You're Not Getting the Google OS for Christmas
As expected, Google released the code for Chrome OS, the Google operating system based on the Chrome Web browser. However, this release isn't even a beta. Google is still a year away from releasing anything that is easy to install or comes pre-installed on new computers. What's the idea behind Chrome OS? It's as simple as it sounds. The entire computer is essentially a Web browser. Nearly everything you do is stored on the Web instead of on

Google Shopping Gets Feature Enhancements
Just in time for the holidays, Google Product Search got some upgrades. The feature updates include bigger pictures for better window shopping, maps to find local stores, and better display of customer reviews.  You can even see video reviews from YouTube. The new reviews on the detail page are actually pretty slick. Not only do you get a graphical bar to show you how the rating were distributed, you can hover over one-line review summar

YouTube Will Auto Caption
If you can't hear, digital streaming video can be pretty unfriendly. Some technologies don't support closed captions. YouTube does, but having videos professionally captioned is also expensive and time consuming. Google is rolling out a new feature that will use the voice to text technology of Google Voice to auto caption videos on YouTube. The technology is less than perfect. Sometimes you get garbled results. That's still much better than nothing, and if you've ever watched the close captioning on your TV, you'll notice  humans don't always do a better

Hands on With Sony Ericsson X10
The Xperia X10 is due out in the US sometime next year, but I had a chance to play with one today. The phone boasts a nice 8 megapixel camera, which is larger than the Verizon Droid's 5 megapixel offering. It has a large touch screen but no keyboard. It also has several software interface additions to the Android OS base.  The far more exciting

Jeff Jarvis at Web 2.0
Jeff Jarvis gave a presentation yesterday on an idea he's mulling over for a followup to his book, What Would Google Do? (Compare Prices) His current idea is to explore life as a form of beta with the idea of beta in the traditional Google sense. Beta means that the product is still evolving and will have interface and other changes. It's a bit ironic considering Google's recent trend away from labeling all their products as beta. In order to sell business enterprise products like Google Apps, they've