Google Launching OS, Firing Torpedo Into Microsoft (And Apple) Hold (MSFT, GOOG, AAPL)

Google will launch its own operating system in the second half of next year, finally launching a direct assault on Microsoft's crown jewel.

(It has been headed here in all but name for the past two years. But last night it finally declared war.)

The OS will initially be targeted to netbooks, then broadened to all PCs. It will be a combination of a Google Chrome browser and a Linux kernel. It will be a different project than Android. It will be designed to be simple and fast. It will also, presumably, be free.

Google's blog post announcing the browser is below. A few points:

A year of development is a long time, and it shows how complex an undertaking this will be. Announcing the product a year early is also a major break with Google tradition and shows how much Google needs help from partners in this endeavor to be successful. (An OS that is distributed only by downloads won't work. It needs to come loaded on the machine. This has been the big problem with Chrome so far, and Google needs to address it.)

Success is far from guaranteed. Google's browser initiative, Chrome, has been a fun little science project, but as a product it has been a flop. The same can be said for almost all of Google's non-search products. If Google wants to have a chance at success in this business, it needs to focus on it with the same intensity it once put into search. This will be challenging for Google, which, for the last several years, has had the luxury of dabbling in whatever it pleases.

Assuming the OS is free to both users and OEM PC makers, Microsoft will need to soup up the free version of its own Windows 7 OS for netbooks (right now, Microsoft's plan is to ship a crappy free version of 7 and try to get users to upgrade. Eventually, if Google starts to gain traction, Microsoft may need to panic.)

This is classic disruption. Disruptive technologies do not immediately replace existing technologies because they are better. In fact, in the beginning, they are worse. They're just simpler, cheaper, and more convenient. They appeal to the low end of the market (in this case, netbooks), which doesn't need all the bells and whistles that the high-end needs. They initially gain share in the low end, and the incumbent doesn't care about losing it because it's low-margin share. But then... the disruptive products get better and more fully featured and they begin to migrate up to the mid-market. And the incumbent is forced to retreat to the high-margin high-end. And then, eventually, the disruptive product becomes mass market and the incumbent becomes a rickety old colossus that crashes in on itself.

Microsoft needs to forget about competing with Google on search and start figuring out how to defend its crown jewels against this assault. It won't be easy. But blowing $10 billion going after a business they don't have to be in while ignoring the front-line invasion Google just launched will be disastrous.

Apple needs to worry, too. Not as much as Microsoft, obviously. But Apple sells integrated hardware and software devices. And if free software begins to take over the world, that will increase the price advantage that Apple's competitors already have.

All of this is at least a year away. That's a decade in the technology business. But it will be the story of the year...

Bing Translator

Do you ever come across a situation where you need to quickly translate a page or some text which is not in the language that you speak? Then you should really give the new Bing Translator - http://www.bing.com/translator a try.

Bing Translator currently supports about 15 languages including - English, Dutch, French, Chinese, Arabic, German, Italian, Japanese Korean, Russian, Spanish and many more. If you have previously used any translation service like Google Translate, then you probably already know how to use it. Bing Translator has a very easy to use interface, just dump some text or a URL in the left hand box on the page and select the source language (auto-detect is default) and select the language that you wish your text/website to be translated to and finally click translate!

This neat thing about this particular translation tool is - if you are translating a website, bing automatically opens both the original and the translated page side by side in a frame. If you click on a particular section of the page it also highlights that portion of the page in the translated version. So in terms of usability, I personally find Bing Translator awesome. However Google Translate supports more languages at this point of time but I’m sure that Bing will catch up with them in no time.

So if you ever need any translation done try Bing Translator!

Google's Chrome OS puts pressure on Microsoft

Google Inc.'s plan to introduce a free operating system for personal computers opens a new front in its longtime battle with Microsoft Corp.

Already rivals in search, e-mail and word processing, the two technology titans are now poised for combat over the key software that runs PCs.

Google announced its operating system, Google Chrome OS, late Tuesday, saying in a blog post that it would initially target netbooks, the portable low-cost computers that are popular for getting online. Eventually, the system would be refined for desktop computers, a market that Microsoft dominates through its Windows franchise.

Almost immediately, Silicon Valley started handicapping the impending high-profile duel. Could this be what finally brings Microsoft down?

If history is any guide, Google's success is far from certain. Indeed, both companies have repeatedly invaded each other's turf, usually to limited effect.

Google, in Mountain View, controls 65 percent of the U.S. search market, according to online measurement firm comScore Inc. Hoping to steal some of Google's thunder, Microsoft unveiled its own search engine in 2005, but it has so far failed to gain much traction, fielding only 8 percent of all queries in May.

Undaunted, Microsoft spent heavily on a search overhaul last month - renaming its engine Bing - and in the process elicited praise from many analysts for its improvement in design. Still, it's too early to say whether the revamp will transform Microsoft into a more serious challenger to Google or prove to be another expensive mistake.

Meanwhile, Google is trying mightily to chip away at Microsoft's desktop software such as word processing, e-mail, spread sheets and calendars. Google's sales pitch is that its products are online - unlike Microsoft's, which must be downloaded - and they are therefore accessible from anywhere.

Earlier this week, Google said that 1.75 million companies use its rival services, called Apps, which come in free and paid versions. But the numbers fall far short of Microsoft Office, which rules the business desktop market.

Spencer Tall, managing director at Allegis Capital, a venture capital firm in Palo Alto that invests in technology companies, said Google's initial attempt with Chrome OS isn't likely to deal much of a blow to Microsoft. Any inroads Google makes, he said, will take years, if it happens at all.
"Microsoft fights wars of attrition - they never give up," Tall said. "Does Google have that fortitude?"
Google's Chrome OS is to be based on its Chrome Web browser, which was introduced nine months ago. Outside developers will be invited to work on the code, with the finished product made available in the second half of 2010.

Success will depend on persuadingflipF computer makers to dump Microsoft Windows, on which many currently rely, for Chrome. Getting such agreements would better position Google to lure consumers to its other products.

"From Google's standpoint, it wants to consolidate its hold on the desktop and that means nudging Microsoft out of the way,"

said Chris Le Tocq, an analyst with Guernsey Research.
The rivalry has left bad blood between the two companies. Google executives often allude to Microsoft's antitrust conviction in 2000 and tried to thwart Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in turn, once famously vowed to bury Google CEO Eric Schmidt and to "kill Google" after an employee disclosed plans to resign and join Google, according to the employee's sworn testimony in a court case.

Google and Microsoft declined to comment for this article.

Google's executives cast their new operating system as a speedy alternative for people who spend most of their computer time online. It's similar to how they touted the Chrome browser, which has gained less than 2 percent of the market compared with 66 percent for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, according to Net Applications.

Short term, Le Tocq said that consumers will take time to adopt something to which they aren't accustomed.

"Does it mean that corporate America should be throwing out its PC operating system?" Le Tocq said. "No."

But longer term, he said the free Chrome OS puts pressure on Microsoft's core businesses, which is based on charging for Windows. Offering a reduced price version of Windows with fewer features is one counter move Microsoft may have to make, he said.

"It leaves a gap and Google is stepping into the gap," he said.

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of 2008

As 2008 moves toward its end, we have been taking a a look at the most pirated titles in various categories. Following our Top 10 games post where ‘Spore’ headlined, we now take a look at movies. Unsurprisingly, The Dark Knight comes out on top, with the rest of the chart featuring a few surprising entries, and some unexpected absentees.

Mirroring its success at the box office, The Dark Knight is leading this list of 2008’s most pirated movies on BitTorrent. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the sequel to ‘Batman Begins’ holds the record for the best opening week and weekend in movie history, and has grossed close to a billion dollars worldwide.

The film’s success doesn’t stop at the box office either. Earlier this week the DVD was released, and on the first day in stores 3 million copies were sold in the United States, Canada and the UK.
Alongside these impressive real-world sales, the film beat the competition on BitTorrent and other filesharing networks too. With more than 7 million downloads on BitTorrent alone, The Dark Knight now holds the title of most pirated movie of 2008. Comments on various BitTorrent sites reveal that many downloaders obtained an illegal copy after they had already watched the movie in the movie theater.

As with every other blockbuster, ‘The Dark Knight’ was leaked onto the Internet in various formats. It began right after the premiere in July with a cammed version, which was celebrated by the folks from The Pirate Bay. The ‘cam’ was followed by a DVD-screener in early September, and a DVD in November. The latter release turned out to be the most popular among filesharers.

As we look over the rest of the top 10, we see that there are quite a few differences between popularity at the box office, and on filesharing networks. ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, for example, came in second at the box office, but only came in 30th place in the download chart. On the contrary, ‘The Bank Job’ is the third most pirated movie on BitTorrent, but just 66th at the box office.

The data for this list is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. All formats, including cammed versions are counted, and based on previous experience a correction is made for smaller .torrent releases that we might have missed.

1
The Dark Knight
7,030,000
$996,500,000
2
The Incredible Hulk
5,840,000
$262,300,000
3
The Bank Job
5,410,000
$64,300,000
4
You Don’t Mess With The Zohan
5,280,000
$201,800,000
5
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
5,240,000
$457,400,000
6
Juno
5,190,000
$231,300,000
7
Tropic Thunder
4,900,000
$187,200,000
8
I Am Legend
4,870,000
$584,200,000
9
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
4,400,000
$104,500,000
10
Horton Hears a Who!
4,360,000
$296,945,439

Set Up "Push" Gmail on Your iPhone

"Push" Gmail on iPhone

Despite iPhone 3.0's push notifications and previously mentioned Google Sync's contacts and calendars syncing chops, push Gmail still hasn't come to the iPhone. But with the Prowl iPhone application, you can now push Gmail notifications—and then some—to your iPhone.

What Prowl Does
The $3 Prowl iPhone application [iTunes App Store Link] works in conjunction with Growl, the universal notification application for Macs, to push desktop notifications to your iPhone. (The current release of Growl for Windows doesn't yet work with Prowl, but the latest unreleased version supposedly already does—meaning Windows users should be able to do this once Growl for Windows updates.)

How It Works

Whenever an application sends a notification to Growl, Growl sends that notification to Prowl's servers, which in turn sends a push notification to your iPhone. So, for example, if you've got Growl set up to display new Gmail notifications (details below), Prowl can push those same notifications to your iPhone. The cool part about Prowl is that it doesn't just work with Gmail—it works with anything that Growl does.

NOTE: What you'll get after following these instructions isn't true push email, but it's a pretty solid approximation. In fact, in order for it to work consistently, you'll need to have an always-on computer to push your Growl notifications to your iPhone. But until something better comes along, it's a pretty strong alternative.

Set Up Prowl with Growl

If you haven't already, go download and install Growl (it will install as a new preference pane in the System Preferences of your Mac).

Next, head over to the Prowl web site and register for an account (Prowl doesn't even require an email address). Once registered, download the Prowl plug-in for Growl, unzip it, and double-click the Prowl.growlView file to install the Prowl plug-in to Growl.

Once you've done that, you're ready to set up Prowl on your computer. Fire up the Growl preference pane (System Preference -> Growl), then click on the Display Options tab. Select Prowl in the Display Styles list on the left, then enter the Prowl username and password you registered with and click Verify to make sure Growl can properly talk to Prowl's servers. (If everything's copacetic, you'll see a green checkmark next to the Password field.) If you want to use Prowl as the default for Growl (meaning you want the majority of your Growl notifications pushed to your iPhone), you can also set Prowl as the default from the Default Style drop-down.

When you set Prowl as your display notification type, you still get to choose what your Growl notifications will look like—you just do so through this Prowl display options menu. Make sure you've ticked the checkbox labeled Display notifications using style, then select the style you prefer (I'm a smoke person). You can also adjust what kind of Growl notifications Prowl will forward and when—for example, I've set Growl to only send notifications to Prowl when the priority is at least High, and I only send notifications when my computer has been idle for more than 5 minutes (presumably you don't need push notifications if you're already sitting at your computer).

If you've already downloaded Prowl to your iPhone (and choked on the $3 price tag—yeah, we're cheap) and logged into your Prowl account from your device, any new Growl notifications with Prowl set as the display type will push those notifications to your iPhone. Pretty cool, huh? That can potentially include anything from your IM client to your iTunes notifier and, yes, Gmail. Of course, Gmail requires a little more set up.

Set Up Gmail Notifier with Growl and Prowl

In order to get Gmail playing nice with Growl, you've got a few more steps to go. First, you need to download and install the Google Notifier for Mac—the official Gmail and Google Calendar notifier from Google. Next, download the Google+Growl plug-in for Google Notifier, unzip it, and install the Google+Growl Utility to your Applications folder. When you run it, this little utility keeps its eye on the Google Notifier and pushes any new email updates (and event alerts, if you wish) to Growl... which, if set up with Prowl, pushes the alert to your iPhone.

To make sure Google+Growl is set to work with Prowl, open up Growl one more time, click the Applications tab, and double-click on Google+Growl. Make sure Prowl is set as the default display style, then click the Notifications tab. On this tab, you'll see a notifications drop-down with New Event and New Gmail selections. Make sure that both are set with Prowl as the display style. (If, like me, you're setting Prowl only to push high priority Growl notifications, make sure you set the priority to High as well.

Keep in mind that you need to keep Google+Growl running in the background for the whole system to work, too. It all sounds fairly convoluted for something that should be so simple, but once you've got it set up, you shouldn't have to do any fiddling after that

----------------------------------------------------------------

A year or so ago I was using a third-party background app (required jailbreak) called iMapIDLE that simulated push for Gmail, and while it looks like something similar is undergoing review for the App Store, the Prowl approach seems like another very solid one. It doesn't require you to hand over any usernames or passwords to a third party, since the notifications are all coming from your computer, and it can work with all sorts of notifications that Growl already supports (imagine getting a notification that your BitTorrent client just finished downloading that movie while you're picking up dinner, for example).

As I said above, Windows support for using Prowl in conjunction with Growl for Windows isn't quite there, but it should be very soon, making this a pretty solid solution for rolling notifications for just about anything from your desktop—and that, we like very much.

Got something clever you'd like to use Prowl for aside from Gmail push notifications? Have another, better method you're already using? Let's hear it in the comments.

Nine Must-Have Features We Want to See in a Google OS

What's inside Google's just-announced Chrome Operating System? How does it work, exactly? Nobody outside Google knows. We can, however, build a dream operating system from the ground up, and that's what we're doing with some help from the hive mind.

We asked on Twitter what features users wanted to see in Google's Linux-based, web-focused operating system, due to be released in code later this year, then on sponsored netbooks in the second half of 2010. We've compiled nine must-have features that we'd like to see from Google's upcoming operating system here.

Speed, Speed, Speed


"Well I'll be more than happy with a 10 sec. boot time. Also, Google should drive software companies to consider Linux seriously."

"if they want me to care, it has to make me go "holy crap, THIS IS FAST"; just like did when I started using chrome"


There are two schools of thought on the boot-up speed wars—one being that, if you're going to work all day on a computer, a few more seconds at start-up don't really matter. The other idea, though, is exactly what Google's aiming at: the netbook as something you fire up, quickly jump on the net with, then suspend or shut down when you're done or moving again. If Google can recreate the relative speed of Chrome as a browser to Chrome as an operating system, it's definitely going to open more eyes.

Of course, it's not just about boot-up speeds. Regardless of how quickly an operating system boots up, what matters the majority of the time is how fast it works when you're actually using it. Google will probably be aiming for the sweet spot between kitchen sink functionality and fast, lightweight operation. We'd guess that the first few releases will be fairly barebones to keep things snappy.

Seamless Syncing of Your Browser and Desktop

Browser with syncable bookmarks. Thats A+ #1!!

It is odd, isn't it? Despite the plethora of syncing services, there is still no viable bookmark synchronization service for any browser you want, whether on your phone or across desktops. Fixing this would go a long way toward demonstrating Google's commitment to openness—even in an OS named after their own browser.

We'd go even further and suggest syncing all over the place. For example, I want instant, no-brain-needed synchronization of files and cloud data—whether through a "G Drive" or Dropbox or my own server space—between my laptop, my browser access, and my Android phone (or, in my Happy Land fantasy on Lollipop Lane, any phone out there).

Integrated Quicksilver/Quick Search Box

Friend of Lifehacker and Quicksilver/QSB developer Nicholas Jitkoff is one of the folks at Google working on Chrome OS, and we've heard that he plans on integrating something Quicksilver-like into the OS, so that's at least something that Quicksilver, Launchy, and Ubiquity geeks like us can get excited about.

Keyboard Shortcuts and Other Power-User Considerations

Apart from Quicksilver dreams, crazy keyboard shortcuts, along with all the small productivity pieces that power users love from their OS of choice, may not make all the difference to just anyone, but if you want to win over the Lifehacker crowd, your OS better be plentiful with shortcuts.

Support for All Kinds of Hardware

"I'd love to be able to load Chrome OS on my eight year old laptop and see it speed along. any chance of that?"

The Linux kernel that Chrome OS will run on is notably adaptive and swift on older processors with less memory. That said, compatibility with peripheral hardware like video cards, Bluetooth devices, and, especially, wireless networking gear, is the reason most clear-eyed Linux fans can't quite say it's ready for mass appeal, so it'll be interesting to see how Google navigates this terrain. It'd be great if Google could churn out a lightweight OS that would work well with aging hardware as well as cutting-edge netbooks.

Further Blurs the Line Between Web and Desktop

"cloud storage (seamless) separately launchable webapps IE Fluid on OS X, fast standby/resume, ability to export settings to liveCD"

Wow, that's a mouthful (tweetful?). Fluid/Prism-like apps seem like a given, based on what we've seen in Chrome's built-in "application" powers, but it'd be nice to see web and desktop integration grow even stronger. Let me drag attachments into Gmail or access all of my apps whether I'm online or off. Last, we kind of think that live CD export is just a great idea.

An Eye for User Privacy

"must-have for chrome OS: no google snooping on me"

This will be the conversation that rises once the initial turbulence of "Google Trying to Kill Microsoft?" subsides. There will be license agreements and privacy disclosures, sure, but those concerned that Google's holding too much of their personal data now have to contend with an operating system where "most of the user experience takes place on the web." Let's hope for controls, placed somewhere accessible, that let one control just how much data is saved, collected, and reported.

In a similar vein, total encryption of passwords and user data (in the case of loss or theft, a la BitLocker/FileVault) would be great. We're particularly concerned about saved password encryption for web pages and (Wi-Fi) networks, and presumably so is Google.

Support for Current Linux Applications

As it's built, Linux apps should work. Having wine in to allow windows apps would be nice. Running mac apps [would] be brilliant.

Linux apps can likely be made to work on Chrome OS, but many Linux apps work on just a choice distribution or two (these days, mostly Ubuntu and Fedora), then are painstakingly ported to meet other distributions' library/system/kernel requirements. Google has experience tweaking WINE to the needs of their apps like Google Earth and Picasa, and could potentially make it more accessible for Windows porting. As for the last bit: Sure Mac compatibility would be "brilliant," but also very unlikely.

Enterprise Friendly

"must have? for enterprise use, must run Salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP, etc in browser with no hitches. Oh, and Google Apps."

A good question, and one we'd expect for any new platform. We'd assume that Google can't, or won't, rewrite their browser product to support proprietary protocols or handlers, but would hope that the increasing popularity of standards-compliant browsers will push enterprises down that road. It's not that sexy for general consumers, but it could make a huge difference in widespread adoption, especially if Google wants their OS to compete with Microsoft.

There's still plenty of room for discussion on the must-have features of a modern OS, so tell us what you'd like to see included, or stripped out, in the comments.

This is a bit of a Pipe Dream, considering my experience with Ubuntu. But there are a few things I'd like to see in an open source OS.

1.) I'd like it to be compatible with a majority of my hardware. When I used Ubuntu, just getting Wi-Fi to work properly was hell.

2.) I want it to be easy to install software if I need too. No spending hours fiddling around just to get something to work.

3.) This isn't reliant on Google... but I don't want my user experience to be stunted because I don't use Windows. With Ubuntu, Flash was ages behind, and Shockwave was nonexistent, which is a major negative for me. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of software manufacturers only write for Windows and OS/X. Sometimes not even the later.

I just want an operating system that works without having to worry about malware, or having to spend hours fiddling with it.

A Retro Plastic Box

Keith Coleman, Gmail's product manager, points to a product that can be bought from eBay: a full version of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. If you think it's not very interesting, read the description:
It's brand new and never been opened. My boss bought it right before I moved the whole company over to Google Apps.

We never looked back, but here's your opportunity to live it up, 90's style, with this great, retro piece of Microsoft 2007 software.

Unique features include:

* Lengthy key you have to register with a company!

* Real, plastic disks known as "CD's".

* Huge files saved ON YOUR COMPUTER!

* The thrill of wondering if you've backed up your data recently after your on-site hard drive dies.

* Appeased paranoia that your contacts will never be extracted by an international organization bent on stealing your identity and submitting LOL cats to all your business contacts.

Throw off the Web2.0 zeitgeist, and know that your entire business can fit in a single plastic box that can easily be left under a train seat.

As a bonus, your software will be Platform Dependent, meaning it will only run on "Windows" (not included).

While mocking Microsoft Office is endearing, many businesses still need to use it and the transition to Google Apps is not always easy. That's probably the reason why Google started to offer a tool that synchronizes Google Apps with Outlook. "You get the cost savings, security and reliability of Google Apps, while employees can use the interface they prefer for email, contacts and calendar. Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is a plug-in for Outlook 2003 or 2007 that lets you keep using your familiar Outlook interface after switching from Microsoft Exchange Server to Google Apps."

New Options for Translating Web Pages

Google's translation service has more options when you translate web pages. You can now set a different destination language and translate a new web page by entering its address in the persistent input box. There's also a new interface that displays the translation in tooltips, so you can still read the original text.

Bing Translator, Microsoft's translation service, has an interesting option that shows the original page and the translation side by side, much like in Google Translator Toolkit. This interface is very useful for those who are familiar with multiple languages and Google should add it as an option.

Tips for Making Websites Run Faster

Installing a fast browser is not always enough to have a good experience when you browse the web:

Many web pages aren't optimized for performance. To help webmasters improve their sites, Google launched a new section as part of Google Code: "Let's make the web faster", which includes useful articles, videos and downloadable tools.

You'll learn how to optimize CSS declarations, how to optimize JavaScript code and avoid memory leaks, how to use the best image format and prefetch resources.

Google also released a Firebug plug-in for Firefox that evaluates web pages and provides suggestions to improve them. Here are the suggestions provided for this blog's homepage:

* There is 58.8kB worth of JavaScript. Minifying could save 15.7kB (26.7% reduction). Google provides the minified versions of all the inline blocks and external files.

* The following cacheable resources have a short freshness lifetime. Specify an expiration at least one month in the future for the following resources: [list of resources].

* The following domains only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains.

* An inline script block was found in the head between an external CSS file and another resource. To allow parallel downloading, move the inline script before the external CSS file, or after the next resource.

* A width and height should be specified for all images in order to speed up page display.

* Serve the following static resources from a domain that doesn't set cookies: [list of resources].

Google City Tours

Google Labs has a new experimental project that could become a part of Google Maps: City Tours. The service "helps you identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major cities. You just specify the location of your hotel and the length of your trip and City Tours will map out an itinerary for you," explains Google.For now, City Tours doesn't offer too many interesting features: it only lists popular sights and it suggests when you should visit them. You can edit the information about a place and you can add new sights, but the options are very limited.

It would be useful to show more details about sights from Wikipedia and from image hosting sites like Flickr or Panoramio. Google works on landmark recognition, a project that associates images from the web with landmarks, and City Tours is an obvious application.

Google Account Recovery via SMS

Google added a new password recovery option: you can now associate a mobile phone number with your Google Account and Google will send a recovery code by SMS.

"Since most people use cell phones these days, we decided text messaging would be an easy, convenient addition to our password recovery options. To set up password recovery via your mobile phone, just sign in to your account and click Change Password Recovery Options. Enter your mobile phone number and current password and then click Save. If you lose access to your account for any reason, you'll be able to regain access by entering a code we'll send in a text message."

For now, the options is only available in the US, so you need to use a US proxy to see it. Google also updated the password recovery settings page to include all the account-recovery options: secondary email addresses, text messages and the security question.

Update: The feature is now available everywhere.

How to Pick The Fastest Torrents

If you follow some basic rules BitTorrent is without a
doubt the best way to share large files online. Interestingly, BitTorrent’s
inventor Bram Cohen recently noted that torrents with more peers are not always
faster. We give some pointers on what torrents will guarantee the best download
speeds.

In the past we’ve written many articles on how BitTorrent users can speed up their downloads. In most of these we focused on tweaking the client’s options such as the max upload speed and the maximum number of incoming and outgoing connections.

Many BitTorrent users are looking for the holy grail that will boost their download speeds to the maximum, and tweaking your client can indeed help a bit. However, selecting the right torrents is far more important, and those are not necessarily the torrents with the most peers. Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol addresses this common misconception in a recent blog post.

“Cohen designed BitTorrent to be able to download files from many different sources [...] the more popular a file is, the faster a user will be able to download it, since many people will be downloading it at the same time, and these people will also be uploading the data to other users,” writes Cohen while quoting an erroneous article.

This is indeed an explanation we often hear - the more people who download a file the better - but unfortunately it’s not very accurate. Or to put it in Cohen’s words, this description of BitTorrent is “somewhere between grossly misleading and wrong.”

Cohen goes on to explain why: “There’s a classic fallacy because if one person stands up during a concert they get a better view, then if everybody stood up during a concert they’d all get a better view. This is of course is not true - they wind up slightly worse off by all standing, because they all compete with each other for a view.”

So how do you get the most out of BitTorrent then? Or to put it differently, what torrents perform the best and generally give you the fastest download times? We’ll try to explain it as simply as possible leaving math out as much as possible.

The fastest torrents will be those where downloaders (leechers) can tap into the most upload capacity. If you have a swarm (seeders and leechers) with a hundred people in total it will be faster when there are relatively more seeders. Why? Very simply it’s because seeders don’t download while their upload capacity is available for the leechers.

Many people understand these basics. A torrent with 30 seeders and 70 leechers (30% seeders) will go faster than one with 10 seeders and 90 leechers (10% seeders). However, it get confusing when you compare swarms of different sizes.

For example, a torrent with 30 seeders and 70 leechers (30% seeders) will generally be faster than one with 500 seeders and 2500 leechers (20% seeders). Why? Simply because the swarm has a smaller percentage of seeders. When picking the right torrents to download, the percentage of seeders that a swarm consists of is the most important thing to look at.

A higher percentage of seeders means that the average upload capacity available to the leechers will be higher. The fact that leechers also upload themselves is irrelevant because all peers have more download capacity than upload capacity. The seeders make the difference.

This is one of the reasons why private trackers generally have such great download speeds. Since users are required to seed as much as possible, they have torrents with 100 seeders and only two or three leechers.

So what can we learn from this? If you’re looking for fast torrents pick those with the best seeder/leecher ratio or the highest percentage of seeders. Or when you don’t have a choice, don’t complain about slow speeds when there are only a few seeders in a large swarm. Perhaps even more importantly, remember to seed as much as possible if you don’t need your upload speed for something else.

Speed Up Your Downloads by Choosing the Fastest Torrents

Even if you know everything there is to know about BitTorrent apps, your downloads can still be slow as molasses. It's not you, it's the torrent. All-things-BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak discusses how to speed up your downloads by picking the fastest torrents.

In a nutshell, it's all about the percentage of seeders in a swarm, as TorrentFreak's Ernesto points out:

Many people understand these basics. A torrent with 30 seeders and 70 leechers (30% seeders) will go faster than one with 10 seeders and 90 leechers (10% seeders). However, it gets confusing when you compare swarms of different sizes.

For example, a torrent with 30 seeders and 70 leechers (30% seeders) will generally be faster than one with 500 seeders and 2500 leechers (20% seeders). Why? Simply because the swarm has a smaller percentage of seeders. When picking the right torrents to download, the percentage of seeders that a swarm consists of is the most important thing to look at.

A higher percentage of seeders means that the average upload capacity available to the leechers will be higher.

So next time you go looking for a fast torrent, don't just head straight for the download with the most seeders. Instead, find the torrent with the highest seeder to leecher ratio.

Got your own best practices for blazing BitTorrent speeds? Let's hear it in the comments.

Google Releasing Chrome Operating System

In a sudden, If not unexpected, Announcement this morning, Google said it would release an open-source operating system based on its Chrome browser. The OS will be free, geared (at first) toward netbooks, and focused on "speed, simplicity, and security."

Google executives told the New York Times that Google Chrome OS would be available online "later this year" as a free, open-source download, while specially tailored netbooks running the operating system are targeted for the second half of 2010. The release will not be a remixed version of the Android phone platform, but a "minimalist user interface," with more screen space and computer power given over to web applications.

Google's official blog post lays out some basic but intriguing details on Chrome OS' goals:

We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto
the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way,
and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we
are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security
architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware
and security updates. It should just work.

More specifically, Chrome OS is planned to run on x86 and ARM-based processors,
and its architecture is described as "Google Chrome running within a new
windowing system on top of a Linux kernel." Developers looking to specifically
target the Chrome OS need not apply, as Google says "the web is the
platform"—the system will, in other words, run web applications online and
offline, and those applications should also work on any standards-based browser
on any system (read: most anything, except Internet Explorer, sometimes).

Many who closely watch the search company have predicted a similar move for some time now. To say the Chrome OS will face stiff competition is quite an understatement, with Intel developing its own lightweight, Linux-based netbook platform, Windows XP emerging as a force in netbook OS share, and Microsoft itself likely to fight tooth and nail to keep yet another upstart from encroaching on the one area of PC sales that is still seeing significant growth.

It's easy to assume Chrome OS is a strong push to get users familiar with using Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other web suites, both online and off. It's harder to figure out the specifics of how Google's platform will overcome the deeply entrenched Windows familiarity that has kept other Linux-based netbook upstarts mostly in check, and how it will accommodate the vast array of x86 hardware compatibility quirks that plagues Linux distributions to this day. More details and discussions to come, certainly.

THE TWO MOST BREAKING NEWS ABOUT GOOGLE IN TODAYS IT INDUSTRY ARE:

Introducing the Google Chrome OS [Official Google Blog]

Google Plans a PC Operating System [NYTimes.com]

Google Voice Invites Going Out to Reservations List

The Today Show takes a look at Google Voice this morning (as we did three months ago), with correspondent Janet Shamlian offering a very generalized overview and announcing it would open today. Updates: See below.

As of this morning, though, Google Voice's login page was still pegged with "Coming soon" and

"Existing GrandCentral users." Shamlian says in the clips that Google Voice would be "available today, nationwide."

Update: Google Voice's official Twitter account just posted that "Invites to people on reservations list" are "starting to go out today." No indication how many at once. If you want in and haven't signed up, request an invitation.

Update 2: And now Google Voice says the "list is huge, so it will take a while to get though them all." Google's official blog also confirms the invite release.

Update 3: In a related, but far more disappointing, development, Google seems to have pulled the ability to send SMS through Gmail's chat box, at least from our view and many Twitter users'. If you still have SMS available through your chat box, let us know in the comments.

Google Voice, Available in the US

Two years after acquiring GrandCentral, Google is about to open an updated version of the service to all US users. Google Voice is a free service that provides one number for all your phones, so you can add some features that help you manage phone calls: blocking calls, recording calls, answering from any of your phones, transcribing voicemail and more.

NBC reports that the service will start to be publicly available today and Google confirms the news:

"Invites to people on reservations list starting to go out today."

In March, Google Voice was released as an upgrade to the existing GrandCentral users and you could request an invitation using a form from Google's site.

Now you can inform Google about all of the calls you make, along with the terms you search for, people with whom you email or IM, Web sites you visit, videos you watch, etc. Maybe Google will acquire the United States Postal Service next…
Two years after acquiring GrandCentral, Google is about to open an updated version of the service to all US users. Google Voice is a free service that provides one number for all your phones, so you can add some features that help you manage phone calls: blocking calls, recording calls, answering from any of your phones, transcribing voicemail and more.

Solving Linear Programming Problems Using Google Spreadsheets

Google Spreadsheets has a new feature that lets you solve linear programming problems.

"Informally, linear programming determines the way to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a given mathematical model and given some list of requirements represented as linear equations," explains Wikipedia.

Google's help center has an article that details how to use the new feature. You can test it using a template offered by Google, but it's not very intuitive and it didn't work for me. I got an error message when clicking on Tools / Solve: "The goal specified must be a cell containing a valid formula."

Gmail Increases Maximum Attachment Size to 25 MB

Great news to all the readers GOOGLE HAS NOW INCRESED THE MAIL ATTACHMENT SIZE TO 25 MB THAT'S A NORMAL SOFTWARE SIZE ATTACHMENT

Now you can send bigger attachments in Gmail, as Google increased the maximum attachment size from 20 MB to 25 MB.

"With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 25 megabytes (MB) in size. Please note that you may not be able to send larger attachments to contacts who use other email services with smaller attachment limits. If your attachment bounces, you should invite them to Gmail," suggests Google.

For some reason, Gmail's Flash uploader doesn't allow me to upload files that are larger than 10 MB. The error message is "attachment failed" and Google's suggestions aren't very helpful. Switching to the basic uploader in the settings solves the problem, but it's more tedious to upload multiple files.

Google Reader Lite

Google Reader's homepage has been updated and it features a small feed reader with three categories: "news", "sports" and "popular". The iframe points to this page and I think Google Reader should offer a customizable version, so you can embed it in your site.

Google already offers a cool AJAX Feed API that can be used to display the most recent posts from one or more feeds, but Google Reader's interface is more user-friendly and it lets you read the posts without leaving the page.

Google Toolbar's Improved Web Page Translation

Google Translate can be used to translate many web pages, but you can't use it for pages that require login and for Ajax-powered web applications. You won't be able to translate a Gmail message, a Google Docs document or a Facebook message without copying the text to Google Translate.

Google Toolbar tests a translation feature that extracts the text from any web page and translates in real-time. The impressive feature is now available in Google Toolbar 6 for Internet Explorer and it works extremely well.

By default, Google detects when a page is not in English (or another preferred language) and it offers the option to translate it. Language detection doesn't send text from the current web page to Google's servers, but you'll need to send the text when you translate the page.

"When you visit a webpage in a different language than your Toolbar, Toolbar will display the translation bar near the top of your browser window and ask you if you'd like to translate the page. Click Translate to translate the page, or click Translate on your Toolbar. Click Show original or the x icon to close the translation bar and view the original webpage. If you change your preferred translation language, Toolbar will remember your language preferences and use them when translating pages in the future," explains Google.

Here's a Gmail message written in French:

... and here's how Google Toolbar replaces the French message with the English translation:

If you open another Gmail message written in French, Google Toolbar will automatically translate the text.

"The new Translate feature is available in all international versions of Toolbar, including English, and the translation service supports 41 different languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew,Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian,Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak,Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese,"mentions Google's blog.

Another improvement is that Google Toolbar's word translator is now available in the 41 languages supported by Google Translate.

Gmail's Labels Are More Customizable

Gmail's transition to labels-that-look-and-act-like-folders is finished: you can now use drag-and-drop to label messages. Labels no longer live in their own container and they're displayed below the built-in labels: inbox, spam, trash, etc.

To make room for other features, Gmail only displays the most frequently used labels and hides the other labels behind a "more" dropdown. The list of labels is now customizable: you can hide built-in labels and some of your labels, while changing their order. If you rarely check the "spam" label or you don't save drafts, you can hide the system labels from the settings page.

"You now have control over which of your labels show. We've done our best to get you started by automatically showing the labels you use most and hiding the rest. Label hiding is my favorite new feature, since it saves me from having to look through labels I rarely use. If I ever need to reach any of my old labels, I just click the "more" link," says Damian Gajda, from Google.

I don't see the new features in my Gmail accounts, but Google promises that the changes are rolled out today.

Update: Google wants to make labels more visible. If you didn't create labels, Gmail will add four labels for you: Personal, Receipts, Travel and Work.

"When I joined the Gmail team, I was surprised to learn that only 29% of Gmail users had created any labels. We realized that if you didn't know about labels, it would be easy to assume Gmail had no way to organize your mail. Not only were "labels" unfamiliar, they were kind of hidden," explains Michael Leggett.

Google Update Always Running in the Background? Not Anymore

Google Open Source Blog informs that Google Update, the software used by Google Chrome and other applications for automatic updates, no longer runs in the background.

"Until now, Google Update would always run in the background, functioning
primarily as a reliable scheduler performing update checks at periodic time
intervals. With today's release, Google Update now uses the Windows Task
Scheduler to only run at periodic intervals."

I've checked the Task Scheduler and I've found that Google Update runs every hour. You can change how often it runs and even disable the task, but I'm not sure if other Google applications change your settings.

"If this task is disabled or stopped, your Google software will not be kept up
to date, meaning security vulnerabilities that may arise cannot be fixed and
features may not work. This task uninstalls itself when there is no Google
software using it,"

explains Google.

The first good news is that you'll no longer see googleupdate.exe in the list of processes when you open the Task Manager. The second good news is that Google Update's team listens to users and constantly improves the software: Google Update is now open source and administrators can disable it using the Local Group Policy Editor.

More White Space and a Smaller Google Logo

In May, Google started to change the logos used by its services to make them look more consistent. Tony Ruscoe compiled a list of the new logos and it's clear that the service names are more visible.

The updated Google logo is now displayed on Google's search results pages and you'll notice that it's smaller and there's more space at the left of the page. Another change is that the SearchWiki buttons are placed next to the "cached" and "similar" links.

Google constantly runs experiments that test different font sizes, background colors, padding values to determine which one is the best. For example, last year Google tested three versions of the search results pages and the one with the least white space was the most popular.

Creating a Gmail Account Requires SMS Verification

Some people report that Gmail started to require SMS verification when you create
an account, a practice used in the US and other countries when Gmail wasn't publicly available worldwide.

"If you'd like to sign up for a Gmail address, you need to have a mobile phone that has text-messaging capabilities. If you don't have a phone, you may want to ask a friend if you can use his or her number to receive a code. Also, if you know someone who already has a Gmail address, you can ask them to email an invitation to you. One of the reasons we're offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in Gmail," explains Google.

I created a new Gmail account and Google didn't ask my phone number, so the new requirement could be limited to some regions or it's just an experiment. Google says that is stores your phone number to make sure that you use it for "a limited number of accounts", but it's not clear how many accounts you can create using a phone number. Another problem is that not all the countries and the carriers are supported.

In other news, the SMS feature from Gmail Labs is still disabled and the option that lets you reset the password of a Google Account by SMS is available everywhere.

Google Apps Premier Demo Accounts

If you're considering trying the paid version of Google Apps, you can create a demo account that has most of the features from Google Apps Premier. The account expires after 14 days, you don't need a domain and you can add 10 user accounts.

A small number of features can't be used in the demo account: Postini email services, domain aliasing and phone support, but all the other options should be available. You can test the APIs, the migration tool, Google Apps Sync for Outlook, the video sharing service and other business-oriented features.

When you sign up for Google Apps Premier
Edition, the service is free for the first month, but you need to have a domain
and you have to configure some advanced settings. The demo account is much
easier to use, even if you only have two weeks to explore the myriad of features
included in Google Apps.

If you only want to use Google Apps for personal use or for a small group, you should try the free edition, which is still available, despite Google's efforts to make it more difficult to find*. TechCrunch claims that "the free version of Google Apps is history", but that's not true and I'm certain that Google will always offer a free version.

* How to find the link to Google Apps Standard Edition? Go to Google Apps' homepage, click on "Gmail and Google Calendar", then click on "See details and sign up" and then select "Not a business? Explore Standard Edition". Only three links from the homepage.