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Intel, Microsoft event to highlight Windows 7 improvements

Intel and Microsoft will hold an event next week to discuss collaboration on improvements to Windows 7.

The event, on September 1 in San Francisco, will "share how the two companies collaborated on key enhancements during the development of Windows 7," according to Intel. Steve Smith, vice president and director, Intel's Digital Enterprise Group Operations, and Michael Angiulo, general manager of Windows Planning and PC Ecosystem at Microsoft, will talk at the event. Microsoft plans to launch Windows 7 on October 22.

Windows 7 collaboration will be demonstrated by engineers from both companies, according to Intel. Not … Read more

Xmarks extension alpha for Chrome arrives

Some selected Chrome users who want to synchronize browser bookmarks with their other browsers now can get a start.

Xmarks, whose browser addition can keep bookmarks synced across Firefox, Internet Explorer, and the Mac OS X version of Safari, has released an alpha version of a Chrome extension to selected testers.

"We've been swamped with requests to create a version of Xmarks for the Google Chrome browser. We're hard at work on that and, thanks to some new APIs (application programming interfaces) from Google, are pleased to report that we have Xmarks synchronization working in the Windows … Read more

Chrome gets bookmark sync with version 4.x

Google has issued the first developer preview version of its Chrome browser to reach the version 4.x milestone, a phase that should bring some advanced features in the forthcoming HTML 5 specification for Web pages but that for now just sports a cloud-based bookmark synchronization tool.

"Once you set up sync from the Tools menu, Chrome will then upload and store your bookmarks in your Google Account. Anytime you add or change a bookmark, your changes will be sent to the cloud and immediately broadcast to all other computers for which you've activated bookmark sync," programmer Tim Steele said in a blog post Monday. Steele introduced the Chrome bookmark feature less than three weeks ago.

I set up the bookmarks feature with no trouble on version 4.0.201.1 of Chrome for Windows; note that to get it to work, you must specifically enable it at launch by adding the "--enable-sync" option to the launch command. The wrench menu (think tools) offers the new menu item to synchronize bookmarks. Clicking on it springs open a dialog box that prompts you to log in with a Google account; doing so then sends the bookmarks to the server.

The Mac version of Chrome--which by the way now enables by default plug-ins such as Adobe Systems' Flash and has grown much more stable--didn't yet support bookmark sync Monday night, so I couldn't test the actual synchronization itself on my present home setup.

Google doesn't draw much attention to version numbers, using them more as developer placeholders than beacons for marketing or support purposes. Google updates Chrome automatically, so users often get new versions without even knowing about it. But the new versions can indicate when the company is making significant changes behind the scenes. … Read more

Adobe's next Lightroom to forsake PowerPC Macs

Adobe Systems, taking the same course with its forthcoming Creative Suite applications, will offer the next Mac OS X version of Photoshop Lightroom only on Intel-based machines.

Apple has chosen to discontinue support for Macs using PowerPC processors beginning with its next operating system, version 10.6 aka Snow Leopard, which is due to arrive in coming weeks. Adobe said last week that its next Creative Suite will follow suit. The CS family includes programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, DreamWeaver, and Flash Professional.

Lightroom, which is for editing and cataloging photos, isn't part of the suite, but it'… Read more

Mozilla nudges Firefox users to latest version

A month and a half after Mozilla issued a significant update to its open-source Web browser, the organization has begun encouraging users of Firefox 3 to install version 3.5.

Firefox 3.0.13 users will see an offer to download the latest iteration of the newer version, 3.5.2, according to a blog post. Firefox 3.5.2 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Users can go ahead with the update, postpone the reminder, or shut it off altogether, but don't expect this latter option to permanently mute the reminder. Firefox 3.0.x will stop receiving stability and security patches in January, … Read more

Mozilla issues first Firefox 3.6 alpha version

Mozilla has released the first alpha version of Firefox 3.6 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, a browser with speed improvements and new features the organization hopes to finalize faster than its predecessor.

"Unlike the year that passed between Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5, we expect that this 3.6 release will be released in a small number of months," Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard said in a blog post Friday.

Firefox 3.6, code-named Namoroka, has a variety of changes, but it's not as dramatic a departure as 3.5 was from 3.0. Among the … Read more

Microsoft joins HTML 5 standard fray in earnest

After leaving much of the creation of a new version of HTML to Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla, Microsoft has begun sinking its teeth into the Web standard.

The move adds clout to the effort to renovate HyperText Markup Language, the standard used to describe Web pages, which last was formally updated in 1999. In a mailing list posting on Friday, the software giant offered a host of questions and concerns with the present proposal.

"As part of our planning for future work, the IE team is reviewing the current editor's draft of the HTML5 spec and gathering our thoughts. We want to share our feedback and discuss this in the working group," said Internet Explorer Program Manager Adrian Bateman in the message. "I will post our notes as we collect them so we can iterate on our thinking more quickly. At this stage we have more questions than answers, but I believe that discussing them in public is the best way to make progress."

HTML 5 in its current draft form includes a number of significant advancements, notably several that make the Web a better foundation for applications, not just static Web pages. Among the present HTML 5 features are built-in video and audio, the ability to store data on a local computer to enable use of Web applications even when offline, Web Workers that can perform computational chores in the background without bogging down Web application responsiveness, Canvas for creating sophisticated two-dimensional graphics, and drag-and-drop for better Web application user interfaces. … Read more

Adobe kills low-end Photoshop, urges users online

Adobe Systems is discontinuing Photoshop Album Starter Edition, the lowest rung on its ladder of image-editing software products, and the company is nudging its users toward the online Photoshop.com site.

Adobe launched Photoshop Album Starter Edition in 2003 as a free, bare-bones image cataloging and editing package. Adobe discontinued the line, though, and support for it ended June 30.

So what's the alternative? In a customer note, Adobe puts its online service front and center.

"As part of our commitment to providing customers with a free photo-editing solution, we have created Photoshop.com, an exciting new online … Read more

New Chrome beta reflects bigger Google challenge

Features that Google brought to its developer preview version of Chrome--themes, a revamped new-tab page, a tweaked Omnibox for searching and entering Web addresses, and support for HTML 5 video--have now arrived on the browser's better tested beta version intended for broader use.

Individually, these features in Chrome 3.0.195.4 (download) are niceties. Collectively, they show Google is steadily moving ahead with its browser project, which was ambitious even before Chrome OS arrived on the scene. Fighting for a piece of the browser market is tough, but offering an operating system solely for Web-based applications is … Read more

What Google's got cooking with Chrome

The Chrome browser still has some distance to go to shift beyond technophiles and into the mainstream. Here's what Google's been working on lately.

New Chrome beta reflects bigger Google challenge Google has moved several features to its more beta version of Chrome. Next up: moving beyond the early adopters. (Posted in Business Tech by Stephen Shankland) August 5, 2009 11:09 AM PDT

Google launches Chrome gallery Google publishes a collection of 29 skins to customize its browser's appearance. Mozilla, meanwhile, boasts it has more than 20,000. (Posted in Business Tech by Stephen Shankland) August Read more