Google Announces Chrome Operating System

In its most direct assault on Microsoft yet, Google on Tuesday evening announced the forthcoming release of the Google Chrome Operating System, a new open source operating system designed primarily for netbooks but also for desktop computers.Chrome OS is Google’s second operating system, after Android, the mobile device operating system that the company introduced in late 2008. That’s also about the time when Google introduced its Chrome Web browser. Chrome OS is an extension of Google’s browser code.

Though there’s some overlap between the two operating systems, Google says that choice drives innovation and benefits everyone. An apparent distinction between Chrome OS and Android is that the latter operating system is designed to work on devices like mobile phones and set-top boxes that deny users access to certain resources. Further distinctions between the two Google operating systems may emerge once the Chrome OS license is published.Chrome OS will introduce a new windowing system, presumably along the lines of GNOME or KDE, atop the Linux kernel. In a blog post, Sundar Pichai, VP of product management and engineering director Linus Upson explained, “All Web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite Web technologies.”

Chrome OS will run on x86 and ARM chips. Google says that it is working with several hardware manufacturers to deliver netbooks running Chrome OS in the second half of 2010.

Along with the mobile phone market, the netbook market is growing rapidly, in contrast to the desktop PC market. Last month, iSuppli reported that PC shipments in the first quarter of 2009 fell 23% compared with the same period in 2008, while netbook shipments grew 10% during the same time frame. Last November, IDC predicted that 42.2 million netbooks would be sold in 2012, almost four times as many as in 2008.

Microsoft expects to ship some version of Windows on most of these devices; the desktop versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 tend to demand more computing power than most netbooks can provide. Brad Brooks, the company’s corporate VP for Windows consumer product marketing, said in February that since February 2008, the share of Windows OS on netbooks had risen from 10% to 80% a year later. The gain represents the result of a concerted effort by Microsoft to counter the spread of Linux-based netbooks.Google’s Chrome OS announcement can be seen as a response to Microsoft’s netbook campaign. And its justification for introducing Chrome OS highlights a longtime sore point for Windows users, namely long startup times. “We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better,” said Pichai and Upson. “People want to get to their e-mail instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them.”

Pichai and Upson also indicated that Chrome OS will include a variety of cloud-based services to make life easier for users, like automatic backups and software updates. The days of shrink-wrapped software sold on store shelves are numbered.In April, Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering at Google, declared, “the Web has won.” Now the fight has moved to the desktop.

Facebook Fan Page Tips

Every Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand as they would a friend or family member.

Facebook is a platform for communication. Although many users have joined brand pages advocating various messages, the average Facebook user doesn’t want content pushed to them, particularly contests or other promotional programs that don’t speak to their overall enthusiasm for a brand. These types of promotions can be supported on the Facebook Fan Page, but should not be the primary focus and should be housed in other digital arenas.

Successful communities on Facebook offer an attitude of openness, transparency and enthusiasm – not a technology platform for advertising.

The following outlines 3 fan types  who participate in Facebook’s “Fan Pages”.

#1 The Enthusiast: Representing the greatest number (85-90%) of participants, the Brand Enthusiast is simply a person who wants the Facebook equivalent of a “bumper sticker” on their profile. Since they make up the bulk of the community, attracting them to join is a very important objective. They are enthusiasts of a brand and they want the world to know it.  It’s wise to encourage this consumer to participate more in the group, but be careful not to over “spam” them because it’s just as easy to leave a page as it is to join. A bulky enthusiast population promotes community vitality.

#2 The Advocate: The next largest group (5-10%) of participants represents the people who will continually update content on the page by simple “acknowledgements”. These people consume the content and post messages on the wall, provide feedback on message boards and comment on content. It’s important that you give as many places for the Advocate to participate as possible. The reason this is so important is twofold:

• The more participation you initiate from a Brand Advocate, the more vibrant the community becomes. They feed the “ego” of the person who provided the original content (Brand Influencer), and often encourages them to produce more content.

• Every time a person participates in any way on the Page, their personal “news feed” broadcasts their action, thereby promoting the brand to their entire network.

#3 The Influencer: Representing the smallest group is the Brand Influencer at about 1%. This active community member provides all the advocacy and enthusiasm of the other group members, but is also active in original content creation. These “uploaders” are very important in the long-term health of the community.

Many companies make the mistake of assuming the primary role of Brand Influencer in their community over the long term. It’s important to assume this role to establish momentum, but over time, if no brand influencers self-identify and no user-generated content is contributed, the community will begin to suffer credibility issues and lose its vibrancy.

IPhone Upgrade from 3G to 3GS?

Planning on upgrading from an iPhone 3G to the new 3G S? You’d better have deep pockets, as AT&T and Apple may charge you $499 to upgrade.  That’s for the 32GB model; if you want to save a few bucks and go for the cheaper 16GB model, it will cost $399. These figures come from Apple’s own site, where you can now pre-order an iPhone 3G S ready for delivery on the 19th of June. Although Apple mentioned a $199 and $299 price for the new iPhone, the cost for upgraders is significantly higher; when we applied for an upgrade from a iPhone 3G purchased in 2008, the system quoted us a price of $399 for the 16GB version or $499 for the 32GB, plus an $18 upgrade fee.

The more expensive upgrade is because the account I tried this with had the 2-year term of the contract renewed when I upgraded to an iPhone 3G in 2008; AT&T does not offer reduced upgrade pricing until the initial 2 years are up. The only people who qualify for the advertised $199/$299 pricing are new customers, or those who have not upgraded their phone for more than 2 years.So, those who upgraded when the iPhone 3G was released last year will either have to wait until 2010, or pay through the nose to be on the cutting edge.

UPDATE: it seems that there may be some leniancy in the 2-year rule: when applied for the upgrade with a 1st Generation iPhone where the contract had a couple of months still to run, Apple offered the $199/$299 price. So, it looks like 1st Gen iPhones may get a break, but 3G users will have to pay the full cost.

iPhone 3GS News, Updated MacBook Pros

Apple announces its third generation iPhone and some MacBook Pro updates

There has been tremendous buzz surrounding the follow-up to Apple’s hugely successful iPhone 3G. While the original iPhone put Apple on the map in the world of smartphones, it was the iPhone 3G’s lower price of entry and enhanced features/speed which put the smartphone over the top (and brought AT&T a wealth of new wireless subscribers). Together, there have been over 40 million iPhones and iPod touches sold around the world according to Apple.

Today at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Apple introduced its third generation iPhone: the iPhone 3GS (the “S” stands for Speed). The latest iPhone confirms most of the rumors that have been swirling around for the past few months.

The iPhone 3GS is available in capacities of 16GB and 32GB – both will be available in black and white. The phone also features a new 3MP webcam (now capable of recording 30 fps video) on the back of the device. The iPhone 3GS also has the ability to edit videos directly on the device.

In addition, the new iPhone 3GS promises better battery life (see image to the right) despite the increased processing power. Speaking of processing power, Apple brags about 2x to 3.6x speed performance improvements over a wide range of apps.

Another new addition to the iPhone 3GS is the increase in data transfer speeds from 3.6Mbps to 7.2Mbps HSDPA. AG&T already announced plans to beef up its data networks to handle the faster transfer speeds.

Voice dialing is also coming to the iPhone 3GS – something that most other phones have already had for years. However, the voice commands also extend to other aspects of the iPhone 3GS like “previous track”, “play album” or “play songs by The Killers” within the Music app.

Other new hardware features include a built-in digital compass, Nike+ support, and hardware encryption.

As you may have already surmised, the iPhone 3GS is sporting OS 3.0 which was announced way back in March. IPhone OS 3.0 brings a wealth of new features including long-requested support for copy and paste, MMS, turn-by-turn directions, voice memo recording, Spotlight search, landscape email/notes/messaging, 3G tethering (via Bluetooth or USB), stereo Bluetooth (A2DP), peer-to-peer Bluetooth connectivity, and more. IPhone OS 3.0 will be available to download on June 17 (free for iPhone users, $9.95 for iPod touch users).

As expected, pricing for the new 16GB and 32GB iPhone 3GS will mirror the prices of the current 8GB and 16GB iPhone 3Gs: $199 and $299 respectively. To make things even more interesting, Apple is also discounting the price of the iPhone 3G (8GB model) to $99 to further expand its user base — the new price is effective today. The iPhone 3GS will be available June 17.

Apple also announced updates to its MacBook Pro lineup. The new 15” MacBook Pro is available with up to 3.06GHz dual core processor, 8GB of RAM, and up to a 500GB HDD (or 256GB SSD). It features a 7-hour runtime with its built-in battery. Interestingly, Apple has finally stepped into modern times by equipping the 15″ MacBook Pro with a Secure Digital (SD) slot.

The base system will retail for $1,699 with a 2.53GHz processor and integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, and ramp up quickly from there (with higher-tier models getting discrete NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics).

The 13″ aluminum MacBook was also updated to include an integrated battery, SD slot, and Firewire 800 — it is also now called a MacBook Pro. The base $1,199 system comes with 2GB of memory, a 2.26GHz processor, GeForce 9400M graphics, and a 160GB HDD. Stepping up to a 2.53GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 250GB HDD will set you back $1,499. The new 13″ MacBook Pro also has battery life of up to 7 hours.

The other big addition is with the updated MacBook Air. The machine now retails for $1,499 in its base configuration (1.86GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 9400M, 120GB HDD) and $1,799 with a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 9400M, and a 128GB SSD.

All of the new MacBooks are available to purchase today.

I’ll post more info to Twitter, as it becomes available – twitter.com/stevenRobert

Midwest Technology Leaders Symposium

The 2009 #MTL is June 3rd, at the MGM Grand Detroit from 7:30am to 6:30 pm, with an MTL awards cocktail reception (open to the public) from 5:30 to 9pm. More information can be found at the MTL website: http://www.midwesttechnologyleaders.com/ and an agenda for the event here: http://www.midwesttechnologyleaders.com/agenda.html – I’m planning to attend the event in full tomorrow, and will try to post some updates throughout the day via Twitter with a blog recap to follow.

I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the 2009 Midwest Technology Leadership mentorship program earlier this year, and have been paired with Mike Thibideau, CIO of Webasto Roof Systems, Inc.  Special thanks to Barry Demp, Danielle DeLonge, Michelle Pallas and Tracy-Ann Palmer for all their hard work making the program such a success!

About Midwest Technology Leaders (MTL)

Midwest Technology Leaders (MTL) 2009 is an exclusive gathering of the Great Lakes Region’s top Information Executives who are committed to innovation, excellence and results. Unrivaled in its quality content and strategic focus, MTL 2009 will provide all delegates the opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom through engaging in highly-interactive executive sessions with their senior peers. Through a compilation of keynote presentations, panel discussions, roundtables and executive networking assemblages, the delegation will address the critical issues impacting the local/regional IT industry, including economic policies and business developments, in addition to an in-depth analysis of the future outlook of the national/international IT industry.

MTL is comprised exclusively of the information leaders driving the Great Lakes economies. It is a non-political, cross-industry sponsored, annual event providing a platform to celebrate the achievements of this technology community.

Together, this group will discover innovative approaches for surmounting considerable IT challenges.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit – May Preview

Overview

The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 features and a variety of framework technologies including:

• C# 4.0
• Visual Basic 10
• F#
• Parallel Extensions
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Windows Workflow
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• ASP.NET 4
• Entity Framework
• ADO.NET Data Services
• Managed Extensibility Framework
• Visual Studio Team System

This version of the Training Kit works with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1.

You can download the training kit here: http://tinyurl.com/86g5od

Eminem’s Letter to Detroit

This originally aired on CBS in Detroit, back in April 2009 when the Final Four was in Detroit.  A lot of people never saw it and thought I’d share..

Apple OS Marketshare Growth

Apple Marketshare growth

The latest computing survey results from the University of Virginia’s freshman class show evidence of continued Apple marketshare growth in the higher education market (via Daring Fireball). The chart above shows that Apple has made steady gains since 2003 in the percentage of incoming UVA freshman who own a Mac. The latest year (2008) shows that 37% of incoming students owned a Mac while the percentage owning a Windows computer had shrunk to 62% from a peak of 96% in 2001. The growth tracks closely with the trend towards laptop ownership amongst the Virginia freshman.

In 2008, 99% of the incoming students owned a laptop. The data adds to a number of anecdotal reports that Apple has been making major strides in higher educational marketshare. Last year, Tim Cook confirmed that Apple had become the #1 laptop supplier in higher education for 2007.

Windows 2008 Cluster says goodbye to Parallel SCSI

Late last year we began formally migrating over to Windows 2008, specifically addressing single points of failure.  In our production data center we’ve recently deployed a fibre channel SAN, whereas Windows 2008 clusters have played very nicely, enabling our SQL instances to benefit from a more robust storage subsystem.

Tonight however, I began migrating a slightly older system, HP DL560s with an HP Modular Storage Array 500.  After a brief six hours, tracking down updated drivers, firmware and iLOs + controller and array config utilities, I happen to find out Windows 2008 has dropped support for Parallel SCSI, in support for iSCSI, SAS and of course fibre channel.  More info can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/947710 

Therefore, if you’ve got legacy Direct Attached Storage (DAS) SCSI Arrays in use, they WILL NOT migrate to Windows 2008 clusters!  So now I must revert back to W2k3 R2 SP2 – which still provides support for Parallel SCSI.  Too bad, have really enjoyed my experience with W2K8 boxes of late, but it looks like W2K3 will have to live on for a while longer..

Four Stages of Twitter Adoption

Twitter can be an invaluable tool for business networking, but most new users don’t get it at first. Learn why in this look at the four stages that the average Twitter user traverses on the path from newbie to devotee. [Originally posted by Jason Hiner here.]

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There’s a strange phenomenon that happens almost every time someone joins Twitter. They hate it. At least at first.But many of the people who once hated Twitter — or at least, didn’t quite get it in the beginning — are now many of its most active users and raving fans. So what’s going on here?

There seems to be four natural stages that the average Twitter user goes through from the point of first trying it until the point of fully embracing it and making it a part of daily life. Obviously, not everyone sticks with it and becomes a Twitter devotee, but there’s definitely a growing cadre of people who believe that there’s some magic happening in the Twittosphere

You can find me on Twitter at twitter.com/StevenRobert

Because Twitter can be used as a valuable business tool, it’s worth talking about the four Twitter stages in order to help recognize users in these stages when you’re choosing who to follow and to keep new Twitter users from getting discouraged and missing the opportunities available on Twitter. So here they are:

1. Confusion and indignation

When a person first signs up for Twitter, the first challenge is figuring out who to follow. Twitter now has its “Suggested Users” feature to help people get started. Jason put together a list of technology personalities worth following on Twitter to help new techies when they sign up for Twitter.

However, even when they find some people to follow, new Twitterers usually look at their Twitter stream and start wondering, “Why would I care what my colleagues are eating for lunch?” or “What’s interesting about a software engineer posting that she’s walking her dog?”

That experience usually leads people to shake their heads and not come back to Twitter for a few days, or even weeks or months.

2. The first “Aha!” moment

Eventually, the user comes back periodically to check Twitter out of pure curiosity. During those casual forays, the person often has a first “Aha!” moment, where they find something really interesting or timely on Twitter that wasn’t available from news, RSS feeds, or word of mouth from their friends.

This could be a piece of news that someone reported on Twitter before it actually hit the wires, it could be a rumor about something that a company like Apple is doing, or even something like NFL teams announcing their picks for the draft on Twitter before they even went up to the podium to make the official selection.

3. Remembering to tweet

After the first “Aha” moment, the user typically starts checking Twitter more often, but still tends to post very infrequently. The next stage of Twitter initiation comes when the user reads something useful online or makes a mental observation about something and then thinks, “I should post that Twitter!”

At this point, the user is still relying mostly on the twitter.com homepage to access Twitter but is starting to go there at least a couple times a day to check on the latest buzz, and has typically found a good mix of friends, news feeds, industry celebrities, and thought leaders to follow.

4. Thinking in 140 characters

Once the person becomes a daily Twitter user, it’s over. The person is almost always hooked, and is now on the path to becoming a power user. This is when most (though not all) users switch from using twitter.com to using a desktop Twitter client like Tweetdeck or Seesmic.

Meanwhile, the user also often has a mobile Twitter client like UberTwitter (for BlackBerry) or Tweetie (for iPhone) in order to stay connected to the Twitter stream on the go. Those that don’t have smartphone often use Twitter via SMS text messages. [Personally, I like 1.) Twitterrific or 2.) TwitterFon - both for the iPhone, of course.]

At this point, the person is a Twitter power user who regularly adds new people and brands to follow and also regularly unfollows people who post too many inane messages about their meals or just doesn’t post enough useful stuff.

The power user also tends to regularly think about and look for things to post on Twitter throughout the day, to the point of self-editing thoughts for brevity in order to fit into Twitter’s 140 character limit.

Final word

The beauty of Twitter is in its simplicity of use and the direct connection it provides to people whose activities and opinions you care about.

Apple recently wrote a case study about Twitter because Twitter uses a lot of Apple products. In the article, Apple wrote, “Twitter’s meteoric rise to ubiquity is proof positive that the world, in all its complexity, is eager to embrace simplicity.”

Twitter can be an very useful tool for business and technology professionals. For more articles by Jason, see:

• 11 reasons to use Twitter for business
• Techies: The top 10 people you should follow on Twitter
• 10 tools that will make you a Twitter power user
• Best practices for putting your business or brand on Twitter
• Video: Twitter CEO predicts future uses for the service

And here are a couple external links worth looking at:

• How Twitter replaced my RSS reader (CNET)
• Ten Twitter mythconceptions - stuff people believe about Twitter that isn’t true (Technologizer)

If you use Twitter, which of the four stages are you in?