Google News: Chrome OS, Blogger Outage, Other News

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 17 May 2011

This is a nice 'little' bundle of Google-related news, and we kick things off the news that Chrome OS-powered notebooks will become available in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain come the 15th of June. Called Chromebooks, the Chrome OS-powered notebooks will be offered by Acer and Samsung and in the US they will be available from Amazon and Best Buy. The Chromebooks will become available at leading retailers in other countries in the following months. For additional information on Chromebooks please click here; watch a video presentation here.

Moving on, the second news in this bundle is that Blogger suffered an outage on Friday the 13th. As Blogger Teach Lead and Manager Eddie Kessler explained, the outage lasted for 20.5 hours. During this time no content could be published to Blogger; some existing posts and comments were removed, but they will be restored. Eddie Kessler explained that “during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior.” That led to intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages.

That takes care of the “Chrome OS, Blogger Outage” part in the title. Let’s move on to the “Other News” part. Here are some other Google-related news you may want to know about:

Think Insights with Google

Think Insights with Google is a new website where Google will publish data-supported insights about digital marketing trends. Google’s marketing team answers questions such as “How do new mothers use the internet?” or “What trends typify today’s Hispanic web user?” The website showcases Google’s efforts to better understand how people use the web and how marketers are adapting to this changing terrain.

Chrome Web Store: Language Support, In-App Payments, New and UpdatedApps
The Chrome Web Store is now available in 41 languages, the In-App Payments API has been released to app developers, and several new apps have made it to the Chrome Web Store – Angry Birds, Reuters Sectors and Industries, Fortune 500+, ESPN Cricinfo, LiveShare. The Springpad and Graphicly apps have been updated to work offline.

Getting back to the In-App Payments API, Angry Birds said it will use it to offer the Mighty Eagle for in-app purchase on the web.

Google Tasks API

Google has made available the Google Tasks API to developers, which means that devs can get the API and use it to create rich applications which integrate directly with Google Tasks. Additional information on this topic is available here.

Android Market Helps You Discover Great Apps
A grand total of five new features have been rolled out, features meant to help you discover great apps on the Android Market. Here are the features I am talking about:
- The top app charts has been revamped; it is now country-specific, presents the most current, relevant results, and features top new free, top new paid, and top grossing lists on the Android Market homepage.
- In the “Editor’s Choice” section you can find the best apps chosen by the Android Market staff.
- The top developers get some recognition by getting a special icon on the Android Market website. The icon appears wherever the developer name is shown.
- Two groups of related apps are shown in the left hand side of an app page: apps frequently browsed by people who viewed this app, and apps that people tend to install alongside this app.
- Trending apps are displayed on the Android Market homepage.

Google News
The Google News team announced the introduction of “News near you” a new feature for mobile users that presents news relevant to the city you’re in and surrounding areas. The feature is available in the US English edition of Google News. To give it a try just visit Google News from your Android-powered device or from your iPhone.

The team behind Google News also announced that it rolled out expandable stories on Google News in the US, allowing you to see more content, hide what you don’t use, and generally have a more streamlined Google News experience. Additional information on this topic is available here.


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