7 Days in News (14-11-2012)

1. The new Acer Chromebook
Creating a better, simpler computer and making it available for everyone is at the core of the Chromebook vision. It’s exciting to see people using Chromebooks as the perfect additional computer in the home, and we continue to work with our partners to make them easy-to-use and more affordable. Today, we’re delighted that our partner Acer is introducing a new addition to the Chromebook family: the new Acer C7 Chromebook.


The new Acer C7 Chromebook delivers a hassle-free computing experience with speed, built-in security and the simplicity of automatic updates. It features a full-size keyboard, fully clickable trackpad, an extra bright 11.6-inch display and over 3.5 hours of battery life. Powered by an Intel Core processor, the Acer Chromebook is fast—boots up in 18 seconds, resumes instantly and high-definition videos play smoothly (yes, videos like Gangnam Style in 1080p, in case you’re one of the few left who hasn’t seen it). You can easily store your stuff on the Chromebook or in the cloud, with a 320GB hard drive and 100GB of free storage on Google Drive.*

As you’d expect from a Chromebook, it’s easy to share with others around the home. Moms, dads, siblings or even your roommate can all have separate accounts and simply log in to get things done. And because Chromebooks bring you the best of Google, if you use products like Gmail, Drive, Maps, YouTube and Google+, your stuff is always available and everything just works.

Starting tomorrow, the Acer Chromebook will be available for $199 in the U.S. on Google Play, BestBuy.com and rolling out this week in select Best Buy stores. In the U.K., it’s available on Google Play, Amazon UK, PC World and Currys. We’re working hard to bring it to more countries soon.

Together with Acer, it’s great to welcome the newest addition to the Chromebook family. We hope it will make a great additional computer for your family, too. New Chromebooks, for everyone.

2. JAM with Chrome: Play music live with your friends online
If you ever dreamed of playing in a band, now’s your chance to be a rock star. JAM with Chrome is an interactive web application that enables friends in different locations to play music together in the Chrome browser on their computers. No matter what your level of talent—from daydreaming air guitarist to music pro—you can JAM together in real time over the web.

When you enter the site, you can choose from a selection of 19 different instruments, from acoustic and bass guitars to drum kits and keyboards. Once you get playing, you can switch instruments as often and as many times as you like.

In the default “easy mode” you can experiment by clicking individual strings, drum pads or keys, or you can play around with the four different autoplay functions and let the machines do the work. Switch to “pro mode” to play any instrument using your keyboard.

Invite up to three friends in different locations to join your JAM via the sharing buttons on the site. Here’s “Keyboard Cat” jamming with his friends:



JAM with Chrome is a Chrome Experiment that uses the latest modern web technologies, including HTML5 features such as the Web Audio API, Websockets, Canvas and CSS3. For more detailed information on the technologies used, check out the technology link in the app.

3. Nokia's Mapping A-Team to Challenge Google, Apple
Nokia on Tuesday introduced a revamped maps application, Here, that will be available across several platforms and could compete with Google and Apple maps. The cloud-based maps application will feature LiveSight technology that offers worldwide 3D views, voice-guided navigation tours, and driving directions including traffic notices for more than 500 cities. In addition to introducing the service to Windows Phone, it also will release free apps for Android and iPhone users.

4. Tooling Around With Windows 8
My first impression of the bargain-basement $39.99 Windows OS upgrade: To all outward appearances, Windows 8 is a vivid, visual, deeply rewarding and aesthetically pleasing skin to the 2009-released Windows 7 PC desktop OS. Big deal, you might say. However, digging in a bit, I found that this rather beautiful desktop isn't just a revamp of Windows 95 and later incarnations, with their ever-proliferating static shortcut icons. The icons in Windows 8 are live.

5. Ubuntu 12.10: Unity Just Sort of Grows on You
The recent release of Ubuntu 12.10, aka Quantal Quetzal, is a more palatable version of the open source OS built around the Unity desktop environment. Perhaps I am growing more accustomed to Unity, or maybe Canonical's developers are succeeding in refining the graphical user interface, so it seems less objectionable for me to use. In my view, the switch to the Ubuntu-specific Unity shell has not been Canonical's finest hour. It did succeed in pushing me as a long-time user to other Linux distros. More times than not, when I return to Ubuntu, I run the KDE interface.

6. Gmail Introduces Easier Ways to Search for Large Attachments and Old Messages
Last week we mentioned that you can search Gmail based on message size, which is great for finding attachments that take up too much space in your inbox. Gmail just boosted those features to make size searches easier and more specific. More »

7. Apple Finally Rolls Out iOS 6 Turn-By-Turn Navigation In Australia


FINALLY. After a few delays, protracted negotiations, then more delays, Apple has today finally rolled out iOS 6 turn-by-turn navigation to Aussies.

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