The PC Report

It’s been a while since I last decided to test the early builds of Chrome OS and it looks like a lot has happened since then. A guy by the name of Hexxeh is releasing new builds of Chromium OS here and there before the OS is actually finished by Google, and his latest edition packs some nice features. Known by the build name “Flow”, the new build features Nvidia GPU support (including ION), auto-updates, user customisable menus, webcam support and much more.

If you’re up for testing the latest build, you can download it from Hexxeh’s page right now. If you’re confused about the difference between Google Chrome OS and Chromium OS (they’re almost the same), check out this blog post from Google.

Of course, not much fresh news here for those who are already using Google Chrome 4.0 via the beta channel, but Chrome 4.0 for Windows has finally gone stable; sorry Linux users, you’re stuck with the beta channel for just a bit longer. The major change for Chrome 4.0 is support for the extension framework, which should rival Firefox’s Add-ons and create more competition between the two browsers.

Currently, there are over 1,500 extensions available for Chrome, including ad blockers, several Google product enhancement tools and a lot of extensions that are available on Firefox already. Also new in Chrome 4.0 is bookmark sync, which synchronises your bookmarks across your different machines so you don’t have to create them on each machine – to use bookmark sync you’ll need a Google account which, as a Chrome user, you should have already.

Head over to Google’s Chrome page to download the browser if you feel like adopting it right now, or you can update to 4.0 from within Chrome.

Today Google has revealed a new future for Google’s operations in China: no censorship, or no google.cn. This new approach has surfaced due to a cyber-attack on Google, along with a number of other high-profile companies, that originated in China and resulted in theft of intellectual property. Google’s analysis suggests that the attackers were trying to access Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, however only two accounts were accessed and no critical information was stolen.

Google has used info from this attack to improve the overall security of their services, and has also revealed the attack to the public as part of a debate on free speech in China. They have stated that because of the background of the attacks, Google will try and stop censoring the search results of Google in China (discussions are taking place with the Chinese government). If no agreement is made, they will shut down their Chinese operations, including google.cn

Personally I think that these moves are great news. Google has finally taken the steps to try and push free speech in China; steps that are desperately overdue. However, getting the Chinese government to allow uncensored results will be tough, and google.cn will probably have to be closed.

Google is increasing once again and attempting to dominate a particular market, this time with URL shortening currently dominated by sites such as tinyURL and bit.ly. Goo.gl will be a free URL shortening service for use within certain Google products, with newly introduced applications in both the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner.

As stated on the rather bland goo.gl homepage, the goo.gl service hopes to be more reliable thanks to Google’s large array of servers, more secure thanks to automatic malicious site warnings and faster than current services offered. However these points don’t really point towards any serious gains as sites such as bit.ly already offer all these features.

For those who aren’t aware, URL shortening is particularly useful for those times when a full-sized URL might seem too long on some web pages, or for easy sharing with others via places like Twitter and Facebook. The Google URL Shortener probably one day will offer more services outside just the Toolbar and FeedBurner and then it may attract more users, but for now sticking to other services is probably a good idea.

Haven’t managed to get in on the Google Wave action? Well this might be your chance to get a Google Wave invite for yourself so you can explore the new features of Google’s latest social tool. We have 25 invites to share, and here’s how you can get your hands on one:

Simply leave a comment on this post asking for a Google Wave invite, with a legit email in the email field when you post a comment, or in the comment itself. Or you can contact us asking for a Google Wave invite and specifying your email address. We’ll then use the Wave invite station to hand out the invites to you. Get in quickly or the invites might start disappearing.

Feel like moving yet another one of your internet services to a Google-run service? Google is dominating again by setting up their own Public DNS for people to use. According to Google, by using their Public DNS service you can “speed up your browsing experience, improve your security and get the results you expect with absolutely no redirection.” To use it, just change your DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 -  watch out, OpenDNS.

Haven’t seen it yet or tested it yourself? Well, you can now just by entering this simple Javascript code into your address bar. To get it working, head over to google.com, paste the following code into your address bar when on the Google homepage, press Enter then refresh the page to enjoy the new look search.

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

Note that it doesn’t work on country-code prefixes of Google, such as .co.uk and .au – you’ll need to head over to the plain google.com to enjoy the new look. Oh, and if your sick of the new look, just find and delete the above from your Google cookies, or just delete all your cookies.

Update: There are reports that this no longer works. However, still try it for yourself.

We were almost right when we said that Chrome OS was launching next week. Today, Google held a conference to announce and detail their latest and greatest venture into operating systems. While Chrome OS hasn’t been launched yet, and according to Google it won’t be for a long time with a public beta still a fair while away, we do get to see some solid pictures and demonstrations of Chrome in action.

First off, its seems like Chrome OS is almost completely web-based, with web applications integrating into the operating system to make it feel like they are real applications. This is all made possible by the features present in HTML5, which allow web applications to access local storage and other resources that a normal application would have access too. Also, even though Chrome OS is based off the Linux kernel, you wont be able to install applications via the kernel like you would in other Linux distros, instead you will have to run them through the “browser.”

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Remember Chrome OS? Well, rumour has it that it’s going to be launched sometime next week for your downloading pleasure. The lightweight OS is designed for web-centric netbooks but should also carry enough security and usability for everyday users. TechCrunch expects driver support to be minimal at launch, but as it’s based on the Linux kernel it might be quite the opposite. I guess only time will tell…

For all those people out there either looking for a new browser to try or using Chrome right now to view this: Chrome 3 is out of beta and has hit full version status, and is still as speedy as ever. Google claims Chrome 3 is 150% faster than Chrome 1, and 25% faster than the last stable release; pretty good going Google.

New features to the browser include HTML5 capabilities, a redesigned New Tab page, capabilities for themes (yay!) and an improved Omnibox, as well as the speed increases mentioned before. You can grab the new browser from Google’s Chrome web page (Chrome updates automatically for those already using it).