native

Google's answer to Java, Flash, Windows: Native Client

Rumors have abounded over the years about a Google operating system, perhaps based on the Ubuntu version of Linux widely used within the company, but on Monday the company revealed an open-source project that provides a different answer to the same problem: Native Client.

The reason I've been skeptical about Google releasing an operating system of its own is that the company has such a Web-based view of the world. But Web apps have limits, impressive gains of Google Docs notwithstanding, and Native Client is geared to address those.

"At Google we're always trying to make the … Read more

Harvard professor sees answers to nagging Web-youth issues

John Palfrey, one of Harvard's leading thinkers on the Internet, has recently finished a study on kids raised in the digital age. He now has a few tips to share about Web porn, online piracy, and Sen. John McCain's lack of tech know-how.

Palfrey, a Harvard law professor and director of the school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, visited CNET's headquarters on Tuesday to discuss the findings of a recent study of a group he calls "digital natives." These are people who don't know life before cell phones, computers, and the Internet. … Read more

eBay gets its own native iPhone app (update)

On Monday, eBay announced and demonstrated its new Auctions app at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Users can log in to their accounts to buy and sell items wherever they are. The app integrates with Webkit, allowing people to write out full descriptions just like they would in Safari, which has been formatted to match the finger-friendly screen. Users can also browse and sort through auction photos the same way they're used to doing with native albums.

While eBay has recently been taking steps to improve its Web 2.0 initiatives with social widgets and a really slick looking Adobe Air app, … Read more

Guitar Rig 3: Kontrol Edition

Ready to toss off the training wheels of Guitar Hero and learn to play an actual guitar? Maybe you already know how to play guitar, but your wife hates it when you turn on your crappy old practice amp and treat the neighbors to your rendition of Slayer's Raining Blood. My comrade in rock, welcome to Guitar Rig 3: Kontrol Edition.

Wondering what the hell I'm talking about? Guitar Rig 3 turns your computer into the guitar amplifier of your dreams, and the Kontrol Edition comes bundled with a sweet foot controller that doubles as a USB audio … Read more

'Frontline' on 'Growing Up Online'

When PBS's Frontline reported on "Growing Up Online" this week, it called the gulf between kids who grew up with technology and their parents "the greatest generation gap since rock 'n' roll." That's a bitter pill to swallow for adults in their '30s and '40s who have been involved in computers for 20-plus years, but I have to say I agree with their assessment. Maybe we kicked it old school with Pong and the Atari 2600. Or we had a Commodore 64 or a Macintosh with a whopping 512K of memory. We may have even written code since we were teens ourselves, but that's nothing compared to growing up with ubiquitous access to cell phones, media, and social networking.

Producer Caitlin McNally describes this shift in thinking that exists even between her, as a twentysomething, and the teens she interviewed:

Despite the research we did, I don't think I was prepared when we started talking to kids for the extent to which the Internet and other electronic communication has permeated all aspects of being a teenager. Almost every kid expressed the utter importance of being connected with friends all the time and how unthinkable a life without that connection would be. I think a lot of kids were bemused by our list of questions about 'life online,' because they don't sit around thinking about the Internet in their lives. It's just there, always, another tool for them to use or place for them to go.

… Read more