No doubt the big tech story of the week has been the release of the new Google Chrome browser, Google's new entrant into the browser wars. Like many others I downloaded this and gave it a go to see what the fuss was about. So first gripe, the current beta is only for Windows, although we are being promised versions for Linux and the Mac. This is an interesting decision, maybe it was taken as they don't want to aim the product at "geeks"? However, as an old manager of mine used to say, let's "park that thought" for the moment and look at the browser itself. Google came up with a great way to explain their new browser and its features; they did this in the form of a comic book and this can been seen at: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/. I'm not really into comics or graphical novels, but this made a refreshing change from a white paper or a powerpoint-type presentation, although I must admit my attention was starting to stray at the end! This is well worth reading as it explains the whole project and its features very well.

I can't help noticing the number of Asus EEE PCs around now, it is strange to think that twelve months ago these weren't really about and there was still discussion of when will be the "year of the Linux desktop". Of course, events took a different turn, and suddenly the desktop didn't seem so important anymore. The real prize was a computer that was small and convenient, inexpensive and easy to carry about. The EEE PC came supplied with a version of Linux called Xandros (which I'd never heard of until then), but more importantly, in a fatal blow to the argument that Linux is too difficult for non-technical users, it came with an "Easy mode" menu that made finding and running applications very easy, with a tabbed menu and large icons. Now other manufacturers are working on their competitors to the EEE, and Canonical, the company that provides commercial backing to Ubuntu, has been working with a couple of them to produce the Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

The most popular post on this blog for some time has been Using you Asus EEE PC on the 3 mobile network, which is no doubt a lot to do with it being linked to from 3 Mobile Buzz. I think it is safe to say that the two hottest gadgets this year have been the Asus EEE PC and the 3G dongle from 3, which put together make a whole new computing experience. Why? I think this may be a similar change to the introduction of mobile phones. It seems to me there is a direct comparison between the way we get onto the Internet and how we use phones. First we started with a hard wired connection, just like the phone, now many of us are on a WiFi connection, which is a bit like a cordless phone, in fact it has a similar range, you can stray a short distance from the location of your network, but if you go to somebody else's house, another workplace or away somewhere you are left with a chore of trying to get access to another network. There are WiFi systems now where you can "roam" between different hotspots, but in some ways that reminds me of the old Rabbit phones where you took the handset with you and had to find a base station to go stand near to make a call.

An area where Linux is sometimes criticised is the level of difficulty expericed by people new to the operating system when installing software. Earlier today, Dr A J Cann posted an example of this criticism when he suggested that Ubuntu should follow the same model of software distribution used Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X of having a downloadable installer file for your desired program. I don't agree with his suggestion, but do see his point that installing software for someone unfamiliar to Linux can seem a daunting task. If I know someone is about to try out Kubuntu, I always try to sit them down and explain the package management system to them. There is no direct equivant of this on other operating systems, so I find it helps to explain it to people. Once, somebody explained package management to me and it saved me a lot of time.

Over the past few weeks for various reasons I have been asked to communicate with people using Skype, the popular program for making calls over the Internet. The chats I have been asked on though are just text chats. I'm slightly wary of Skype after reading a thought provoking entry on the Ubuntu Wiki about the ethics of using the service and because I can't get a version that will work on a 64bit operating system. As it is not interoperable, there is a big risk of lock in, once all of your contacts are on Skype surely you will have to go on Skype too. It seems very backward to me to have such lock in, imagine if you had a mobile phone and you could only call people on the same network, it would be a ridiculous situation. The only interface out of Skype appears to be to the PSTN not to other chat clients.

Google this week anounced that it was going to let outside developers host their applications on Google infrastructure through a new product: Google App Engine. This is the latest in a long list of products from Google who are most probably the world's leading Internet company and may well become the most important IT company, if they aren't already. The offering from Google does not work in the same way as conventional web hosting, instead you must devise a solution that will work with their infrastructure, but in return the promise that your solution will be able to scale to keep up with demand with such things as load balancing taken care of automatically. This probably won't be a problem for most developers who are used to devising solutions that work with in-house IT requirements anyway.

I was sad today to find out that a radio station I really quite like has shut down. That radio station was Captital Life, which broadcasted on the UK's digital radio system (DAB), a nice radio station that played a lot of music without lots of interruptions from presenters and adverts. It has been known for some time that this was going to happen as the station's owners GCap Media was having problems making DAB radio a profitable venture. This is the latest development in the sad story of DAB radio in the UK, which has recently been branded by technology news website The Register as "a very British failure", they have also published an interesting article exploring some of the options to save digital radio in the UK from terminal decline in "Fixing the UK's DAB disaster". It would be a great shame if digital broadcasting did die off as the idea of a platform that can carry many stations serving diverse tastes is very appealing. Yes you can put everything through the Internet, but for the times when you are out and about, maybe in your car, relying on a mobile broadband signal is not usually a reliable business. Radio can be used in many ways and as it is much cheaper to make programmes for radio than TV it can be possible to make diverse programming and cover costs.

Up to now the computing experience has been divided into two - online and offline. Being online means using sites through a web browser, offline means working with different applications, mostly designed to work with documents not stored on the Internet, but instead on local file systems. However, changes changes in the way we communicate and work are starting to make this arrangement look creaky and old fashioned so thoughts have turned to how to integrate these two worlds.

It's funny how the phrases "paperless office" and "it'll never happen" can occur in close proximity, but just maybe there is a way to work towards this dream. Modern offices are often a colossal mess of paper, high powered printers churn out copies of electronic documents, scraps of paper litter people's desks and people remind themselves of tasks to be completed by sticking little notes to available surfaces.

Top educational blogger Stephen Downes has compiled his own list of who he feels should have been Edublog winners, and our very own Course Profiles application in Facebook gets his vote for Best educational use of a social networking service.