The Egg Man

In case you have not been keeping up with the latest technology news.. Google had a Chrome based announcement in SF last Tuesday which focused on the project idea they announced last year, Chrome OS. As kind of expected, the OS is not ready to ship this year like they originally promised. However, they opened up a pilot program for selected businesses and end users to begin testing the operating system. during the event,  they mentioned in order to test you would need special hardware, the Cr-48, to test on as well  (I, like many other Geeks immediately wanted to apply..  who passes up free hardware?). Wednesday came on by, no word from Google as to who had been selected to test. Thursday.. bloggers were starting to report users  Cr-48s randomly showing up at their door steps (I knew I had applied fairly early on and was beginning to wonder if I would get one). Friday morning, as I was about to head off to work UPS dropped one off at my door step.. The short lived wait was finally over.

I will not go into great detail on the ins and the outs of the Cr-48, there are several other tech bloggers that have already done this. My initial reactions on Friday night, (aside from this is a really nifty new toy) were not liking the track pad. I’m used to my netbook’s over-reactive track pad, the Cr-48′s takes some getting used to using. I really like the mate finish on it (despite it being a bit strange having a peace of hardware with NO BRANDING and that is NOT on the retail market).  I briefly used Chrome OS, thought it was interesting using a Google released version over the Chromium OS builds that I have been compiling on and off (for security reasons, I  have refused to use any of the unofficial pre-compiled images).

Overall, the new toy is a great addition to the collection of computers. Its battery life is very nice, the finish on the case doesn’t attract finger prints. Chrome OS itself, is quite usable providing you are used to Chrome. It is still in Beta, there are still areas which show shortcomings.. these will hopefully be resolved with time. Question is, should I now attempt to roll my own Chromium OS build on this wonderful hardware?

Last couple of posts have been about my Pandora progress. I’m still patiently waiting for the email saying its going to be shipped, but while I wait I’ve got to occupy myself with a couple of side projects.  One of them is Google’s  Chromium  OS, the developer side of me has always wanted to build an entier operating system from source. Being involved with the Chromium OS project has helped me establish this need and I love working with Google.

I’ve been tracking the Chromium OS project from the day Google made the announcement to open the code to everybody. That day (or maybe it was the day after) took the plunge and downloaded the source code and built an entier operating system from source. It was very daunting at first, but I struggled through it and now I build Chromium OS at least once a week to see what Google has done to improve it.

(Btw, you’ll notice that I’m not saying Chrome OS. It is the  same operating system, but as I’m NOT Google nor will I be bundling the OS with a net book I’m creating.. I will not call it Chrome OS.)

Now that there’s some history, here’s what I really wanted to say.. According to the Chrome developer mailing list there might be some vmware based builds available for anybody to test. Though, Google has not released any official binary builds at this point, they might just keep them internally.

Testing Google’s Wave embed.

[wave id="UH2BJasiA" type="google-wave-sandbox"]This is a sample wave from the Sandbox, it might require Sandbox access to view properly.[/wave]

While a few weeks back, in early November if you were to search the interweb the new fad would be to try and dig up a Google Wave Invite. I’ll admit, even I fell into the trap when they announced the grand opening back on September 30 2009. Here’s how my story goes.. essentially when this announcement hit, I knew I wasn’t in the first round as I did not go to Google I/O. So I went and applied for Developer Sandbox access and the Preview invite as well.  However, by a stroke of luck in one of my IRC channels somebody was giving away Invites. I was jumping up and down when I got the word my invitation was on its way. I was nominated on the October 17th, and about a week later my invite came my way.

Now, when I was first given access to Wave, I had no clue what to do with it, so I did what I do best.. Asked around the IRC channels I hang around in. They gave me the “with:public” search pointer, and I was off on my way investigating all these fun Public Waves, and learning all about what Wave really was. Wave is a very intriguing concept, but I see no practical purpose for it at this time. Bottom line, Google has really opened the doors to Wave, its very easy to get invited to the preview these days. Nobody cares about them now. It was OVER HYPED AS GOOGLE DOES BEST.