Chrome Blog

Chrome supports multiple profiles now, see http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/11/take-your-chrome-stuff-with-you-in-new.html. I can't believe so few HN readers know this, since it's the best way to use seperately Google Apps and Gmail accounts. It works for Facebook too, obviously.

You can sync all Chrome browsers, on all your devices, with both your Google Apps account for work and your personal Gmail account. It means that each profile have their own bookmarks, history & most visited pages, extensions, saved passwords (...) synced in real-time (you can even sync open tabs!). It's very powerful to improve your focus, because you only use 1 browser (no need to switch your habits) and you're never get distracted by notifications, mails, docs, rss when you're in your work/perso "station".

Fortunately, you can keep your Gmail/Google apps chat accounts of each profiles open in the background with the official Google Talk extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nckgahadagoaajjgafhacjanaoiihapd (works on Mac, Windows, Linux & ChromeOS).

OK, I'm going to go off-topic and sound like a crank...but is the font-size for Google's blogs kept at 13px because:

1) To keep consistency across every service (search, analytics, maps, etc)

2) Because it's what users like, according to in-house studies

3) Because...why change it?

Not all the Google blogs use Arial (http://chrome.blogspot.com/ uses Open Sans). I'm not trying to be completely snarky here...If it is indeed a best practice, then that's good to know. The width of the Google blogs do conform to showing 80-or-so characters a line, though at 16px, the characters-per-line is about 70, which isn't bad either.

(yes, I know HN is at 13px too...but a discussion board with variable length of text and a higher value in being able to see more entries at once is different than the narrative paragraph form)

As a parent I was more interested in the "supervised users" feature to monitor your children's internet usage. Parents desperately need something simple to help them make sure that their children are safe on the internet.

Most solutions are far too technical for most parents to understand and their children are more technically aware than they are, even at a young age.

It is of course important that parents can educate their children about the dangers of the internet, but such a feature is like having stabilisers on a bike. Once your children show you that they can be trusted the you can take the supervision off and give them the privacy they they too deserve.

I think Google is hitting a sweet spot if they can get that feature right.

http://chrome.blogspot.de/2013/10/a-beta-preview-supervised-users.html

I'm not too sure they'd like it. In this post: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-to-your-computer-with-html5.html, the big G clearly states their speech recognition is beta. I've also seen on Stack Overflow responses from Google employees insisting the API shouldn't be used for commercial applications.

Best recommendation is to use Nuance's HTTP Api
http://dragonmobile.nuancemobiledeveloper.com/public/index.php?task=supportedPlatforms#http

It's not free, but it's at least it's guaranteed for commercial use.

I don't work for Nuance, but my startup uses their products now - and the accuracy and speed are great. The documentation is pretty horrible, so feel free to reach out w/any questions on the program/usage/etc.

Every time Firefox introduces a cool new feature, they emphasize how it's standard, or being put into the standardization process, and how every web developer will be able to use it.

Chrome? Not so much. And it isn't just that this news article left something out — the official Chrome blog[1] never hints that this feature will ever work on anything but Chrome.

To me it's uncomfortable how much Google's tactics with Chrome resemble Microsoft's "embrace and extend" from the late 90s. They seem to want everyone to make Chrome apps, not web apps. If that happens, ultimately we all suffer from the loss of an open web.

[1] http://chrome.blogspot.com/2013/05/richer-notifications-coming-to-chrome.html

Software is a service industry, not a product industry. Expect to see more software in the style of http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/09/adobe-joins-chromebook-party-starting.html or http://aws.amazon.com/appstream/ or even http://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/psnow in the future.

This developer is upset about the difficulty of securing a continuing revenue stream. This is exactly the problem addressed by streaming software to users instead of just giving it to them. What this developer really wants to do is _rent_ their program: when users stop paying, they stop having the software as well.