Day in, day out…

Ever since they made the Chromium source code public yesterday morning, I’ve been itching to build it and take it for a spin. I did not know it would take only a couple hours to do that!

Getting and Building

I am so impressed! The instructions on the Getting and Building a Chromium-Based OS page are precise, to-the-point and.. they work! I am not sure if this is brilliant scripting, great documentation, me having just right prerequisites (Ubuntu Karmic Koala), or a combination of all these. But it took me just over an hour or so to download source and build a ‘.vmdk‘ file for VirtualBox. I did not see that coming.

I’ve built other projects from source before. It always involves some figuring-out. Sometimes the documentation is not adequate – may be inadequate for my skill-set. Sometimes the prerequisites are not clearly specified/checked. Building an entire OS, I was preparing for a few days of reading up and figuring things out.

But it was none of that. I just followed the steps – mostly word-to-word – and I had a virtual disk image (.vmdk file) at the end of it all!

The only change I had to do was to BASE_FROM in ~/chromiumos/src/platform/chrome/copy_chrome_zip.sh to use build.chormium.org instead of chrome-web. I think this was because I chose not to build Chromium (browser) from source. I am sure this will be ironed out soon (may be it is already).

Using in VirtualBox

I followed the instructions to Convert the image for VMWare, which creates a .vmdk file. Instead of using VMWare workstation, I used VirtualBox to fire it up.

Impressions

I love the concept of Google Chrome OS. I think it is very relevant to how we use the computer these days. It would be even better if Chrome OS would coexist with a normal OS on any laptop. I agree that most often we only use the computer to access the web and do most of our things on the Internet. But I am not ready to give up the full-fledged OS, not quite yet. Does that remind me of SplashTop?

Here are a couple of obligatory screenshots:

Chromium OS build in VirtualBox, running Google Wave

Following is the list of Apps currently on the home page. These showed up only today. Yesterday when I was trying the OS for the first time, one could only use @google.com usernames to sign in. I am sure things are going to be changing fast in the next weeks/months.

Apps on Chromium OS home page

Next…

Next thing I am going to try is to get hold of a 4GB USB drive and see if this image works on my laptop.

Secondly, I am curious to see if the OS updates itself in the VirtualBox, like Google has mentioned. If it does, I should not be required to build another image… ever!

Back to more experiments.

Later…

The requirement is simple:

It is desirable that when we use our browser on different computers, we want to feel at home on all of the computers. If we bookmark a website on one computer, other computers should also get it seamlessly. If we end up using a loaner computer, the bookmarks should be readily available online.

When I say feel at home, I have something very Mozilla Firefox specific in mind. I use Firefox’s smart URL bar, or what is called the AwesomeBar, extensively. When I start typing in the URL bar, I like to get suggestions based on my bookmarks and history. When I get the suggestions, I want them to be derived from the latest and the greatest of my bookmarks – bookmarks added on my current computer, or some other computer. Getting history from the other computer would be great too, but just bookmarks should be just fine.

So what are the options? From what I read, there are quite a few…

Weave

Weave from Mozilla Labs, to me, is the most promising candidate to solve the problem at hand. But it is far from ready for general consumption. Every new version (that comes out pretty frequently) seems to break something or the other – It is fixed very promptly too – but there is disruption. It is indeed in lab-mode.

Weave synchronizes variety of profile items

What I like about Weave is that it synchronizes almost your entire Firefox profile between multiple Firefox installations – Bookmarks, History, Tabs, Saved Passwords, may be even more in the future. The data is stored (by default) on Mozilla’s servers in an encrypted format, that only your can read. Privacy freaks concerned can setup their own servers, so their data stays with them. But then they must keep the server accessible from the internet.

All this is achieved using the UI elements that already exist in Firefox – namely, the star in the URL bar. It is very intuitive, and in most cases very seamless.

It is really neat.

The down side to weave, is that there is no web interface to the data on the server. So if I am on a loaner computer, or in an internet cafe, my bookmarks are not accessible to me. I cannot use my existing bookmarks. I cannot add a bookmark if I come across something useful.

Delicious

Delicious is one of the most widely used social bookmarking service. Delicious add-on for Firefox provides an additional bookmarking system where the bookmarks are stored on the Delicious website. The add-on provides handy buttons to manage the online bookmarks.

Delicious adds button that do things similar to Firefox’s star

Although the Delicious website says that the add-on enhances Firefox’s bookmarking system, in my opinion, it is more like an additional bookmarking system. The add-on adds UI elements to Firefox toolbar to interact with Delicious bookmarks. A tag button that functions exactly like the star in Firefox’s URL bar. A new window to add tags to the new bookmark, where you input almost the same information that you do in Firefox’s native interface. A bookmarks menu item, that is very similar to the native Firefox bookmarks menu. There’s just too much redundancy.

Since Delicious is mainly an online service, it has a very mature and efficient web interface. And because all your bookmarks are online, you can access them from any computer with an internet connection – whether it is your own or a loaner or one in an internet cafe.

Google Bookmarks

Google Bookmarks is a part of Google Web History. Like Delicious, the bookmarks are saved online and they can be accessed from any online computer.

Google Toolbar adds its own star

Google Bookmarks integrate well with the Google Toolbar for Firefox. Also like Delicious, the interface provided by the Google toolbar for bookmarking is exactly like Firefox’s own. The toolbar adds its own star, which is used to bookmark a website, or edit (add tags to) an existing bookmark.

Foxmarks A.K.A. Xmarks

Foxmarks which is now known as Xmarks is also a strong contender in this space. It has the goods of both online bookmarking services and native Firefox bookmark synchronizing. Xmarks provides an add-on for Firefox (in addition to Internet Explorer and Safari, which is an added bonus), that just synchronizes your bookmarks with an online storage on xmarks.com. They have a neat web interface to manage the online bookmarks. Any changes made online, or on any computer are automatically synchronized.

The missing link

Although Delicious and Google Bookmarks provide a usable interface with Firefox, there is one deficiency in both of them that is very significant to me (an AwesomeBar user). Bookmarks on Delicious or Google Bookmarks don’t become a part of Firefox Bookmarks, and hence are not accounted in the search algorithm used by the AwesomeBar. If I add a bookmark to either of the two services, it will not be suggested when I type something in the URL bar.

Conclusion

I love the fact that online bookmarks (Delicious/Google Bookmarks) are available from anywhere on the internet. However, no matter how much I try to get used to one of the two services, I miss that fact that online bookmark are not included in the AwesomeBar suggestions.

A web interface to manage Weave’s bookmarks online will be a welcome feature. Or If add-ons provided by online bookmark services somehow integrate their bookmarks with Firefox’s bookmarks, that would be cool too.

Until then, it will have to be an inconvenient combination of the two.

I have not used Xmarks long enough to form a solid opinion about it. I’ll just have to play around with it for a while.

Edit: Added Foxmarks/Xmarks as a viable alternative, after this post was first written.

Edit (05/12/2009): Well, looks like the Delicious add-on for Firefox just came a step closer to the way I like it. With its version 2.1.041 released yesterday (?) delicious bookmarks are now integrated with the AwesomeBar. In addition, if you start typing in the address bar with ??, AwesomeBar will show only Delicious bookmarks. If you start typing with >>, AwesomeBar will show Delicious tags. This is great! Now if it could just reuse Firefox’s native UI elements…

Looks like the Google Street-View guy is spreading some cheer on Google’s 10^th birthday!

Google Street-View guy spotted with party hat and balloons!

Happy 10^th, Google!

It bugged that over the past few days, I was seeing different Google News at work and a different looking one at home. An entry on the Google News blog explained why:

Google News Blog: Testing… testing… is this on?:

… They’ll only be visible to a small number of random Google News readers. (In case you’re wondering, experiments are selected randomly, so we can’t give you any advice for how to get in!)…

Although, what is selected randomly? Username? IP address?

Is it just me? Or others are getting too many Oops! messages from Google websites lately?

I got this one from the Gmail…

Gmail Oops! message after archiving a message

And this one from Google Calendar…

Google Calendar Oops! message after creating a new event

… more than a few times today. Almost a 5-10 times everyday in the last few days, combined on all Google sites I use.

Looks like I am growing out of the initial disappointment with Gmail IMAP. Although the mapping of labels to folders is still uncomfortable, thanks to some useful tips floating around on the web, I have been able to configure my clients much better now.

I did not have a lot of trouble with Thunderbird to begin with. I use the nightly build on Linux, it works fine with Gmail IMAP. After mapping Trash, Drafts, Sent and Spam folders to those on [Gmail], things work great. The only flaw I see is that even after mapping Thunderbird’s Trash folder to [Gmail]/Trash, Thunderbird’s Trash folder stays put. This causes the unwelcome [Imap]/Trash label on the web interface.

Two Trash folders on
Thunderbird on Ubuntu Gutsy

On the Mac, I had expressed my doubts on how Mail.app would handle multiple IMAP accounts. This was because when I configured one Gmail IMAP account, Gmail folders were created at the top level. I was worried that more than one accounts would step on each other’s folders. Thankfully, Mail.app handles multiple accounts just fine. Mapping Mail.app’s Trash, Drafts, Sent and Spam folders to Gmail’s is easy. Select [Gmail]/Trash, for example, and use Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> Trash from the menu-bar. Repeat that for other special folders.

So, there are some rough edges as far as the clients’ implementation of IMAP goes, Gmail labels are rendered pretty much useless – but all the clients are in sync! Not bad at all…

I noticed today that Google has started rolling out support for IMAP on Gmail accounts. This is something I was waiting for since a long time. Gmail’s POP access is too inadequate when it came to accessing Gmail from multiple desktop email clients.

I was lucky enough to have one of my accounts enabled for IMAP. First thing I did was start playing around with it.

My first impression – I hope I grow out if it – is that Google’s mapping of Gmail features to IMAP features is very disappointing. It’s workable, but may be I was expecting something smarter from folks at Google. After using Gmail IMAP for a few hours, I’ve started to think that the POP option suits me better for access with desktop email clients (whooda thunk!). Web Gmail is still my favorite flavor – but it does not make messages available for off-line use (Say what? Gears?).

So what is it that I don’t like about the new IMAP access?

• I like the concepts of labels or tags when it comes to organizing files, email messages, things – as against folders. Tags are much easier to search, manage. If a message belongs in two different categories, you can add two (or more) tags. You don’t have to waste time deciding which folder to file it in. Labels and Folders are two completely orthogonal concepts – they can coexist, but they cannot be mapped. I was hoping that Google kept them that way. As it turns out, Google has tried to map Labels to folders. As one would expect, this causes multiple copies of messages on the desktop.
• It may be just my lack of knowledge about IMAP, but I had thought that information about labels, stars etc. would be carried in custom message headers, so that desktop applications can use the labels as they are on Gmail web. There would just be one big All Mail folder
• From what I have read though, there are a lot of Gmail users who hate (or don’t understand) labels and dearly miss the concept of folders. Rejoice suckers!
• I configured Thunderbird 3.0 (pre-release) and Apple Mail to use IMAP access to Gmail. Things look pretty OK on Thunderbird. Notice this, all Gmail folders are created under an account tree (account name obscured).
  

  Gmail IMAP folders on
  Thunderbird on Ubuntu Gutsy

  On Apple Mail though, Gmail folders are created at the top level.

  

  Gmail IMAP folders on Apple Mail

  If one wants to configure multiple Gmail accounts, I can see it work in Thunderbird with the [Gmail] folders under each account tree. On Apple Mail will the [Gmail] for different accounts stomp on each other? I am not even going to try that before I hear from someone else who has done that without problems.

• This label-folder mapping also causes funky things to happen to Web Gmail when you move messages on the desktop client. Not something I found very impressive.

So there… Like I said, I hope this changes, but for now, I am not a big fan of Gmail IMAP.

I use Google Reader a lot. On one of my computers, I use a theme that works really good.

Sometime between last night and this morning, the theme suddenly broke. When I reloaded the page, the entire look of Reader had changed. I removed the theme to checkout the new design. It was pretty neat actually. There was a hide arrow for the left side bar. A Google Groups -like My Subscriptions drop-down.

But now I see, the Reader look is restored! It’s back to normal! Was I dreaming? Or somehow the new design got live by mistake… we’ll see.

By the way, its a great time to have a lot of spare cash … why? why??

Although I’d much rather wait for a 30/60GB iPod Touch …

Update(9/6/2007): Looks like the new Reader look is live now!

Google, which started as just a search engine, has so many tools and services now. Lot of them are useful in everyday life.

Tool Integration related

It is nice to see how these tools/services work with each other so well:

• Google Talk in Gmail
• Online status, Google talk in Orkut
• Gmail contacts, Google Talk in Docs and Spreadsheets
• Gmail and Calendar
• Maps and Picasa Web Albums

… to mention a few. But there are still quite a few that would be nice to have. Following is a kind of a wish list of some ways Google tools could work together and enhance the user experience – from my perspective:

Google maps still seems like a standalone tool. On its own, it is probably the best online maps website. Some of the new features are really useful. My Maps, re-routing directions, the newly added third party content etc. But Google Maps doesn’t seem to integrate well with rest of the Google tools.

• It would be nice to be able to pick locations in My Maps as venues in Calendar, for instance
• How about a My Maps collection of all the Gmail contacts
• My Maps collection for geo-tagged albums in Picasa Web Albums

Google Calendar is well integrated with Gmail. But it would be nice to have a Google Docs and Spreadsheets document/spreadsheet attached to an appointment. For instance, if the appointment is a party, a spreadsheet of party supplies to be bought, party activities planned, etc.

Other

IMAP access to Gmail must be on the top of many Gmail users’ wish lists. I am hoping that the Gmail team is secretly working on this! If and when IMAP is supported, I’d like to see tags in the header of messages – that can be added and read by the desktop mail application. The current POP access available with Gmail is only good if Gmail is accessed from just one desktop. And the tags, the feature of Gmail that I love the most, is totally useless with POP access.

Google Calendar plugin for iCal is something that I had expected to be out after Mac Team was formed at Google. But hasn’t happened so far. There are other solutions that provide the functionality, but something coming from Google would be nice to have (like the Picasa Web Albums plugin for iPhoto.)

I am sure there is going to be a sequel to this post some time soon, with more wishes. When that happens, I’ll love to see some of the above wishes already granted!

To me, this was a long time coming. Google Desktop Search for Linux is finally here. I did not waste time trying it out. So far it looks pretty impressive…

It does not have the sidebar and gadgets like the windows version, but the desktop search seems good so far.