OpenSource

Google Fit update brings Android users real-time exercise tracking

In a statement on the official Google Chrome Blog, the browser’s developers have announced the availability of a new version in the stable channel. It brings some performance improvements and a handful of new features.

Google’s development efforts on Chrome have been moving forward at an impressive pace. The company is iterating very quickly on new features and stabilizing them as they trickle down through the various release channels. The most noteworthy new features introduced in the stable release of Chrome 9 are support for WebGL and Chrome Instant.

WebGL is a relatively new standard that emerged in 2009 with the support of the Khronos group. It provides a set of JavaScript APIs that wrap the functionality of OpenGL ES, allowing developers to render 3D graphics in the Canvas element. Mozilla and Apple have also adopted the standard and have their own increasingly mature implementations. Google officially supports WebGL with hardware-accelerated rendering in Chrome 9. To take the feature for a spin, you can try out some of the WebGL demos at the Chrome Experiments website.

Another major feature in Chrome 9 is support for Chrome Instant, the browser equivalent of Google’s instant search innovation. As the user types a URL, the autocompletion mechanism will automatically load pages. This feature is integrated into the browser, but is not enabled by default. Users who want automatic loading will have to opt-in by toggling a preference in Chrome’s settings panel.

Users can download the latest version of Chrome from Google’s website. For more details about some of the bug fixes, you can refer to the release notes.

YouTube Kids, the family-friendly video app, is now available outside the US

Mozilla has rolled out an eleventh beta release of Firefox 4, the next major version of the browser. In addition to the usual assortment of bugfixes and performance improvements, the new beta also adds support for a “Do Not Track” setting.

The implications of behavioral advertising are a growing source of concern among privacy advocates. In an effort to appease regulators, the most prominent Internet advertising companies voluntarily offer a cookie-based opt-out service that allows users to indicate to advertisers that they don’t want to be tracked. It’s a good start, but Mozilla sees a lot of room for improvement.

The browser vendor recently proposed a simpler and more seamless solution which involves adding an optional header to HTTP requests. The header can be used to transparently inform advertisers that the user doesn’t want to be tracked. It’s a better long-term approach than the cookie-based solution because it’s easier to manage and integrate into existing software.

Mozilla has implemented the feature in Firefox 4 beta 11. The browser’s preferences dialog has a new checkbox that the user can toggle to control whether the opt-out header is transmitted to servers. The setting is disabled by default, but is relatively easy for users to find and enable.

As we explained when we compared the tracking opt-out philosophies of Google and Mozilla last month, the downside of introducing a new Do Not Track mechanism is that won’t actually work until it gets buy-in from the major advertising companies. As far as we know, the new header isn’t actually recognized by major advertisers yet.

Due to the lack of industry support, toggling the new setting will have no real effect for users at this time. It seems premature to be exposing the feature through the Firefox user interface, but doing so could potentially help to encourage broader adoption by advertisers and other browser vendors. It’s worth noting that the advertising industry has been relatively supportive of opt-out technologies in the past, so there is hope that Mozilla’s solution will gain some traction.

Google+ is now faster for the few who use it

It has been almost a year since Intel and Nokia began converging their respective mobile Linux platforms to create the MeeGo project. The effort has attracted interest among hardware vendors, but hasn’t quite reached the stage where it is ready for mainstream consumer devices. A growing body of evidence suggests that the wait might soon be over.

Nokia had hoped to deliver its first MeeGo-based product in the fourth quarter of 2010, but pushed back the launch into 2011. Nokia’s MeeGo debut device was originally expected to be the rumored N9 handset, but the subsequent flow of conflicting rumors and leaks has left little in the way of clarity, leaving broad speculation in their wake.

The latest round of rumors suggests that Nokia is still aiming to bring the N9 to market, but that it will be powered by an Intel Atom processor. This seemingly dubious suggestion got a boost last week when Intel showed off a smartphone with the company’s Medfield SoC.

We are also starting to see some signs that Nokia is polishing up MeeGo for a product launch. In a brief and informal note posted on the Qt Labs blog earlier this week, Nokia’s Henrik Hartz acknowledged that Nokia has temporarily closed the MeeGo-themed branch of its Qt Quick components project. The contents of that branch will allow third-party Qt applications to conform with the MeeGo look and feel. Nokia says that this code is being finalized and that the developers are “unable to make certain pieces of the final user experience public” during the last stages of development.

A Finished Version of Firefox for iOS Is Finally Available on App Store

Free hardware has somewhat become the norm lately, if you want to promote your new platform (at least if you aren’t Apple or Google). We hear that HP is apparently planning to hand out WebOS tablets and Intel just confirmed that it has given developers MeeGo netbooks.

How do you convince developers to start using and developing for a new platform. Hardware would help and that seems to be a common theme these days. Remember Microsoft, which handed out more than 30,000 Windows 7 phones? Or Google, which beta tests Chrome Os with 65,000 ChromeOS notebooks (and hopes that developers will start developing many more apps for the Chrome Web Store)? Intel does it on a much smaller scale with MeeGo.

At a recent meeting with about 140 developers in Arizona, the company gave out MeeGo netbooks to “qualified developers”. The hope here is, as well, that developers will actually use the netbook to build MeeGo apps. “By the end of the night, developers learned that with MeeGo they can rapidly create a variety of experiences across many computing device types, as well as have an opportunity to make money with their applications,” Intel’s Rhonda Peters wrote in a blog post.

The success of smartphone and tablet platforms seems to be a numbers game. 140 netbooks are a start, but it may not be enough to see a big impact. The first MeeGo version that will make it into consumer devices is, as far as we know, currently scheduled for a late April 2011 shipment date. We have no idea whether there will be MeeGo netbooks on retail shelves, but we do know that the company plans on having MeeGo tablets in U.S. retail by June.

If you are a developer interested in MeeGo, we have no idea whether Intel is giving out more free netbooks. However, you could always try and contact the company through its AppUp developer program.

Generate a Résumé from Your Github Account

A few months ago, Nodejitsu co-founder Marak Squires wrote “The day’s of resumes and references for developers are slowly dying.” Squires sends his Github account to potential employers before he sends a résumé.

With that in mind, check out My Github Résumé, a web application that will generate a résumé from a Github account.

Here’s one for our resident hacker Tyler Gillies: