Chrome

It seems Hewlett-Packard plans to follow Samsung, Acer, and Lenovo into the Chromebook market.

The company published a spec sheet for the Pavilion Chromebook 14-c010us that reveals a 4-pound model with a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 processor, 16GB SSD, 14-inch LED-backlit display with 1,366x768 resolution, a Webcam, and three USB 2.0 ports.

It appears the device will ship in the coming weeks. The spec sheet, spotted by The Verge, lists an advertising embargo date of February 17.

"The HP Pavilion Chromebook gives you fast and easy access to the things you love and depend on, from … Read more

Acer hasn't been doing well lately, and the company is pointing a finger at weak demand for Windows 8.

"Windows 8 itself is still not successful," Acer president Jim Wong told Bloomberg in an interview published yesterday. "The whole market didn't come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch, that's a simple way to judge if it is successful or not."

Acer was stung by an annual loss in 2011 and will post another loss for 2012, according to the Wall Street Journal. Last week, the company announced a $120 million write-off … Read more

It's easy to forget you've shared a folder from Google Drive with someone. There are visual indicators that show a folder is shared, but if you're busy working, or don't spend a lot of time logged into Google Drive, you may not notice them.

When you come across a situation where you want to limit the amount of time that your folder remains shared, there's a script that can help you add an expiration date to the sharing status. The way it works is by creating a duplicate of what you originally shared (minus the … Read more

Google has released a new beta of its Chrome browser for Android that gives people the option to try new features such as WebGL and CSS graphics features.

The update, the third since the inaugural version of the Chrome beta for Android, shows not only more of the browser team's ambition but also a faster pace of change.

The unbranded stock browser that shipped with Android for years moved comparatively glacially, but in particular with the new Chrome beta releases for Android, Google is pushing for a broader feature set. And the code base is evidently an offshoot of … Read more

Google has finished a version of its Native Client programming technology that extends beyond mainstream x86 PC processors into the world of ARM chips.

Native Client, or NaCl for short, is designed to let programmers easily adapt the C or C++ software they've written for native software so that it can run as a part of Web apps, too. It's designed for high performance, but it's also got security mechanisms built in to counter the risks of running malicious code directly on the processor. The first version of NaCl, though, only worked on personal computers using Intel … Read more

Do you love reading articles online, but find yourself losing your spot often? The developer of MagicScroll Web Reader, Richard Wallis, proposes that the problem isn't social media and other computer distractions -- it's the way you scroll through large blocks of text online.

To combat the issue of scrolling and making your eyes search for where you left off, Wallis wrote a browser bookmarklet that changes normal scrolling to page-turning style. This means that instead of scrolling down a really long page, you can flip through it, just like you would do with a book.

Here's … Read more

BitTorrent Surf is a new Chrome add-on (download) that turns the browser into a torrent client. While that's not an innovation on its own, this is the first time the company has built a complete torrent-manager for the browser.

In development for the past six months, according to the BitTorrent blog announcing the add-on, Surf lets you find torrents on the Web and download them.

Still in rough alpha, Surf goes beyond that. It allows for automatic torrent detection when you navigate to a site, and you can save favorite sites to "create your own combined engine," … Read more

Google got a big new ally in its Chrome OS push today: Lenovo, the No. 2 PC maker.

Although Lenovo is a notable ally, it's only really a foot in the door for Google. Lenovo's new ThinkPad X131e Chromebook is only geared for schools. Presumably it could lead to greater things for Google if the device gets a good reception, but this shouldn't be confused with Lenovo pushing a mainstream device the way the two existing Chrome OS partners, Acer and Samsung, have done.

It's not clear whether Lenovo has grander ambitions for Chrome OS, something … Read more

Android users who want to live an edgier life now can try a beta version of Chrome.

Google yesterday released the Chrome 25 beta for Android 4.x for smartphones and tablets, a version number in sync with the release for personal computers. Previously, the only option was the stable version of Chrome for Android, which is still way back at version 18.

The Chrome for Android beta is available on the Google Play app store, but only by following that link -- it's not visible in Google Play's search, Google said. The beta version can be installed … Read more