

Jolicloud will be debuting something else at Le Web next month: their new HTML5 launcher that was built in collaboration with several key Mozilla developers. The main goal is to give people a way to synchronize as many netbooks as they want with their Jolicloud account, including preferences, installed apps, and so on.

The team is also constantly finetuning the user interface to give users the best possible user experience on a relatively small screen, something as a user I can only acknowledge and applaud. Among other things, Jolicloud is working on implementation of the Activity Streams standard, which essentially means social networking activity will become an integral part of the operating system rather than something bolted on top.

Also in the labs: the idea of providing a Jolicloud-powered netbook with a custom Twitter account, enabling users to converse and interact with their streams even if they’re not actually in front of their computers.

Evidently, Google Chrome OS is going to get all the buzz today, and however well-deserved it’s worth noting that there are startups already working on the next generation of operating systems that can already be installed and tested on netbooks today. Even if Jolicloud never achieves the success the Paris-based team – which is now 12 people strong – and its high-profile investors are hoping for, I think that’s admirable and worth highlighting.

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Version 2 has been beta testing for several months now, and a release candidate was unveiled a couple weeks ago. For a while, there was some concern that its release would get pushed indefinitely since the lead on it, Mike Pinkerton, also happens to be the guy helping Google build Chrome for Mac. But, “Mike is still involved in overseeing changes that land, planning features, and overall guidance for the project. While his day job may be Chromium, he continues to lead the Camino Project in his spare time,” Samuel Sidler, Camino’s team coordinator tells us.

And that spare time is apparently enough, as not only is Camino 2 here, but it’s being released ahead of even a beta version of Chrome for Mac (which should be coming in a few weeks).

Camino uses the same Gekko 1.9 rendering engine that Firefox 3 uses, which ensures that the majority of the web looks great in it. But the Camino browser maintains more of a Mac-style since it was built as Mac-only from the ground up, whereas Firefox was not. One great looking feature is the Tab Overview page, which shows a nice visual representation of the tabs you have open (pic below). Camino also has a built-in option to block web ads.

One downside of the browser is that Firefox plug-in lovers are out of luck with Camino. But I don’t consider that to be a big downside, since it keeps the browsing experience very fast. Download Camino 2 here.

So what’s new in Camino 2? Here’s a rundown:

Improved tabbed browsing

The Tab Overview feature displays a grid of thumbnails of the tabs in the current window.

Tabs can be rearranged by dragging and dropping.

Command-click now defaults to opening links in new tabs instead of new windows.

New security features

Camino now supports the Google Safe Browsing service to provide warnings about many potentially malicious websites.

Camino now displays error pages for secure web pages using invalid or untrusted certificates.

Full content zoom

Camino now has support for making the entire contents of a web page bigger or smaller.

Download notifications

If Growl is installed, Camino will generate notifications when downloads begin and finish.

On Mac OS X 10.5 and higher, Camino will bounce the downloads folder in the Dock when a download finishes.

Recently closed pages

The History menu now contains a sub-menu listing the last 20 closed web pages.

Improved support for Full Keyboard Access

When Full Keyboard Access is enabled, tabbing now moves correctly through the entire browser window.

Enhanced annoyance blocking

Camino now includes an exceptions list to allow disabling “Block Flash animations” on a per-site basis and an “Allow Flash From This Site” contextual menu item to ease adding sites to the exceptions list.

New AppleScript capabilities

AppleScripts can now obtain the HTML source or text of an entire web page or of a selection.

Added AppleScript support for setting the active tab in each browser window.

Web content support

Camino now uses version 1.9.0 of Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine, which contains thousands of bug fixes, better web plug-in compatibility and performance, enhanced support for web standards, and new technologies like JavaScript 1.8.

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Microsoft announced the availability of Silverlight 4 in beta at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) today. Some of the new features include more fluid animations, Webcam, microphone and printing support, 200 percent faster start times than Silverlight 3, deep zoom and multi-touch support and more. It now also supports Google Chrome, even though it’s just a rounding error of a browser.

One of the big capabilities of Silverlight 4 is its ability to take rich-media experiences outside the browser in client apps which will compete with Adobe AIR. The non-browser apps fully support HTML, allowing tight integration with content from the Web. It also supports notifications.

During one demo, Microsoft showed what a Silverlight version of Facebook might look like. Using Facebook’s APIs, Microsoft created a demo app which was completely reskinned, complete with news feed, contacts, and photos. Cycling through photos in the Silverlight Facebook app, for instance, was much faster than doing it in the browser. Although I’m not sure we’re oing to start to see a whole bunch of Facebook desktop apps like we do with Twitter, but the it was a good demo.

Some screenshots below of what Facebook would look like as a Silverlight app. They show a reskinned stream view, a people view, Facebook photos, and a grid view.

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Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS will be speaking at the event. And there will be a Q&A session afterwards.

As we reported a few days ago, Google had been planning to release at least part of Chrome OS this week. That still may be the case at this event, but it looks for now that the more complete launch will in fact take place next year. And if they are holding this event now with a “complete overview,” progress is clearly being made, so you can probably expect that launch to be early next year.

Google first announced Chrome OS in July, but gave very few details about it. It seemed the idea there was more to drop a nuclear bomb on Microsoft, which was just about to announce its online free version of Office. In the subsequent months, interest has remained high for Chrome OS, but about all we’ve seen is what the OS’s browser may look like.

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As you can see in the screenshot, both the Google Mail Checker and (Chromium) BuildBot Monitor are up and running in a new build of Chromium. In fact, they’re even working on the latest builds of the dev version of Chrome for Mac, which just got updated tonight as well (they weren’t working with the previous build). The one other sample extension, “Subscribe in Feed Reader” doesn’t appear to be working yet on Macs, but images posted earlier by Google Operating System indicate that this is working on Chromium builds for Windows. To find all of these sample extensions, go here.

Installing these extensions is a breeze. You click the “Install” link, the file downloads, you click to run it, it asks if you’re sure you want to install the extension, you say “yes”, and you’re done. There is no need to restart Chrome/Chromium, they work right away.

The Google Mail Checker is particularly useful since it is badged with a number to show you exactly how many unread Gmail messages you have without having to have it open. Clicking on the icon launches Gmail in a new tab. Likewise, the Chromium BuildBot lets you know if there’s a newer version to download.

Of course, there have been a number of unofficial Chrome extensions that have worked for a while with the browser (Xmarks has a good one, for example), but it’s good to see some real ones rolling out, even if they are just samples for now. More importantly, neither seem to slow down the browser at all, which has become a major problem with Firefox extensions. Hopefully they can keep it that way.

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As first spotted by DownloadSquad earlier today, Google appears to have tipped its hand a little early. In the newest builds of Chromium across all the platforms (yes, even Mac and Linux), you can clearly see the jigsaw puzzle area in the lower right hand corner. This is in the same place that the colorful stripes usually appear to take you to the Theme Gallery. But clicking on this area currently redirects you back to google.com — but as you can see when you hover over it, clearly there will be something at https://chrome.google.com/extensions, presumably an Extensions Gallery.

Next to this new jigsaw picture is a note at the bottom of the page reading: “New! Chromium now has extensions and bookmark sync.” “Extensions” links to the URL above, while “bookmark sync” links to a Google help page to show you how to use bookmark sync. Sadly, while this does appear to be working on the Windows and Linux versions of Chromium right now, it’s not yet working for the Mac.

Also note that when you go to the current extension page in Chrome (which you can find by typing chrome://extensions/ into the URL field), you will see a message that reads, “Want to browse the gallery instead?” The phrase “browse the gallery” is again linked to the still non-existant extensions page.

As you may recall, Google also tipped off its Theme Gallery a bit early on this tab page just before it launched. Chatter here by Google employees seems to suggest this Extension launch is indeed imminent. The image on the right would look to be some sort of new Chrome menu placeholder icon related to extensions.

And there’s more. Below, find some other pictures and information I was able to find in the Chromium Code Reviews area (placed by Google employees) that seem to make it very clear that Google is about to unleash extension support to rival that of Firefox. Based on what I’m reading, developers will be able to add icons to the Chrome toolbar (likely what the image above represents), add temporary icons inside the Chrome address bar (think: RSS icon), allow users to customize the extensions, and developers will apparently even be able to implement their own versions of “standard browser pages such as the New Tab page.”

From the backchannel talk, it sounds like Google will have a few of its own extensions ready to go at launch. One will have something to do with Google Maps, another will have to do with Google News, a third will allow you to automatically update builds of Chromium (much like the tool we built several months ago). But by far the most interesting is the Gmail Checker. As you can see in the image up top, it will use badging, tagging a number to the icon to let you know how many unread items you have.

The key for all of this though appears to be to show developers just how easy it is to make your own extension for Chrome. That’s what many of the images below represent, an easy “hello world” extension that can apparently be built in just a few steps. With speed no longer its strong suit, extensions are perhaps the last great feature Firefox has a stranglehold over. If Google gets it way, that could soon change.

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What can we expect? Driver support will likely be a weak point. We’ve heard at various times that Google has a legion of engineers working on the not so glamorous task of building hardware drivers. And we’ve also heard conflicting rumors that Google is mostly relying on hardware manufacturers to create those drivers. Whatever the truth, and it’s likely in between, having a robust set of functioning drivers is extremely important to Chrome OS’s success. People will want to download this to whatever computer they use and have it just work.

We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one. Google has previously said they are working with Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba on the project.

We’ve seen convincing and not so convincing screenshots of Chrome OS over the last several months. The good news is the speculation is about to end, and you can try it out yourself. If you have one of the supported devices, that is.

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We asked Google about it and here’s what they had to say, “As I’m sure you know, we generally don’t comment about timelines for releasing specific features or products. But we’ve been quoted a few times saying Chrome for mac should be out by the end of the year.” I was then pointed to an Reuters article from September that quoted Google’s Product Management Vice President, Sundar Pichai, as saying that Chrome for Mac would be released by year’s end.

So it would appear that everything is still definitely on track or Google would have simply given me a “no comment.” But you’ll notice Pichai didn’t originally specify that this would be a beta version, so I asked if it was safe to assume that it will be a beta version and not a final, stable release that will be out. “Yep, that would be a safe assumption. Kind of the same model as the Windows version — launch it in beta first then take it out of beta (upgrade to the stable channel) when it’s ready,” a Google spokesperson wrote to us in an email.

So basically, yes, a beta version of Chrome for Mac will be coming in a matter of weeks. It will drop sometime in December.

This is great news considering that after continually improving the Chromium (the open source browser behind Chrome) builds for months now, there has seemed to be some setbacks recently in terms of both performance and wonky UI elements. The situation got so bad that I stopped using the daily builds of Chromium and switched over to the actual Chrome for Mac dev version. This version has been impressively stable for a few weeks now, and it auto-updates when a new stable build is ready.

If you’re not using it yet, you should check it out. Seeing as it’s pretty much the middle of November already, it’s likely very close to what the beta build will be. The only major element that does not appear to be working right now is the bookmark manager. But when you first install Chrome, it should ask you to import your bookmarks from Safari or Firefox, and this works fine. The build numbers for Chromium and the Chrome dev builds are not far off either.

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To be clear, despite some of the wording ins its blog post, SPDY (pronounced “speedy”) isn’t about fully replacing HTTP, the standard web protocol since 1996, but it is about augmenting it, to make delivery faster. How much faster? After doing some initial internal tests with Chrome, Google claims that the top 25 websites in the world can load up to 55% faster with SPDY.

Of course, as Google notes, those tests were done in Google’s labs, likely under optimal conditions. SPDY in an average home during daily use may produce different results. But again, this protocol is still very young, so it’s entirely possible that things could get even faster. To that end, Google is asking for the development community’s help. They’ve posted some early documentation and code samples, hoping for feedback.

In the docs, Google lays out the difference between HTTP and SPDY:

SPDY is intended to be as compatible as possible with current web-based applications. This means that, from the perspective of the server business logic or application API, nothing has changed. To achieve this, all of the application request and response header semantics are preserved.  SPDY introduces a “session” which resides between the HTTP application layer and the TCP transport to regulate the flow of data. This “session” is akin to an HTTP request-response pair.

I reached out to Google just to confirm that they weren’t going to try and do something completely crazy like change the “http://” we all know and love with “spdy://”, don’t worry, they’re not. As stated above, SPDY will create a session of sorts that resides between HTTP and the data transportation.

What will be interesting about this protocol is if it’s optimized for Chrome over the other web browsers. It would seem Google wouldn’t do that, since its ultimate goal is to have people using the web through any means as quickly as they can (so as best to serve their ads more often). But when you’re developing both a protocol and a browser, it seems likely that Google will have an advantage to offer the best experience.

A few startups are also working on ways to deliver web content faster. One, FasterWeb, which we covered in July, is hoping to improve web surfing speeds tenfold next year. Their approach is different, optimizing content on the provider or ISP end.

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The New York Times Company is considering the launch of a brand new online news reader that would let people experience the consumption of NYTimes.com content in an entirely new and fairly innovative way. The publisher has reached out to members of its Insight Lab to get some rudimentary feedback on the new reader prototype and to help settle the naming issue.

Insight Labs members can test out the new prototype on a live website, which means you can, too. All you need to do is head over to this web page and you’ll be able to play around with the ‘newview’ as well.

One of the names the NYT is considering for the new online reader is Article Skimmer, which is the same name that was given to a prototype product the publisher threw out there some time ago. But the new reader linked above boasts more features than the Article Skimmer that’s currently featured on First Look, which is basically a showcase for new NYTimes.com features and services.

This could be a sign that the company considers graduating the Article Skimmer experiment to a full-fledged mass product and giving it a new name for the occasion. Some other names it is suggesting in the survey: Grid View, Times View, Easy View, Broadsheet and Easy Reader.

(click for larger size)

Here’s how the NYT describes the new reader prototype:

NYTimes.com is launching a new online feature that offers the experience of reading a newspaper spread out on a table, allowing readers to more easily browse through headlines and discover stories deep within a section. Each section of the Web site is organized in an easy-to-read grid displaying the headlines and short summaries of each story. Full articles are one click away and keyboard short cuts provide easy navigation from section to section. Readers can select from among eight different skins to display content in the way that best meets their interests and needs.

Some of the themes (or skins) are fascinating. One called ‘Flows’ displays headlines, a short summary and the author of the article in a single, continuous stream of text, while another (’Blackout’) reminds me a lot of the TweetDeck design (see screenshot on top).

Evidently, there’s some place reserved for advertising units inside news content.

The keyboard shortcuts – which are mostly meant for navigation – are fairly useful, although not all of them worked flawlessly in my limited testing in both Firefox and Chrome. What’s more interesting is the fact that you can customize the content in your reader much more easily than on the regular NYtimes.com website, giving you the opportunity to filter what you see based on section, blogs, and topic. Surprisingly, there’s no option to display only articles from a specific writer.

Your thoughts on the new reader prototype?

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The main selling point of the browser is still intact: Lunascape users can instantly switch between Firefox, IE or Safari/Chrome mode by right-clicking tabs or by clicking on the engine switcher button on the bottom left of the screen.

The browser should come in handy for web developers and designers who have to test sites for browser compatibility or for those people who aren’t satisfied with either one of the five big browsers (in case there are any). But the Lunascape developers say they aim at establishing a “Unified Browsing Platform” for everyone. Their ultimate goal is to help general web users overcome the hassles they encounter when using IE at work and Firefox at home, for example (different UIs, bookmarks, settings, add-ons etc.).

Screenshot: Triple engine selection

But what’s new in Lunascape 6.0?
Probably the biggest change in comparison to version 5 is that in addition to IE and Lunascape-specific add-ons, Lunascape now supports Firefox add-ons, too. The browser still doesn’t work with Chrome or Safari plug-ins, but Firefox add-on support was the most requested feature coming from users in the past year. And a new wizard makes it possible to transfer all of your add-ons from Firefox 3.5 to Lunascape 6.0 automatically if you’re so inclined.

Screenshot: Firefox add-on in Lunascape 6.0 browser

Users can now operate tabs in any kind of window split view, meaning you can compare any given web page rendered by the three different engines side-by-side in one browser window (vertical, horizontal, thumbnail, cascade). This makes a lot of sense and should actually have been included in the previous version already.

Screenshot: Multi-view tab display

Some smaller revisions include a new extra-minimalist interface available that does away with a lot of the clutter of Lunascape ’s previous version and a revamped “floating” sidebar that can display a number of dedicated add-ons (i.e. a minimap).

I’ve tested Lunascape 6.0 for a few days now, and the browser is still a little buggy but pretty stable for a beta release. Granted, the changes from version 5 aren’t huge, but especially the Firefox add-on support and the new design and interface should make Lunascape 6.0 worth taking for a spin. The race for the ultimate browser continues.

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