The UpStream

Google announced this week that they will be taking on the giant that is Windows with the Google Chrome OS - a lightweight, open-source operating system aim at netbooks (at least initially). The Google Blog describes it thusly:

People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet...

In other words, this isn't Windows. Do you think you would use the Google Chrome OS, or do you love Windows too much to switch?

Ever wondered what device is the easiest to destroy without feeling bad about it? Well, we now have an answer: The Finger Dance alarm. The alarm clock works like this: in the morning, the alarm goes off, and to make it stop, you must do a little DDR on the alarm clock itself with your fingers. Now you know why you could destroy this thing and not feel bad about it - it is EVIL. I have been a DDR player for 10 years now, and even I can see that this thing should not exist.

Yikes.

It's a lot of fun to watch the buying habits of large companies and speculate what they are doing with the products. In today's installment, Apple has purchased cameras. Lot of them. A lot more then they need to fulfill the manufacturing needs of the iPhone. What could this mean? Spying on competitors like in Antitrust? Probably not. More likely is the inclusion of a camera in the next generation of the iPods.

While it is not financially feasible to add a camera to the Nano, it is very likely we will see a camera added to the iPod Touch. In fact, we here at The Upstream are pretty shocked that it has taken them this long to do it. The Touch runs the same OS as the iPhone, which has a camera (granted they just started actually letting you use it for something), so it isn't a matter of technology standing in their way. They just never did.

Isn't it nice how Apple computers don't get viruses or malicious code? It's because there aren't enough of them out there for anyone to care. On the other hand, there are a lot of iPhones, and now we know there are things that can be done to an iPhone to make them really interesting. Charlie Miller, a security researcher had this to say:

Microsoft's legal team has taken an interesting tactic in their most interesting lawsuit (to me... right now...). The lawsuit in question is over patent infringement (what's new) for "communicating live while playing the same video game in separate locations." Obviously this is all about Xbox Live and the Live chat option.

Remember when Sony lost the lawsuit over the rumble feature in their controllers, and they said that they didn't plan on having a DualShock3 controller, and then when the lawsuit was finalized they brought it out anyway? Well, Sony is having another "we were just kidding" moment with UMD. Naoya Matsui, product planning leader for Sony, said in an interview: