Klint Finley at ReadWriteWeb writes:

Google is bringing Web apps one step closer to having full desktop functionality. Today, it announced new functionality that allows apps from the Chrome Web Store to run in the background, even when all Chrome windows have been closed but the user hasn’t actually exited the browser. Why would you want to do this? A couple of reasons.

1. To enable hosted apps, such as calendars, to provide notifications without having to leave a window or tab open for the app.

2. To enable apps to load content in the background so that it’s instantly available when a user launches the app. For example, a dashboard with real-time information, or something like Mint.com that takes a while to update.

This brings Chrome the Browser one step closer to Chrome the OS … and if I were Google, I would not go much further than that. At least for now.

I say this as the recipient of one of the tens of thousands of CR-48 Chrome notebooks Google sent out over the past couple of months. (I strongly suspect it was sent to me by someone at Google Docs, because I spent a morning with them about a year ago talking about next steps for the product. It was an unpaid session [well, until now], and, as far as I can tell, what I said had no effect. Very interesting morning, though, from my point of view.)

The Chrome netbook comes with an early version of Google’s Chrome operating system installed. As many have pointed out, the hardware is a mix of pretty nice and totally sucks. The point of the distribution was not the hardware, but, rather, how well the OS works. Nevertheless, let me get the hardware comments out of the way. Positives: Fairly lightweight for a screen that large. Good battery life. It was free. Negatives: OMG the trackpad is frustratingly awful. The lettering on the keyboard is invisible except in full light. The mouse tracking speed cannot be slowed down enough. And because there is only one USB port, you can’t easily plug in both a mouse and a USB lamp to light the illegible keyboard. Anyway…

The key difference apparent to the user is that the Chrome OS is a fullscreen browser with no desktop underneath it. Everything is optimized for online work. That’s great for online work: The wifi connection is easy, setup overall was easy, it’s getting very good battery life even though wifi is on all the time, it starts up lightning fast, and it actually both goes to sleep and wakes up instantly when you close the lid. So, when you’re online, Chrome is terrific.

But I am not always online, and even when I am, I often want to use local apps. For example, there are some good text editors online, but they are not better than the copy of TextWrangler I have installed on my laptop. Furthermore, Google Docs has its strengths, but Pages, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and even Word all are better at some important things. Much better. Why does it help me as a user not to be able to use the apps I want? Plus, I have many years of documents and other data on my computer (yes, multiply backed up); I’d have to move them all into the cloud to have them at my fingertips when using Chrome. But why would I want to go to all that trouble…except to use Chrome?

Chrome is like a visitor from the future when wireless connectivity is ubiquitous, but the available apps have been frozen since 1996. It is in that regard the worst of both time zones. Sure, the apps in the cloud will get better, but I am unconvinced that there will never ever be any app that I want to run locally. In the meantime, I’ve taken to using my CR-48 as the laptop I keep on our TV couch, so I can figure out where I’ve seen that actor before, which I suspect is less than Google hopes we’ll be doing with their shiny new operating system.

On the other hand, enabling Chrome the Browser to permit Web apps to work in the background is a brilliant idea for the here-and-now. We can continue to use our highly-evolved local apps, but still integrate cloud-based computing into the world we’re going to be in until creatures from the future blanket our land with wireless, open, broadband access to the Internet, or until our government comes up with policies to do so. (My money is on creatures from the future getting here first.)

[But, hey, Google, thanks for the free laptop, and I do admire your willingness to push the envelope.]

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Here’s a lunch I’m enjoying. I call it Fried Rice Omelet, because that’s what it is.

• Take last night’s fried rice. (Surely you had fried rice last night!)

• Spray a pan with some oil and heat it up.

• Dump in enough rice to cover the pan. Heat it until it’s hot.

• Cover the reheated fried rice with some egg beaters. (I suppose you could use real eggs if you scrambled them first.)

• Cook for a minute or two. Before the eggs set, flip the rice over.

• Serve with soy sauce, and Siracha if you want a little heat.

Serves: It depends how much you make.
Calories: Yeah, I guess.

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Here’s a fun little Mac trick from MacLife:

1. Open a terminal.

2. Type:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework//Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

3. Hit the return key.

4. Hit the button that lets you see your desktop.

5. Close the terminal to end the effect.

6. Blame MacLife for anything that goes wrong (although nothing should).

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That’s it, snow. You win.

After two more hours of shoveling this morning, the pile in the yard is approaching 7 feet. Our neighbor kindly agreed to let us deposit snow from our driveway onto their narrow walkway. Without that, we would have had to clear the snow by melting it teaspoon by teaspoon in our mouths.

Not that it matters, but you shouldn’t feel too smug. You only won because you were able to throw more and more troops into the fray. No strategy, just a ruthless willingness to send your young — each a unique individual, not that you care — into the breaches that we kept trying to open. Whatever clever stratagem we came up with, you countered simply by throwing more snow at it. Still, it worked. We hope you’re very proud of yourself.

So, call off your dogs. No need for another blitz. We surrender unconditionally. Please take these frozen tears as a first small token of our capitulation. Plus Fluffy, whom we haven’t seen in a couple of days anyway.

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James Grimmelmann, whose writing on the Google Books settlement I’ve found helpful, has written an article about the incoherence of the concept of “search neutrality” — “the idea that search engines should be legally required to exercise some form of even-handed treatment of the websites they rank. ” (He blogs about it here.) He finds eight different possible meanings of the term, and doesn’t think any of them hold up.

Me neither. Relevancy is not an objective criterion. And too much transparency allows spammers to game the system. I would like to be assured that companies aren’t paying search engine companies to have their results ranked higher (unless the results are clearly marked as pay-for-position, which Google does but not clearly enough).

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Over at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab blog I’ve posted a video from NotionInk showing their Adam tablet UI at work. Seems elegant and usable. [Hat tip to Gianluca (again).]

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British voice coach Gareth Jameson explains how to talk like an American:

Accents:
How To Do An American Accent

Pretty good! Where I come from, “banter” and “banner” don’t sound identical, but otherwise I think he nails us.

Gareth has a bunch of other videos, some of which are better than others. (As for his “how to yodel” video, it pretty much comes down to “Sing low, then high, then low.”)

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Global Voices has posted its list of most-read posts in 2010. The list includes blog posts from Haiti, Chile, Jamaica, Pakistan, Thailand, Israel, North Korea, Costa Rica, Russia, Philippines, Egypt, South Africa, Macedonia, Myanmar, Mali, Georgia, Philippines, Poland, India, Guatemala, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Japan, and Iran.

Where else do you get to hear this range of voices so clearly? Who else has a most-read list that so represents the globe?

By the way, the
#1 was the report on The Cala Boca Galvao Phenomenon, a hilarious phenomenon that Ethan Zuckerman helped popularize.

Have a fruitful new year, Global Voices. And to all the globe’s voices: Happy new year!

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I just heard that Ronnie Simonsen died.

I knew him, a little, because he was one of the campers at Camp Jabberwocky [more posts] and Zero Mountain Farm. The loving obituary in the Boston Globe captures much of what was remarkable about Ronnie, but I knew him inextricably embedded within his summer community. Like some ideal post-racist world, in this community, people do not see disabilities. I cannot think of him apart from their loving and fully mutual embrace.

Every year the campers make a movie, an exercise in play, joy, and friendship. Here’s the Return of the Muskrats, starring Ronnie. I — we — will miss him.

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[Zombie pointer via BoingBoing]

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