The web browser is undeniably the most important piece of software on your computer. These days much of what you do with your computer happens in your browser. Today, Google Chrome leaves beta on Mac and Linux. Just in time! I recently made Google Chrome (beta by then) my default browser. So, that made me feel better about my decision.

How about you? Which browser do you prefer/use?

You can now download Chrome from google.com/chrome.

[ illustration by Christoph Niemann ]

Do you recall the Native Client technology revealed last fall by Google? Well, today Google released a developer preview of the Native Client SDK.

Native Client is an open-source technology for running native code in web applications, with the goal of maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability, and safety that people expect from web apps.

With the Native Client SDK -which is available under Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux- you can build web apps that seamlessly use native C/C++ code to perform high-performance computation, render 2D/3D graphics, play audio, and respond to mouse and keyboard events. If you are interested in building Native Client apps, visit code.google.com/p/nativeclient-sdk.

Check out the Getting Started guide for more instructions for building and running the examples.

Google is currently in the middle of upgrading from ext2 to a more up to date file system. We ended up choosing ext4. This thread touches upon many of the issues we wrestled with, so I thought it would be interesting to share.

Just think about this for a moment. Google was still running on ext2 filesystem. Although ext2 remains one super stable filesystem, imagine the size of the impact of the forthcoming upgrade to ext4 filesystem. In case your are not familiar with the ext4 filesystem, ext4 is a journaling file system developed as the successor to ext3. Ext4′s main features range from backward compatibility, bigger filesystem/file sizes and multiblock allocation to fast fsck, online defragmentation and inode-related features. For more detailed information you should check out kernel.org‘s article on ext4.

The driving performance reason to upgrade is that while ext2 had been “good enough” for a very long time the metadata arrangement on a stale file system was leading to what we call “read inflation”. This is where we end up doing many seeks to read one block of data. In general latency from poor block allocation was causing performance hiccups. We spent a lot of time with unix standard benchmarks (dbench, compile bench, et al) on xfs, ext4, jfs to try to see which one was going to perform the best.

–Michael Rubin

Now, back to Google, what do you think this could mean to our future searches? Search results showing up in light speed time? Probably. For example, take a look at Google Goggles. It is an amazing product right? However the current status quo of the speed of its results is limited by the perception we have about the device’s speed and not only. I mean most of us realize it is not an easy thing to match a photo of the Parthenon temple I just took with trillions of random photos indexed somehow. Every query like this one, is narrowed by the network bottleneck and the processing speeds, which include hard disk’s read/write speed.

Imagine a super-fast network, with lets say 10Gbps bandwidth, where on the one end you press a <button> and all it does is erasing 10^100 rows and recreating 10^100 rows in a SQL database on the other end. Given that, apart from the CPU usage which is required for a process like this, there is the limit of read and write speed of the hard disks even if using RAID technology. This is where ext4 comes in to make this whole process a lot faster.

I can only imagine what’s next for our future searches. Fast and responsive holographic search results? I really don’t think there is a limit here, right?

I recall the first time I downloaded Boxee for my Mac about a year and half ago. At that time Macs were already equipped with this thing called the Front Row, a media center software by Apple which was quite impressive back then.

If you haven’t tried Boxee, go to boxee.tv for download it for free. It is available for Mac, Windows, Linux and Apple TV. Once you ‘ve installed it just move around to explore Boxee’s capabilities and be prepared to be amazed.

Boxee is the best way to enjoy entertainment from the Internet and computer on your TV

Until yesterday Boxee was available only for your computer where you had to connect your computer to your TV to enjoy media from the Internet or your computer. However Boxee announced yesterday that they will be announcing Boxee Box tomorrow at CES.

[roll over to see the back]

Yeah, that’s right, now you can get all your favorite TV shows & movies from the Internet or your hard drive onto your TV – no PC needed.

Boxee Box features:

• HDMI
• Optical Audio
• RCA Stereo Audio
• WiFi (802.11n)
• Ethernet
• 2 USB Ports
• SD Cart Slot
• RF Remote

As you can see in the list above, Boxee Box comes with a super-remote (named after the super-phones). It’s a two-face remote with a QWERTY keyboard at the back! How amazing is that?!

Maemo is an advanced Linux-based operating system designed to run on high-end Nokia mobile computers. As this is an open-source platform, it enables the Maemo community to freely modify and continually develop software as part of a shared goal: to bring added value to all Maemo users.

The Maemo Platform is supported by the Maemo Community which consists of more than 18.000 members actively contributing to more than 800 development projects. Apart from the Linux Kernel, Maemo is based on a lot of open source projects including Debian and GNOME.

Here is a Nokia N900 unboxing video from SlashGear.com

Interesting news for all the Open-Source guys and gals. The Linux Foundation now provides new Individual Membership. About 3 months ago the Linux Foundation launched a branded credit card featuring tux. Now its time for new, exclusive perks for Individual Members.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced new, exclusive benefits for individual members, including employee purchase pricing from Dell, HP and Lenovo, and the opportunity to secure a Linux.com email address for life.

With an annual fee of $99 you can now get a @linux.com email address and secure it for lifetime with $150 more. There are three types of membership including Individual, Student and an Individual with a lifetime @linux.com email address. You can see here more details about each type of membership.

It’s feels like yesterday when I first tried the Gentoo linux distribution. It blew my mind. There are numerous things that make Gentoo linux one of a kind. One of them is definitely scalability/configurability. In fact, I have never used any other linux distribution that is by default that much scalable and configurable. It actually makes you feel like you can do anything you want! Of course, you can’t talk about Gentoo without mentioning performance issues. Gentoo is like performance’s synonym or something.

Gentoo is a free operating system based on either Linux or FreeBSD that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme configurability, performance and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.

Gentoo Linux was initially created by Daniel Robbins as the Enoch Linux distribution which changed to Gentoo Linux almost immediately. Gentoo now celebrates its 10th birthday, releasing a special edition LiveDVD available for download in two flavors, a hybrid x86/x86_64 version, and an x86_64-only version. The LiveDVD features packages like:

• System packages include: Linux Kernel 2.6.30 (with gentoo patches), Accessibility Support with Speakup 3.1.3, BASH 4.0, GLIBC 2.9, GCC 4.3.2. Binutils 2.18, Python 2.6.2, Perl 5.8.8, and more.
• Desktop Environments and window managers include: KDE 4.3.1, GNOME 2.26.3, Xfce 4.6.1, Enlightenment 0.16.8.15, Openbox 3.4.7.2, Fluxbox 1.1.1, TWM 1.0.4, and more.
• Office, graphics, and productivity applications include: OpenOffice 3.1.1, G/Vim 7.2.182, Abiword 2.6.4, GNUCash 2.2.9, Scribus 1.3.3.11, GIMP 2.6.4, Inkscape 0.46, Blender 2.49a, XSane 0.996, and much more.
• Web browsers include: Mozilla Firefox (Minefield) 3.5.3, Arora 0.7.11, Opera 10.0, Epiphany 2.26.3, Galeon 2.0.4, Seamonkey 1.1.17, and other favorites.
• Communication tools include: Pidgin 2.5.9, Quassel 0.5, Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.23, Claws Mail 3.7.2, Ekiga 2.0.12, Qtwitter 0.7.1, irssi 0.8.13, and many more.
• Multimedia applications include: Amarok 2.1.1, MPlayer 1.0_rc4, DvdAuthor 0.6.14, LAME 3.98.2, FFMPEG 0.5_p19928, GNOME-MPlayer 0.9.7, SMPlayer 0.6.6, and several others.

Additionally, there is some new artwork from Ben Stedman, and Gentoo Developer Alex Legler.

So, Happy Tenth Birthday, Gentoo!

Wonderful news for openSUSE linux users and develpers. The openSUSE Project announced a few hours ago that the last openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 (M8) is available for download. -One small step for the openSUSE project, one Milestone closer to openSUSE 11.2- This Milestone includes the final version of the openSUSE 11.2 branding! Besides that, this Milestone includes some new updated packages like:

• Linux kernel 2.6.31
• GNOME 2.28 RC
• OpenOffice.org 3.1.1
• openSUSE 11.2 theming is in place
• PulseAudio 0.9.17
• Samba 3.4.1
• postgresql 8.4.1

So, what are you waiting for? You are one click away! :)

Excellent news for Android users and developers. Android 1.6 SDK is available for download. Android 1.6 introduces new features for users and developers like New User Features, Android Market Updates and New Platform Technologies. Some of the most notable new features include Expanded support for screen densities and resolutions, Quick Search Box, Text-to-speech engine, Gestures and of course a new Linux kernel upgrading from 2.6.27 to 2.6.29.

Android 1.6 includes a redesigned search framework that provides a quick, effective, and consistent way for users to search across multiple sources—such as browser bookmarks & history, contacts, and the web—directly from the home screen.

In the video following you can see an overview of new features and improvements in the Android 1.6 release.