Watched the Google announcement yesterday?  Intrigued?  Well thanks to gdgt you can now download a VMware or VirtualBox Image of the Developer Preview of Chrome OS.  You must have an account on gdgt to get it, but once you sign on it’s a 331 MB download away.  Since this is a early version, expect bumps.  Gear Diary can’t be held responsible if it doesn’t work.  Thanks goes to Lifehacker for posting about this.  Go here to get the VM and try it out!

As was mentioned here yesterday, today was the  big developer and press Google Chrome OS event.  Today was the day Google pulled back the curtain and let the blogsphere know about the mystery that is the new Chrome OS platform.

Early adopters and developers alike can grab a copy of the  source code today to play with.  It has been released as open source.  So, if you really really wanted,  you could build your own Chrome OS.  Those of us who don’t have those mad skillz we will have to wait until late 2010.  I am sensing it will be a Google Chrome OS Christmas next year.

So what is Chrome OS really?  Well, from what was said and shown at the event, this isnt your mother’s operating system. Continue Reading

The rumor mill is buzzing about the possible launch of an Android handset that is actually designed BY Google. We heard this rumor before the launch of Android but now it makes much more sense. Here’s why…
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Actually, make that “Living With Motorola Droids.”  Yes, Droids, plural.  My initial intention was to post my first impressions of the Motorola Droid after just a few days with it.  However, the first Droid that I picked up started locking up and spontaneously resetting itself on the first day I had it, and it continued to do so two or three times per day.  A few times it wouldn’t power on at all, and I had to pull the battery in order to get it to restart.  The upside, if there is one, is that none of the resets seemed to result in any data loss.

I tried uninstalling the few programs and widgets that I initially installed, thinking that perhaps one of them wasn’t working well with Android 2.0, but that didn’t eliminate the problem.  Next, I tried a factory reset.  Still didn’t solve the problem.  After checking a the forums on a few Android sites, it was apparent that a few other new Droid owners were experiencing the same problem.  So, I took the Droid back and exchanged it for another unit, which so far seems to be behaving just fine.  After this disappointing start, things got much better. Continue Reading

Honestly? It’s not like I was going anywhere. I mean, my entire life seems to be managed by Google these days, and it only seemed right to upgrade and support a company that usually treats me so nicely …well, except when their Exchange ActiveSync isn’t working properly, but sheesh! It’s free! How can I complain without seeming completely ungrateful?

Anyway. This was waiting in my inbox this afternoon, and it was a pleasant surprise. Thank you Google, you are pretty darn cool.

Google is giving the presents early. They just bought out web service at 47 airports through January 15th. That will save travelers the usual $10 a day fee to get on line while stranded at JFK.

That’s a pretty awesome gift to the weary traveler. And it leads me to ask… Continue Reading

Gmail is once again having some issues. When I woke up, I noticed that all of my new e-mails were indicating that they’d already been read when I checked from my iPhone. The problem was, I haven’t read any of them yet. I e-mailed Larry to ask if Gmail was down for him too, and he told me that he’d seen on twitter that exchange was having problems. Since I use exchange with Gmail currently, that clearly was the issue. Looking at my iMac, everything seemed to be fine. A few hours later and it still isn’t working properly. I checked in with Larry, and he indicated that his most recent e-mail on the iPhone was from 8:27 a. m. when in fact it was now 11:15 a. m.. His iMac, on the other hand, showed all of the new e-mails. Yes, it’s just another day in Gmail land.

Fortunately there is a bit of a workaround. If you’re currently using exchange on your iPhone to access your Gmail account … don’t. Turn off the exchange e-mail, and go into the e-mail setup wizard and create a Gmail account. Preferably use IMAP in order to set it up, so that whatever you do on your iPhone will be reflected on the server. Once you’re done setting up the IMAP account, make sure that the e-mail exchange account is off and the new IMAP account is on, and you should be good to go. No you won’t have push e-mail, but at least you be getting your e-mail.

Later on, when Gmail exchange is working again, you can just swap back. But don’t delete that IMAP account; it will likely come in handy again, soon.

I’m still trying to figure out how I’ll best be served by Google Wave; right now it seems like a huge disorganized chatroom. If you haven’t yet had a chance to get in on the action, and you want to know what all the web-hoopla is about, I have 18 invites to share. Want in? Leave a comment and I’ll give invites to the first 18 who reply. If you have some extra invites that you’d like to share, you are welcome to do so as well.

Update: Dan has 15 spare invites; once mine are gone, we can keep on giving!

Update: We are out of invites at the moment, but if we score some more, we will share!

There have been rumors surrounding the Android 2.0 SDK for a while now, but it had not yet been released to developers. We knew this would be coming soon, since the Verizon Droid would be launching next month and is reported to run Android 2.0. Well, the wait is now over.

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Within the last week the Google Wave invitations finally started arriving at GearDiary (sorry – we wish we had invites but we’re cleaned out). We’ve been working with Google Wave for the better part of a week and our reactions can be summed up by a phrase we all seem to keep typing into Wave – now that we’re in – what do we do?

It’s a common question so here’s a quick guided tour of what we’ve been doing with Wave but more importantly what some of our concerns are. You’ll see that (for now) you aren’t missing much. This is all very early stage development. It’s not ready for prime time and the vast majority of Wave conversations ask nothing more than – ‘what do we do? – how does Google Wave help us?’. Continue Reading

Google has written frequently about accessibility in the past in a variety of locations. Yesterday, they announced a new website that brings all of their accessibility information into a single location.

Google has always considered access to information part of their core mission. This includes being able to get your data into and out of Google products via the Data Liberation project site. The new Accessibility at Google site is their new home which focuses information on Accessibility from Google products in a single location.  In addition to highlighting information on official Google products, they also showcase third-party developer applications, such as a Talking RSS Reader for Android.

Accessibility at Google (via the Official Google Blog)

On February 9, 2009 Google enabled wireless sync of both contacts and calendars between their service and iPhone and Windows Mobile phones. They did this by using Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology to wirelessly push the updates. On September 22, 2009 Google updated GoogleSync to include push Gmail for iPhone, Touch and Windows Mobile. Unfortunately the system worked seamlessly for all of about three or four days. Since then it had worked but with sporadic minor delays. On Saturday morning October 3, 2009 Larry noticed that all of Google’s properties were briefly off-line.

Since that fateful day my poor Googlesync has been sunk. While it will sync data between my iPhone and Google – it does so extremely sporadically and without any set schedule – certainly not meeting any definition of the word push. Googlesync is beta, so service interruptions are expected – and certainly excusable. But what happened to that “bullet proof” Google of the past? The service that never went down and was so available that many of us switched our email completely over to their Gmail platform?

Google Push Gmail

We mentioned a few weeks ago that the Android 1.6 SDK had been released for developers, and T-Mobile and Google have been rolling it out over the past few days to T-Mobile G1 and myTouch 3G owners. It seems that the rollout is in full force now, as I received the update recently. Read on for more information and screenshots of the new features.

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It’s amazing how much I’ve grown to rely on Google for information.  See Google has control of many of the web sites I visit first thing in the morning, YouTube, Gmail, iGoogle, Google Reader and more.

Problem is though today none of them are loading.  Well some are but it’s taking them an eternity and when they’ve finally loaded navigating is painfully slow.

A brief search of Twitter and I found several people experiencing the same thing.

So is there some sort of planned or unplanned Google service outage going on?

Here’s hoping everything comes back to normal soon.

UPDATE:  Things seems to have come back on line at of 8:oo AM EST

Who would’ve thought we’d see IBM positioned as a low cost alternative technology provider. That’s exactly what they appear to be doing — at least on the surface. IBM’s LotusLive iNotes web mail service is priced at only $36/user per year versus Google’s $50/user per year price for Google Apps Premier Edition. Unfortunately that just might be where the positive comparison ends for most companies. Unlike Google, which provides 25 GB of storage, IBM only offers up 1 GB of email storage (you can buy added storage for an extra annual fee). They also lack the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications that Google includes in their Google Apps bundle. Of course for anyone deeply embedded in Lotus Notes this is probably a wise investment as the service claims integration with your existing on-premise software. Naturally IBM also touts tighter security and a whole host of other corporate type benefits.

LotusLive iNotes via Physorg.com