Chrome Comes To Android, But Only For The 1 Percent

  Google on Tuesday began offering a beta version of its Chrome browser for Android phones, finally beginning the move to unify its computer, tablet and mobile phone browsers.

The browser, however, is only available for phones and tablets running Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich. As of Feb. 1, just 1 percent of Android devices in use are running Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Chrome browser for Android offers a few neat features for people who also use Chrome on their computers. When signed into Chrome on both devices, a user can launch the browser to display the same tabs that are open on the other device. Autocomplete also works across both devices, so if a user searches for a phrase on a computer, that phrase will pop up as a suggestion when the user searches on a phone or tablet. Bookmarks also synch across devices. 

In a blog post, Google promoted the fast speed of the browser and said it was designed "from the ground up for mobile devices," so that tabs fit naturally on the small screen. Users can also preview the content in the link, which could help them choose the best link first. 

Prior to this release, Google had offered Chrome for computers and had developed a separate browser that was included with Android devices. 

Google didn't say if it planned to release versions of Chrome to be compatible with earlier versions of Android or other competitive operating systems. 

The mobile browser space was once a competitive battleground, until it became clear that most people simply use the browser that comes loaded on the phone, which is most often built by the operating system developer. Opera is one of the few standalone companies that has managed to win and retain customers who are willing to download the browser to their phones.

ReactOS 0.3.14 released

Oh ReactOS. This project has been with us for a very long time now, and since day one, I never really knew what to think of it. They always seem to be running at least 300 miles behind the Win32 bandwagon, but what they've accomplished so far is insanely impressive nonetheless. This new release comes with quite a lot of new stuff.

No, Mac OS X wasn't ported to ARM by an intern

It's still early days, but this has the potential to put more fuel on the Apple rumour mill fire than anything else in recent times. A BA thesis by Dutch student Tristan Schaap details how, during his internship at Apple's Platform Technologies Group, he ported Darwin to a certain ARMv5 developer board. A few blog articles later, and the headline has already turned into 'Mac OS X ported to ARM'. So, what have I been running on my iPhone and iPad all these years?

Nokia Belle released

"People who have the latest Symbian Nokia smartphones can now update them to Nokia Belle - bringing a fresh look to their screens thanks to the latest user interface. Once you have installed Nokia Belle you will still have the same phone, but it will feel like new, with improved performance." Love the version name.

The Apple fanboy problem

Let this be a lesson. After posts by John Gruber andShawn King, this happened to Violet Blue. "The misinformation gave a significant number of people fuel to stalk me, attack me for hours at a time, malign, insult me in disgusting ways, threaten me with weapon-specific violent death (an axe), and lead social media attempts to force me to lose my job over the matter. Many referenced John Gruber, and/or his post as they did this. Plans were openly made to make media to attack me - another Angry Mac Bastards podcast." Disgusting story, and sadly enough, this isn't the first time this has happened, as Blue notes in her article. I don't like talking about these matters (you don't want to know the kind of crap that gets thrown my way at times), but I can assure you my inbox has seen its share of pure vitriol after Gruber links to an OSNews piece. It ain't pretty.

Canonical Ceases Funding of Kubuntu Development

This shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Jonathan Riddell, lead developer of the Kubuntu project and the only person paid by Canonical to work on the KDE variant of the popular distribution, has announced that after the 12.04 release, Canonical will no longer be funding him, effectively putting Kubuntu on the same level as other Ubuntu variants like Xubuntu.