chrome

Chrome 27, making its way through the development pipeline, is helping to advance the fortunes of a new audio compression technology called Opus.

Opus is what's called a codec -- a technology to encode and decode streams of information, in this case audio. Technically, it's actually two codecs in one, an approach that lets it span a range of uses from Internet telephony on slow networks to streaming high-quality music on fast networks.

One of its chief virtues is low latency: there's not a long wait for audio to be encoded or decoded, something that's not … Read more

Safari has won back some of the ground it lost recently to rival mobile browsers.

Apple's iOS browser captured 61.79 percent of all mobile browser Web traffic seen by Net Applications in March. That was a healthy rise from the 55.41 percent tracked in February.

Safari remained firmly in the lead last month, followed by the default Android browser in second place with a 21.86 percent share and Opera Mini in the third spot with 8.4 percent. But Safari has seen its share of Net Applications' Web traffic rocked by the competition.

After rising steadily … Read more

My mid-afternoon most work days, my laptop begins to drag as I am stare at dozens of open tabs, many of which I may need to save or return to before shutting down to preserve the day's twisting and winding research and Internet meanderings. With Chrome extension TabJuggler, I am able to slice and dice and search all of my open tabs, which is a huge help in cataloging my day's worth of work before closing up shop for the day.

After TabJuggler installs, it places a button to the right of the URL bar. Click on this … Read more

Google Chrome has matured from a lightweight and fast browsing alternative into an innovative, standard-bearer of a browser that people love. It's powerful enough to drive its own operating system, Chrome OS. The browser that people can use today, Chrome 26, offers highly competitive features, including synchronization, autofill, and standards compliance, and maintains Google's reputation for building one of the fastest browsers available.

Chrome 26 represents a major milestone for the browser, but those expecting to see dramatic changes in major version-point updates will be disappointed. For a while now, Google has been pushing features over what it … Read more

The nascent WebRTC standard for video communications on the Web has become a technology battleground pitting Google against Nokia.

The reason for a war not just of words but also of actions is a lowly technology called a codec, which compresses video for efficient networking and compact storage. Google wants the Net to embrace its royalty-free, open-source VP8 codec, but Nokia is trying to quash VP8 by refusing to license patents it says are required to use it.

Google, meanwhile, has come to the aid of Android phone maker HTC in a Nokia patent-infringement case that involves VP8.

Why the … Read more

A Google patent-licensing deal two weeks ago dramatically improved the fortunes of its VP8 video technology, but Nokia has added a barricade to what has already been an arduous road to adoption.

VP8 is a codec -- technology to encode and decode video or audio data for compact storage and efficient network streaming. Despite passionate debates about VP8 vs. the incumbent codec, H.264, most people need never care about video codecs.

But as video becomes ever more deeply embedded in the Net -- TV entertainment, chatting with friends, videoconferences for business, online schooling for children -- the video codec … Read more

When Chrome's engineers sat down to plan out feature updates, who would've thought that "spell-checker" would've been anywhere on that list?

Google Chrome 26 stable for Windows (download) and Linux (download) updates the browser's ability to automatically check for spelling and homonym mistakes with new dictionaries.

Chrome 26 for Mac (download) has received the other Chrome 26 updates, but the spell-checking feature will be made available later, Google said in a blog post. The company did not specify a timeline for the feature, and unfortunately, it will not correct inaccurate spelling already published elsewhere … Read more

I don't always retweet, but when I do, I prefer Classic Retweet.

If you use Twitter's standard Web interface, then you have probably grown tired of manually retweeting -- with the cutting, and the pasting, and the typing -- in order to edit or add comment when sharing another's post. With the Classic Retweet extension for Chrome or for Firefox, you get a Tweet window with editable text, helping to streamline the retweeting process.

After installing the extension and refreshing your Twitter page, mouse over a Tweet in your feed and you'll see a "Classic … Read more

Those eager to get their hands on the expensive, gorgeous Chromebook Pixel with LTE now have the option to order one. While the Wi-Fi only model has been in stock for weeks, the LTE model only popped up in Google Play today. It will ship by April 8, according to the product page.

An LTE connection will cost from $9.99 for 24 hours to up to $50 for 5GB, according to GigaOm. All LTE models come with 100MB of data transfer for two years, along with 1 terabyte of Google Drive storage for three years.

(via The Verge)