I’ve been promising that I’d give an update on the Chromebook challenge that I undertook a while ago, but one thing and another have meant that I haven’t really had enough time to do it. But, finally, here it is.

The positives

There are a lot of positives to the Chromebook experience and to the “web-only” approach. Never having to think about where your data is is a liberating experience, and one that – once you’ve had it – is very hard to go back on. Similarly, not having to think about whether an application is installed, and being able to sit down at any machine and get to work in seconds is amazingly cool.

Then, of course, there’s security. Chromebook is about the most secure computing platform you’re going to find (and yes, I know about the security hole), and your data is about as secure as it’s possible to be.

The speed of startup and battery life on the Samsung Series 5 3G hardware is also great. You open it, and it’s ready to use (at least if you’re using WiFi – 3G, sadly, always takes a few extra seconds to connect to the network, something that’s really unavoidable). And the battery life is so good that it’s more like a phone than a PC. You charge it overnight, and work throughout the next day with it.

The negatives

This might surprise many, but the need to constant connectivity hasn’t proved to be a negative. I’m simply not out of range of both WiFi and 3G often enough for it to be a problem for me. If you live in the middle of nowhere, that may not be true for you – but in my case, living in London, I’m constantly connected. And, of course, if I’m not connected then it doesn’t matter whether I’m using Chromebook, Mac or whatever – I can’t get to my webmail.

However, there are problems, and you can group them into two camps: those connected with the web-only nature of ChromeOS; and those to do with the hardware.

First, the web. You would think, with uncounted millions of websites, that there would be better applications out there than there actually are. But even the best web applications look pretty barebones compared to the richness of native apps on something like the Mac or iPad (or even Windows). Of course, web apps have features and advantages, particularly around sharing and collaboration, but their interface design tends to be pretty weak and hugely inconsistent from app to app.

Then there’s the hardware. Now there’s a lot to like about the form factor of the Samsung, but at the end of the day it’s just not quite powerful enough to do what it needs to do. Open up a couple of windows and five or six tabs, and the Atom processor and 2Gb of RAM start to creak under the strain. An i3, with maybe a bit more RAM, would make ChromeOS fly – and given the premium price you’re paying compared to more complex Windows-based netbooks, I think we have a right to expect this level of hardware.

Conclusions

Overall, I’m actually happy with the way that the Chromebook challenge has gone. Could I use the Chromebook as my only machine? No, and I don’t actually think that it’s really intended to be used like that. Could I use it as a second machine, a “throw in the bag and forget” laptop? Definitely. In fact, it’s ideal for that.

Will I be carrying on using it? Yes, I think I will. I don’t think that I’ll use it exclusively – sometimes, the iPad is a better thing for me to be carrying around – but the Chromebook will definitely get enough use to make it worthwhile keeping. And I’m looking forward to seeing what the next generation of Chromebooks will look like, because I think that this is a view of computing that represents part of the future. Not for everyone, perhaps, but for quite a wide range of potential users.

This weekend will be the first trip away that I’ve had since starting the challenge where I won’t be taking my Chromebook. Instead, I’ll be back using the iPad, along with a keyboard so that I can churn out some words. I’m pretty sure that I’ll miss the Chromebook though – it really is something that its creator, Sundar Pichai, can be proud of.

A while ago, I wrote a column for Tap on the differences between Apple and Google’s vision of “the cloud”, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) came down hard on the side of Apple’s. iCloud, as I saw it, was very much the more user-centred version.

The iPad and Chromebook represent two different views of the future of cloud computing. In one – the Chromebook – the applications as well as the data live in the cloud. In the other – the iPad – applications remain firmly on the desktop (or mobile), while the data floats wherever it needs to go.

Each approach has its advantages. Apple’s keeps native applications, which are still way ahead of the web in terms of richness and usability, while bolting on what amounts to a seamless, invisible storage and syncing system.

The Google approach has some big advantages too. Lose your computer, and you’ve lost nothing: your applications, your data, and everything else aren’t lost, and you can pick up where you were from any machine with a browser. ChromeOS itself has a remarkable level of security, and any files that you store on the Chromebook’s SSD are heavily encrypted. And web applications allow a level of collaboration which is rarely seen on native apps.

I’m fascinated by how this will play out, and which vision of the future of computing will be more popular over the coming years. And I feel like I ought to know more about how the other half lives.

So, as an experiment, I’m going to try living The Google Way for a month. Starting today, and finishing at the end of November, I’m going to only use applications native on the web, rather than the rich apps which I love. The Chromebook will become my main mobile machine, with Chrome (or Safari – let’s be a little platform agnostic!) on my MacBook Pro and work desktop. Google Docs will be my business apps, Gmail’s web interface will be my email client, and so on.

The biggest challenge, I think, will be managing my to do list. I’m a huge, huge fan of OmniFocus, which organises my life on Mac, iPhone and iPad – and unfortunately, it doesn’t have a web client. Instead, I’ll be using doit.im, which I’ve played around with in the past and is probably the best web-based system for GTD that I’ve found. It’s not as powerful as OmniFocus, but it’s pretty good.

Upfront, I should say that there’s going to be a handful of exceptions. Our workflow at Redwood means that I’ll almost certainly have to use InDesign and a few other applications as part of my job. I’ll need to use some native apps when reviewing them for the publications I write for, although the reviews themselves will be written online. And at home, games will stay native: you can prise World of Warcraft from my cold, dead fingers. But where there’s a web-based alternative, that’s what I’ll be using.

I think this is going to be more of challenge for me than for my blog buddy Louis Gray (a man who loved Google so much, he bought joined the company), but I’m very much going to approach it with an open mind. If I was a betting man, I would probably bet that I won’t be staying web-only after the month is over, but I’m prepared to be surprised.

The biggest problem online since the turn of the Century has been that it’s really hard to discover new stuff. Not find stuff: discovery isn’t the same thing. If I know roughly what I want, Google makes it easy to find. But finding things that I might like that I don’t know about yet? Much harder.

Part of discovery is about social. If my friends like something, I might like it too. But part of it is also about taking time to browse, and the problem, in media at least, is that good places to browse which have multiple possibilities are few and far between.

That’s why I’m not surprised at the success of projects like Apple’s Newsstand in iOS 5:

Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman reports that Newsstand, the long-awaited feature in Apple’s newly released operating system for iPhones and iPads is causing explosive growth in news app downloads. A stunning 1.8 million iPhone users downloaded NYT’s free app last week, eighty-five times the rate of a week earlier, Sonderman reports, and the iPad app’s downloads were up seven times, to 189,000.

(via Audit Notes: Paying for Newspapers Edition)

Before anyone starts muttering “but that works on a closed system” under their breath, it can work on the web too. Take Slovakia’s Piano Media as an example:

For Piano Media, it gains that awareness through a thin, top bar appearing across its nine member websites. (That bar is much like CircLabs has touted in its “Circulate” concept.) Click on that banner and you get this offer: “For a single monthly payment, you can get shared access to premium content on 9 different websites.” Your choices: €0.99 for a day, €2.90 for a month, or €29 for a year. (Is “nine, nine, nine” spreading?) Sign in and get access to all: one price, one login recognized persistently by all member sites. Most buyers opt for the monthly deal.

So this is a newsstand — but it’s not a kiosk, a difference Bella emphasizes. A kiosk just lets you buy a single title, from a collection. It makes use of collective marketing, but doesn’t make use of how we like to digitally read, a little of this, a little of that, without barriers.

(via The newsonomics of Piano Media » Nieman Journalism Lab)

I’m convinced we’ll see more and more media adopt the newsstand model.

Martin Belam:

I’d define dick-ish behaviour on a news site as including, but not restricted too: personal attacks, using “amusing” clichés like EUSSR and Tony Bliar, making the same off-topic point day after day, being rude and grumpy and unwelcoming to newcomers, mocking other people’s spelling, bullying and hectoring staff and journalists appearing in the comment threads, asking “is this news?” on a story you are not interested in and which nobody forced you to read, hate speech, “ironic” hate speech, anything that might now or in the future potentially land the publisher in legal hot water, and any comment which includes the phrase “I don’t suppose the moderators will publish this but…”

Eliminate those and you’d eliminate 95% of the reason that I don’t tend to read comments on news sites.

Why do people feel the need to be abusive online? Why do they believe that behaviour which they would never consider to be acceptable face-to-face is perfectly fine when using the Internet?

A case in point: these two tweets directed at Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat:

Calling someone a “cunt”? Declaring that you’d like to perpetrate physical violence against someone who you’ve never met? Is this acceptable behaviour anywhere?

There is, unfortunately, a nasty strain of macho bullshit that exists online that says, yes, this is perfectly acceptable. Well I don’t think it is – and I’m pretty tempted to do something about it.

What can I do? Well, one thing would be to use the Google juice of this blog to name and shame offenders. Because it’s been around for so long and linked to from so many sources, this blog tends to get rated pretty highly. If I mention someone’s name prominently, and they don’t already have a big online presence on a major site, it’s quite likely that a search for their name would turn up a page on here.

So I could name and shame people, thus displaying to friends, family and potential employers exactly what they think is an acceptable way to treat other people. Shaming them by tying them to their own words and forcing them to acknowledge their behaviour would, I think, be an excellent way to show them their behaviour isn’t on. Free speech is great – but you had better be prepared to stand behind those words when you put them out there.

I’m tempted, but I’m not going to do it… for now.

One of the things which you notice watching Google is that they make a lot of stuff. A huge amount of stuff, in fact. And a lot of the time, they don’t really shout about it much. Take this:

Isn’t that just brilliant? I can think of a hundred applications of this – and then some.

Hugh MacLeod:

And as I’ve said many times over the years, Web 2.0 IS ALL ABOUT personal sovereignty. About using media to do something meaningful, WITHOUT someone else giving you permission first, without having to rely on anyone else’s resources, authority and money. Self-sufficiency. Exactly.i.e. not waiting for the green light. In the blogosphere, the only light IS the green light.

This is something the people complaining about “real names” policies need to remember. If you’re posting content on someone else’s site, you’re playing by someone else’s rules. If you’re not happy about that, don’t keep asking permission – pleading with the king for a “fair” approach won’t get you far. Do it yourself.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Don’t Quit… Yet
• Thinking about Stuff
• Don’t Get To The Point Where You Need to “Reclaim” Your Blog

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Nick Bradbury, author of the very fine FeedDemon, on learning Android and “the fragmentation thing“:

Of course, I can’t write my first post about Android without mentioning its supposed “fragmentation” problem. It is a problem, but it’s mostly blown out of proportion. Desktop developers have always had to create software that works across different OS versions, different devices and different screen sizes, so the fact that you have to do that on Android isn’t a big deal. But it is a big deal when different Android devices handle things differently – video playback and recording, for example, are challenging due to device differences, and getting video streaming to work reliably across devices feels impossible (as Netflix discovered).

Nick, I think, gets this right. Fragmentation is real, but developers deal with it.

It’s not often that I spend time playing around with infographics, but I really like this UK petrol prices history graphic from specialist insurers Staveley Head – not only interesting, but also a nice design that gets over the information in a way that’s really clear and simple (click on the image below to go to the interactive version).

Infographic by Staveley Head

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Poor Charles Arthur. Charles wrote a relatively simple post asking the question of why the Mac has proved to be so successful lately, out-performing the overall computer market and growing its market share. And in response, he got a 500+ long comment thread in which multiple geeks are arguing over how the specs of the Mac do/don’t compare to Windows machines.

I’m greatly enjoying the batting around of specs like people buy computers based on specs anymore. If there’s one thing that the huge demand for netbooks a few years ago proved, it’s that people buy because they can see how a computer can do something for them, not on megahertz.

In the case of netbooks, the “something” was being a machine they could carry everywhere, and do simple stuff on. In the case of Macs, it’s having access to easy to use, powerful software like iPhoto, iMovie, and so on – in a package that’s good looking, well designed, robust, and so on.

It’s about the whole experience: Compare buying a Mac in an Apple Store to buying a Windows machine in PC World and you’ll see what I mean. Compare the ability to take your machine back if there’s a problem with it to a Genius Bar and have someone help you sort it out in a way that’s friendly and not patronising.

This is the thing that advocates of the spec-sheet method of buying computers, or any product for that matter, don’t understand. What lifts a brand from being a making of generic boxes into a real identity isn’t simply the spec you get for the money, but the overall experience of buying and owning the product.

To give a non-Apple example, consider Dell. What set Dell apart from other PC manufacturers was the build-to-order approach which let you tailor the product to exactly meet your needs. You went to the Dell site, and you got exactly the machine you wanted. It was competitively priced, but it was rarely (if ever) the cheapest option. The experience was simple, straightforward, and gave you what you wanted. In short, a good brand experience.

Unfortunately for Dell, this was a part of the brand experience that was relatively simple for other companies to copy, and it’s lacklustre performance in the market coincides with other companies copying this approach. Now, I can get a totally customised machine from most PC makers – so what’s left for Dell to say is unique about its experience?

People buy Macs because the experience of buying, owning and maintaining a Mac is better than the experience with any other computer maker. It’s the experience that matters, not the specs.