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Google is developing an operating system (OS) for personal computers, in a direct challenge to market leader Microsoft and its Windows system.

Google Chrome OS will be aimed initially at small, low-cost netbooks, but will eventually be used on PC’s as well.

Google said netbooks with Chrome OS could be on sale by middle 2010.

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” the firm said in its official blog.

The operating system, which will run on an open source license, was a “natural extension” of its Chrome browser, the firm said.

The news comes just months before Microsoft launches the latest version of its operating system, called Windows 7.

To continue reading this article on the BBC click here

Watch this space!!

Google have recently brought out a new tool in which you can sync the items on your Microsoft Office Outlook Calendar with your Google Mail Calendar.  It is a great application which is ideal for anyone who is always on the go!  You can schedule the application to sync the calendars as often as you want.  This means that any changes you make in your Outlook Calendar will be synced to your Google Mail Calendar!  Check out the images below to compare the calendars (click on the image to make it larger)…

It is pretty easy to set up.  There is a great tutorial on the Google Website which is worth ready whilst setting up the program!  For those who knew it the application is very similar to the SBS 2003 Server Setup.

So far we’ve been really impressed!

Everyone goes on how you can do pretty much anything with a computer now days….but is that true?  Things to do is a small site from Google which aims to help you to do something new and different with your searches in Google.  For example, fancy a good read but can’t get to a book shop or library?  You can now browse through books on the Internet and read reviews etc.  You can also check the weather, learn a new skill, find cinema times, learn a new language and much more!

Google’s Things to do has some great ideas for you use up any free time you may have and make your life that little bit easier.  Have a look if you have some time to spare!

So we have had Firefox 3, Google Chrome and on the horizon is Internet Explorer 8! At the moment there is a beta version out which we have been playing with. We would like to remind users that beta versions are really only for designers and developers or those more competent computer users. This is because it is not a final version and there is a possibility of some stability issues!

If you think you are one of those users then take a look at the IE8 Beta download, otherwise it is best to wait for it to be properly released, but if you want to read about what is different then take a look at the office IE8 site.

We have been playing with the beta and like it very much, which means a lot considering we are BIG Firefox fans! Some pages which don’t work too well in IE7 now work properly in IE8 which is brilliant! In our eyes they have fixed the CSS layout issues, we also think it is quicker than IE7 which can’t be bad, there are a number of nice new features which we could talk about but read properly about them all here, a couple that stand out to us are the InPrivate browsing and also the SmartScreen Filter.

This is just a short post highlighting this new release of Internet Explorer so we won’t be reviewing it properly until it has been released, but well worth keeping an eye on we think!

Tuesday of this week saw Google release their own web browser! Arguably the best search engine on the web has produced a very nice browser. I have only been using it for a few days now but I am loving it. Most noticably two things visually that stand out to me are

• There is not a big toolbar at the top, so more of my screen is filled with the web page, therefore less scrolling so that is great!
• When opening the browser you get your most recent websites shown to you with little scrrenshots!

Over the past week I’ve reviewed the top three Web Based Email Providers, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Live Mail/Hotmail. In my opinion they are all good providers have their pluses and minuses. For example; Hotmail/Live Mail is the most user friendly and has the most stylish layout, whereas Yahoo! Mail has unlimited storage space, although with a gmail account you can use loads of great features like Calender, Documents, Photos, Reader, Images, Maps, Books, Shopping and much much much more! In this last review I’m going to do a comparison between the three providers. To save all the confusion, I am only going to refer to the free editions unless I mention otherwise.

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We are now on the penultimate of the Web Based Email Review series. I’ve previously reviewed Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail/Live Mail, now its time for Gmail. Gmail is one of the many applications that you can have for free with a Google Account. Google Accounts are completely free and worth while!

There are many useful features you can get with your basic Gmail account. On their site they have made a list called ’10 Reasons To use Gmail’.

1. You don’t like spam. Neither do we
2. Search your mail instantly
3. Organize replies into conversations
4. Chat is built right in
5. Labels, Filters and Stars…oh my!
6. Get your mail on the go
7. Lots of space (and counting)
8. We have ads, but only the good kind
9. Save time
10. All this is free?

To find out more on these features and to see the details of the list click here.

Gmail have made some cool new features for all their users. Some new features include:

• Group chat
• Instant messaging
• 20MB attachment limit
• Emotions
• Contact Groups
• 6.732016 GB email storage per account and the amount it always increasing!

Click to see a list/information on all 35 updates/new features.

You can also upgrade to either Premier or Education Edition. An Education Edition is free to accredited not-for-profit K-12 Schools, Colleges and Universities which are described in the terms and conditions. It provides the same features as the standard edition but also includes:

• Conference room and resource scheduling
• APIs to integrate with your existing infrastructure
• Email routing controls for dual delivery (Coming November 08!)
• Email migration tools
• 24/7 assistance, including phone support for critical issues
• Third-party applications and services
• 6.732016 GB email storage per account and the amount it always increasing!

Click to find out more about Google for Educators or to Compare Packages.

The Premier Edition is by far the packages which supplies the most but it does come at a price! It costs £25 a year. With in the Premier package there are two versions, one geared more towards Enterprises and the other Small Businesses. The package provides all previously mentioned features from the Standard and Education Editions, plus:

• 99.9% up-time guarantee for email
• Policy management and message recovery by Postini (Coming in November)
• 25 GB email storage per account

Click to compare the package with the standard package.

Gmail has everything that most people need from their web based email account and you can also use so many great applications with an account. Although in my opinion it isn’t as user friendly as other providers.

Do you use Gmail? What do you think of it?

Google has created an incredibly easy way to share photos with people on the web. It’s called Picasa. Picasa is a great free download which helps you to organise photos on your computer, share photos via email and the web etc and to edit/add effect to your photos with just a couple of clicks. In this review we will tell you a little bit about Picasa and show you some basic features of the program.

Before you download Picasa for free you must you need to create a Google and Picasa account which will allow you to share your photos on the internet. Both Google and Picasa accounts are compltely free. If you already have a googlemail or gmail account then you don’t need to create a new Google account, just a Picasa one. Click here for a Google account. Then for a Picasa account click here. You need a Google account to use Picasa Web Album.

Once this is done you need to download Picasa for free and then install it.

Then you need to upload your pictures to Picasa by selecting where you wish for them to be uploaded from. If you have some pictures on a digital camera that you wish to upload to your computer follow the instructions on the pctoolbox.co.uk tutorial named ‘Downloading Pictures from Your Digital Camera On An XP Machine‘.

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