I have tried and given up on Google’s Chromium based browser several times. The failing grade always has come from the same issue – creating stand-alone web applications from web sites. “BUT WAIT” you scream at your computer in hopes I will hear – “Chrome has web applications shortcuts built right it!” Fortunately, I do not hear you. However, I did some digging and found an answer – actually, I found something that let me search form something more which eventually helped me to create an answer.

Problem statement:

I create an application shortcut in with a Chromium based browser to Google Reader. I launch the new shortcut and login and tell it to save my password. I then launch a standard Chrome browser. But wait, it is logged in with my user and password from the Google Reader web application. I don’t want that ! I really don’t want it. What happens when I launch my GMail application shortcut ? I have a different user and password for my personal GMail account. Chrome is meant to have these all as separate processes. Why it it sharing all this stuff?

Solution:

Firefox with Prism solves this by creating separate profiles. It turns out, Chromium can do the same. All you do is go ahead and create the application shortcut. Next right click on the shortcut and edit the properties. Find the “target” that specifies the program and command line options and edit it to be something like the following:

“C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome.exe” –app=http://www.google.com/reader/view/ –user-data-dir=”..\Local Settings\Application Data\Chromium\User Data\GoogleReader”

For each web application shortcut, you will replace “GoogleReader” with an appropriate folder name.

The above is for Chrome v3. Depending on what version of the Chrome browser you are using, the root of the user-data-dir seems to vary. One website listed it as “..\User Data\<name>” but that placed my results in an odd place. If all else fails, you can do what I did and temporarily give it a unique name, run it once, and then search for wherever the directory gets created; then adjust the target to get it where you want. You don’t need to have it with other chrome profiles so you may want to create a separate area for your web application shortcuts.

With this little addition, I now have “web applications” for my Google Reader, Google Voice, GMail, my router’s control page, my NAS’s control page, my printer’s control page, ….. I guess you get the idea.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I don’t actually run Google Chrome. I use SRWare Iron – the more private build of Chrome !

For those who fear “Google is to personal data thru search info as Apple is to personal data thru music info” they probably will not turn on the iTunes Genius playlist generator. But, what if you could turn it on and keep some level of personal privacy? Wait, you say, Genius needs an iTunes account and an iTunes account requires you give your credit card. The trick is creating that account without a credit card. You can’t do it if you try to open an account but you can do it if you try to download a free application from the App Store. This may all sound confusing but Efrum posted the “how to” over at Instructables.com. Once you have created an account, you can turn on Genius in iTunes, sit back a while while it collects data from your music and loads it to Apple’s servers.

I tested Efrum’s instructions and tested Genius. My first test yielded pretty good results and even found some music off of a few soundtrack and compilation “best of …” albums I had forgotten I even had. I don’t know if Genius will prompt me to buy more music from the iTunes store via "its suggestions. I have an aversion to DRM locked music. It may prompt me to pop over to Amazon.com’s music store for the same tracks DRM-free.

GeoEye-1 will deliver higher resolution images and a much faster rate. U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency gets first dibs at the images but Google gets exclusive on-line rights after that. Oh, and if you were curious, there will be a GeoEye-2 a bit later on.

Credit: Vandenberg Air Force Base Media

I’ve read a bunch of hype and speculation on a “Google Phone” and most of the sites are focused on how cool it might be or how it will be better than the iPhone, etc. A Computerworld article is probably closer to the truth – “Google wants your attention” (and the advertising dollars that go with it).

Google appears to be lining up partnerships between carriers and handset makers to build and sell free or very cheap Google-branded phones supported by advertising. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been quoted previously as saying that cell phones and cell phone calls could both be free if the industry developed the right advertising model.

This model is more about expanding the reach of Google’s search and other features into new markets, not developing some amazing, high-end phone that will compete with the iPhone, Treo and Blackberry.

Source: Mike Elgan, Computerworld

Now for the good, the bad, and the ugly. Mike goes on to write …

Google is working on the mother of all mobile Web browsers.The browser they’re working on will be super fast. Best of all, search will be so good it will actually seem like the browser is reading your mind. And, in a way, it will. The secretive Android project is the key to understanding what Google is up to. Android was developing location-aware mobile phone software.

A patent filed by Google probably related to the Android acquisition involves predictive searches based on location, date and time, and previous searches. A phone enhanced with this technology tells Google where you are, and Google changes the results accordingly. the system will use personal information to return quality results from ambiguous searches.

The application may get location information from cell tower triangulation, GPS if the phone has one.

Google’s secret software will remember things about you, such as who you call, what stocks you’re interested in and where you work. It might also base predictive results on demographic information, such as age, gender and home zip code.

The very technologies that will make mobile Web browsing usable and appealing are the same technologies that make contextual advertising Google’s next killer app. So a query for “pizza” that will give you the nearest Italian restaurant may also give you an ad for the nearest Italian restaurant that advertises on the Google network.

The big picture is that Google wants to own mobile advertising, and it’s secretly building the technologies and partnerships that will make that happen.

BTW: the gimp’d screen pic is a pipe dream and just my way of “getting your attention”. I think Mike Elgan’s article is a good read – even if all you get is this blog post chop-shop version of it.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T60p for work. I have an IBM Thinkpad X60 (refurb) for my personal computer. Given the corporate policies enforced in today’s business world, there I keep my personal content (blogs, personal email, photographic work, money manager, etc.) off my work computer. However, when I travel, I don’t want to carry two computers but I also don’t want to give up the ability to keep up with the personal commitments that are contained in on my computer. Continue reading ‘Traveling Lite’ »