Google Dream Phone Makes Its Debut

NEW YORK - The long-awaited, breathlessly-rumored, Google-powered (and still unavailable until next month) G1 phone was unveiled today with a list price that undercuts Apple's iPhone by $20 but with few design or software elements that had not been anticipated.

The handset is made by HTC and the service is provided by T-Mobile -- but the buzz is all about the completely open source Android platform developed by Google, which allows third-party developers to create applications.

Indeed, it was the unadvertised appearance of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 45 minutes into what had been a routine presentation, that energized the packed media room. The pair skated onto the stage wearing rollerblades, perhaps taking a cue from the legendary, crowd-pleasing marketing prowess of Apple's Steve Jobs.

"I’m a bit of a geek and I really like tinkering with things," Brin said, pulling one of the black flip phones out of his pocket (also available in white and brown).

The G1 comes with three preinstalled applications that premiered in the Android developer contest: Ecorio, which measures your carbon footprint; ShopSavvy (formerly known as GoKart), which scans bar codes to compare prices; and BreadCrumbz to create a step-by-step visual map using photos.

While it doesn’t support DRM protected audio files, there is an Amazon MP3 application with the option of purchasing music directly to the device.

One of the more interesting features is the built-in compass, which displays a 360-degree Google Street view based on location. Other Google apps are also built right into the system, including support for Gmail and YouTube videos.

As for the hardware, the 5.6 ounce device is 4.60" x 2.16" and .62" thick, with a 3.17" display. It is as predicted, a swivel, sidekick-like flip phone with a QWERTY keyboard, and 3.17 inch touch display screen.

The web browser is based on WebKit. "You can think of it as 'Chrome Lite,'" says Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms.

The touchscreen works just like the iPhone, but uses what they call a "long press" to zoom in and select objects. The interface is drag-and-drop.

The G1 will be released on Oct. 22 and is priced at $180. Current T-Mobile customers can order it online today. You need to purchase a data plan in addition to a required voice plan. There are two service options available: a basic $25 limited data and SMS plan, or, for an extra 10 bucks you get unlimited messaging and internet.

© 2008 CondéNet, Inc. All rights reserved.

Adobe unveils CS4 suite

Adobe on Tuesday will unveil Creative Suite 4 (CS4), the latest update to the its suite of high-end applications for print, Web, and video professionals. Available in October, the suite consists of 13 products, 14 integrated technologies, and seven services.

One of the biggest changes users will notice right away is the new tabbed interface for applications in CS4. Adobe has given all of its applications the ability to use tabs, so you can have multiple tabs open at the same time, but still be in one window.

Files and objects can be shared across tabs by clicking and dragging them and holding them on a new tab. Of course, if you prefer the multiple window interface of the old Adobe products, you can still use that too.

Major standalone products released as part of CS4 include Photoshop, Photoshop Extended, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and Adobe Premiere.

If there is a consistent theme in Creative Suite 4, it's integration. Adobe integrated its Flash multimedia application across the CS4 applications. The company also focused on integrating common functions in other apps, too, as part of an effort to make pro users more efficient.

To allow collaboration Adobe now offers a set of online services on Acrobat.com to allow designers and clients to create and share documents. Groups can also use Adobe ConnectNow to meet live over the Web and share a computer screen. This gives designers the opportunity to get immediate feedback and make any necessary changes to a design without sending documents to clients and waiting for them to be returned.

Focusing on the mobile platform, applications across the suite are now more tightly integrated with Adobe Flash, which allows designers to use the SWF format for mobile devices.

CS4 includes an expanded version of Dynamic Link in the Production Premium suite that enables users to move content between After Effects CS4, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Soundbooth, and Encore, so updates can be seen instantly without rendering. Other new tools like Photoshop's Content-Aware Scaling automatically recomposes an image as it is resized, preserving vital areas as it adapts to new dimensions.

Adobe made some big changes with sharing and collaboration in CS4. Adobe ConnectNow, can be accessed from InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, and Acrobat 9 Pro, allowing real-time collaboration with two colleagues or clients.

Adobe Kuler, a Web-hosted application for generating color themes, is now accessible from within InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 and Fireworks CS4, and can be shared by designers. Kuler is available for owners of the individual applications or the suites.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 will be available in October. Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium will cost $1799 and includes InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional and Fireworks; Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium will be $1699 and includes Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Soundbooth, Acrobat and Contribute; and Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium is $1699 and includes After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Soundbooth, OnLocation and Encore.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection costs $2499 and includes InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, OnLocation and Encore.

Adobe will offer tiered upgrade pricing from previous versions depending on the applications you own. Details of the upgrades are available from Adobe's Web site.


For more Macintosh computing news, visit Macworld. Story copyright © 1994-2008 Mac Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Official Google Blog: The intelligent cloud

In coming years, computer processing, storage, and networking capabilities will continue up the steeply exponential curve they have followed for the past few decades. By 2019, parallel-processing computer clusters will be 50 to 100 times more powerful in most respects. Computer programs, more of them web-based, will evolve to take advantage of this newfound power, and Internet usage will also grow: more people online, doing more things, using more advanced and responsive applications. By any metric, the "cloud" of computational resources and online data and content will grow very rapidly for a long time.
As we're already seeing, people will interact with the cloud using a plethora of devices: PCs, mobile phones and PDAs, and games. But we'll also see a rush of new devices customized to particular applications, and more environmental sensors and actuators, all sending and receiving data via the cloud. The increasing number and diversity of interactions will not only direct more information to the cloud, they will also provide valuable information on how people and systems think and react

Official Google Blog: The intelligent cloud

The future of mobile

There are currently about 3.2 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world, and this number is expected to grow by at least one billion in the next few years. They are more prevalent than only 800 milliom Cars registered worldwide. While it took 100 years for land-line phones to spread to more than 80% of countries in the world, their wireless offspring did it in 16. So it's safe to say that the cell phone may be the most prolific consumer product ever invented.

Read Andy Rubin's The future of mobile at the Official Google blog.

Indian Team develops Intel's First 'true' quad-core chip

Intel launched its first "true" quad-core processors on Monday with the introduction of its Xeon 7400 series of server chips, formerly known Dunnington. Designed by Intel engineers in Bangalore, India, the chip lineup includes the first quad-core and six-core chips produced in a single piece of silicon. 

The Xeon 7400 series is the first Intel chip to exit the design centre in Bangalore. Founded in 2002, the center has worked previously in another server chip called Xeon Whitefield. But chip than ever to market. It was canceled in 2005, when Intel revised its product road maps to better compete with Advanced Micro Devices, and India design team then put their attention on Dunnington. 

Moreover, the design centre in Bangalore is the first team outside the U.S. Intel to complete the design of 45 nanometers processors. The chip design Dunnington marks a milestone for Intel, which already uses a monolithic die, the term engineers use to describe the placing of all cores on a single piece of silicon. 

Existing Intel quad-core processor lines use two pieces of silicon, each containing two cores packaged together. That approach made the older quad-core chips easier to produce and avoid manufacturing difficulties impeding the release of AMD Barcelona chip - an x86 server chip with four cores on a single piece of silicon. These difficulties were compounded by AMD in its transition to a new 65-nanometer manufacturing process. 

The manufacture of semiconductors is both art as science, and chip makers can fight for months to obtain high yields of a new manufacturing process. 

With the introduction of Dunnington - and the next line of quad-core Nehalem processors who also uses a monolithic design - Intel waited until their 45-nanometer process was in mass production, presumably overcame the technical difficulties, before making this transition .

Google Announces new Web Browser

Google announced Monday, in the unconventional guise of a 38-page comic book, its new Web browser project, Chrome. According to the comic, drawn by acclaimed comic artist and writer Scott McCloud, the forthcoming open-source browser is based on the open-source rendering engine WebKit, the same engine used by Apple's Safari browser and Google's own Android mobile-phone operating system.

The comic describes the Chrome browser as one designed to take advantage of today's Web, which features rich applications that run within a Web-browser interface. It features a tab-based interface with the tabs on top, above the browser's URL window and control buttons. According to the comic, the browser features a fast JavaScript engine from "the V8 team" in Denmark. Each browser tab runs as its own process and is sandboxed for stability and security reasons.

The Chrome browser will also feature a default home page that's automatically constructed by the browser based on the sites you visit and search frequently, presenting your favorite sites in a 3x3 grid on the left side of the screen with a list of frequently-searched sites on the right.

According to the comic, Google has been testing early development versions of Chrome by using Google's own catalog of sites to automatically stress-test the browser. Included in the browser will be Google's existing Google Gears system, which allows browsers to store and access information on local computers, allowing (for example) Google Docs to create and edit documents when a computer isn't connected to the Internet.

The comic only explicitly mentions Windows Vista, in the context of its security model. It's unclear what platforms the browser will support when it's released.

You can find the comic book here.

Sources [googleblog,Google blogoscoped, PC World]