Speaking of Spongebob, I found it just a bit creepy that Aryanna, a very young little girl, homed in on the Spongebob theme music and ran for the television as soon as the show came on. Do they test these cartoons’ music on small children to figure out what makes them react? Two years old, mind you… but already has Spongebob imbued in her consciousness. And that’s the only show she responds to in that fashion. I guess the Marketing Department at Nickelodeon really earns their pay if they can snare someone who’s barely potty trained.

Potty-trained… this is a good thing since it means far fewer absolutely disgusting diapers to change. It does help if the kid is able to tell you in advance that they need to “go.” Ary was very good about this, so we merrily made our way to the bathroom several times that morning. It soon became apparent, however, that Ary’s gastrointestinal tract was having a major malfunction, as those few trips soon became 6, 7, 8, 9 and on up into the double digits.

Even worse is the fact my house is an older one built around 1910, with only one bath as was common back then in homes of that size… and it’s upstairs. Even on a normal day I find it hard to navigate the stairs when my various aches and pains are flaring up. By about noon Sunday, I was ready to just plop the kid in the sink to do her thing.

Bathroom Trip #28 turned out to be the topper. Ary tapped me urgently on the knee exclaiming she had to poo. The poor child was literally squirming, not wanting to have an accident. To save valuable time, I picked her up and ran (well, walked as quickly as I could) up the steps, pulled down her pants and pullups, and picked her up to sit her on the toilet. I didn’t move quickly enough.

I’ll spare you the horrendous details but it went everywhere. With my typical cat-like reflexes (if the cat were dead) I shifted Ary to the tub and hosed her down. Once she was clean and dry she announced she again had to go. So, back on the pot.

This time it turned out to be a false alarm as she merely ripped off a series of man-sized farts. What made it funny was how she would break wind, laugh, purse her lips and go “Pffffffffffft” and then laugh again. After a few minutes of hilarity, she suddenly belched and then proceeded to lose her breakfast all over the bathroom floor, and herself as well. I returned her to the tub for another hosedown.

Oddly enough she didn’t behave as if she felt bad – after getting clean clothes on her I took her back downstairs, where she resumed watching Spongebob as if absolutely nothing had happened. Later in the day she ate again and made a few more trips upstairs, but there was no encore of the earlier massive explosion. Whatever her ailment, it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Her mom told me later that Ary’s molars are coming in, so I am guessing this was a contributing factor to her gastric woes. To the kid’s credit, she never cried or fussed. One amusing side note is that by about the time of the 14th or so bathroom break, she quit asking to go and just tapped me on the leg and pointed wordlessly upstairs, like she was using a secret hand signal.

The remainder of the afternoon was uneventful. Ary napped, woke up, helped me finish off some leftover hot dogs and chili and then went home with her grandma for the night. Me, I had to tend to emergency laundry detail in order to wash bath sets, clothes and towels. For the rest of the evening I played on Google+, tended to some business emails and otherwise noodled around on the Internet.

The next time I keep her I’ll be better prepared for disasters like Sunday’s… if need be I’ll just hold her over the cats’ litter box, which isn’t located up a flight of stairs. And hopefully it won’t already be occupied by one of the felines that roam the premises.

Of course, a newspaper has to sell ads in print and online to survive. Subscription rates do not carry any newspaper that I’m aware of. They live or die on advertising. Where do you find the fine balance between getting the advertiser’s product or service out there in an effective manner, and doing it to the point of sensory overload?

This is not a specific slam directed at the newspaper in question. They’re far from being the only paper who has an ad-heavy website. I just wonder if these types of ads are actually still effective. More and more people are running ad blocking software in their browsers. Those that don’t will often choose to just stay away from ad-heavy sites.

I happen to host a site for a business who has run ads on the local paper’s site. As such, I can monitor their stats and see where people are surfing in from. In the past year I have seen click thrus from their web ads drop by nearly 65%. Granted, this is only one advertiser on one site, but I think this is probably a trend across the board.

In my opinion people seem to respond better to small text ads like you find with Google’s advertising partners. If the advertising message is strong enough, interested people will “click” without the need to assault them with Flash or animated GIFs.

Your thoughts?

For the non-geeks among you, Google’s browser has gotten a lot of attention, and market share, since its launch a few years ago. Eschewing the bloat you’ll find in browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox, Chrome is small and nimble, and runs well even on older computers. It’s fast and secure, and already has an ecosystem of thousands of installable extensions, most free, that enhance your surfing experience.

So what’s this “Chrome OS” I’m talking about? Well, it’s a computer operating system, just as Windows and Apple’s OSX are. Without an operating system your PC or laptop would be an inert metal and plastic box. The operating system is what tells your machine what to do. It communicates with your hardware and serves you up the desktop environment you work in.

The foundation of Chrome OS is the Chrome web browser, with the needed extra functionality added that lets it directly control your machine’s hardware, perform file handling functions, and all the other small tasks that are needed for your computer to work. In Chrome OS, your entire computing experience takes place in what is essentially a browser window.

Google believes that both home users and businesses are ready for a computer that’s nearly invulnerable to viruses and malware, updates its operating system silently without user intervention, and relies heavily upon the cloud for most of its functionality.

Cloud? Yep. Chrome netbooks have no hard drive for storing programs and data. You won’t be saving those funny photos of the cat to your desktop, or scanning the disk with McAfee  to detect cooties inadvertently downloaded during your last porn-watching session. Without an Internet connection, these netbooks can do very little.

Google has a vested interest in pushing people to the cloud –  they offer many free (and paid) cloud-based applications such as Picasa (an online photo editing/album suite) and Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheet and more). Cloud apps run in your browser and don’t care what operating system your computer is using. Google hopes it can convince the general public that cloud computing is suitable for many, if not most of, the needs of millions of users. Are they right?

Contrary to what the pundits say, I think the world is ready for Chrome netbooks. Think about it. Google wants to wed your computing experience to a glorified browser window. Don’t many of us spend most of our computer time in a web browser already? We’re communicating amongst ourselves on Facebook. We’re using web-based email clients such as Yahoo Mail. We upload our digital images to services like Photobucket. We do our banking and pay our bills online.

Google is also going after the enterprise with these new laptops. They hope to see them deployed as desktop replacements in environments like support centers, where customer fulfillment is performed via server-side software with a browser-based interface on the service rep’s end. In-house IT staff would embrace machines that are immune to attack and update themselves without interaction. Google plans to market the netbooks to businesses on a subscription basis, which would provide free technical support, system upgrades and repairs, and a brand-new machine every three years… all that for a planned $30 per month per user.

Last but not least, Google plans to offer similar subscription plans to the educational community.

I, for one, can see the potential appeal of Chrome netbooks to millions of home users and thousands of businesses and learning institutions. The machines are small, weigh only a few pounds and boot up in seconds. The threat of malware is virtually nonexistent. The operating system updates itself continuously. And while optimized for Google’s own cloud offerings, they will work with any site offering SaaS (software as a service).

It will be interesting to see if they succeed, and how Microsoft and Apple react if they do.

Related articles

• Chromification of the Operating System (googlesystem.blogspot.com)
• Exclusive: Google: why the Chromebook will succeed where Linux netbooks failed (techradar.com)
• Chrome OS: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (pamil-visions.net)
• What’s Really New About Chromebooks? (spectrum.ieee.org)

Image via Wikipedia

From its origin as just another search engine running a distant second to Yahoo, Google has evolved into one of the largest, most powerful computing and technology companies on the planet. But it’s still just a company that offers web search and sells online ads, right? Wrong.

Google is about much more than search these days, but it’s a safe bet that the majority of the web surfing and computing public have no idea how many pies the company has its fingers in.

Its free web email client, Gmail, was the first true contender to pose a threat to Yahoo Mail or Hotmail. Gmail does away with the traditional folder storage structure in favor of virtual “labels” that can be applied to messages meeting defined criteria, making it easy to filter and sort through mail. The interface is slick and streamlined without a myriad of confusing options.

Google’s Android operating system for smartphones has become a heavyweight in the marketplace. They basically give Android away to any company that wants to use it to power their mobile devices. This is in marked contrast to Apple’s iPhone, whose operating system (iOS) is tightly controlled by the boys in Cupertino. Some stats indicate that Android-powered devices have already surpassed the iPhone in market share. (Notice I don’t mention the new Windows phones. Why? I think they’re a non-player and always will be.)

Docs is a free browser-based office suite that anyone with a Google account (also free) can use. While it has only a fraction of the features of Microsoft Office, the bald fact is that for most people, it’s good enough for daily use. And since your document are stored remotely, you can access them from any computer using any browser running on any operating system… anywhere you are.

Of course, Google does none of this for purely altruistic reasons. They make most of their money selling ads. Gmail and Docs serve up unobtrusive text ads while you use them. You see discreet ads on the pages of your search results. Google has an agreement with many Android handset makers whereas they promote Google products and services in their phones’ bundled applications.

What many non-techies don’t know is that Google is also working on a computer operating system. So what’s an operating system, some of you may ask. Windows is an operating system. So is MacOS. So is Linux, Unix and BSD. They are the layer between your computer’s hardware and you. It’s what allows you to surf the web, edit photos and compose text documents. Without an operating system to basically tell your computer what you want it to do, it would be a dumb hulk of metal and plastic. Microsoft Windows is by far the most dominant operating system for your average PC, followed with MacOS at a distant second, then the others.

Google wants a slice of the pie currently being mostly eaten by Microsoft and Apple. Their new operating system, ChromeOS, is intended to be a lightweight, low overhead and malware-free alternative to the big two. If you’ve ever tried Google’s Chrome web browser, then you have an idea of what ChromeOS will be like. It’s pretty much just the browser on steroids… with additional code to let it talk to your peripherals (printer, external hard drive, etc) and do all the other little things an OS has to do in order for you to be able to use your PC.

ChromeOS is intended for use mostly on small, lightweight notebook computers, aka netbooks. Google’s reasoning is that as the computing world moves to the cloud, there will be less of a need to have the applications you use every day actually installed on your machine. You won’t need a massive hard drive to store programs and data. It will all be in the cloud. The operating system itself will not be on your disk drive as it is with Windows – it will be installed on a memory chip inside the machine. And since the OS is so lightweight, couple that with the fact it’s on a chip and you will have nearly instant bootup times.

The system will update itself silently and continuously – you will hardly ever be asked to confirm a system update and will seldom have to restart to finish the process. Best of all, ChromeOS will be nearly invulnerable to virus infections, since it is inherently more secure than Windows.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about ChromeOS is the rumor circulating that Google intends to sell Chrome netbooks on a subscription basis. For a small monthly fee, the user will get the computer along with free repairs and upgrades as needed – rather like leasing a car as opposed to buying. According to the rumor, the target market will be companies that utilize the premium, paid versions of Google’s many services offered to home users for free. But to me, they would be stupid to lock out private individuals, should this rumor turn out to be fact.

So, why is Google spending millions of dollars hoping they can convert millions of people who know only Windows or Mac? Again, it’s all about promoting products and services, especially their own. The upcoming Chrome netbooks will be preconfigured to work with Google’s applications like Docs and Picasa. When you use a Google app, you know you’re going to see ads, and some of you will click on them. Some of you will end up buying something as well.

What’s not usually mentioned in their self-serving press releases concerning ChromeOS and the netbooks is that Google wants to knock Microsoft’s and Apple’s blocks off, plain and simple. They do not like the fact that two companies basically control the computing experience of much of the world. Apple and Microsoft are both notorious for locking users into a never-ending upgrade cycle. Still using XP? You’re out of luck now if you ever have a real problem since Microsoft has phased out technical support, and system updates, for XP. They want you to buy either a new PC loaded with Windows 7, or buy a DVD to upgrade your current system. Similar deal with Apple, except in their case they actually directly control the hardware and manufacture of ALL Mac computers, so they make even more money.

Google also envisions a world where the user is not tied to a certain operating system due to the requirements of the software they run. In the cloud, where most applications run inside your browser, it doesn’t matter what OS you have installed on your computer, or what browser you use.

For the foreseeable future, there will sometimes be a need to have a good old-fashioned PC or workstation for gaming or specialty applications… as an example, I need to have Adobe Photoshop available to me because there are no cloud-based apps that can do a tenth of what it can do.

But what about the huge chunk of the population that uses their machines for mundane everyday tasks like email, web surfing, lightweight photo touchup and word processing? Google is hoping these people will be ready to embrace ChromeOS for their computing needs.

It’s a gamble – and a big, expensive one. Some experts have already predicted ChromeOS will fail.

A few years ago, many tech pundits said that Google’s plan to create and distribute a smartphone operating system for free was a huge mistake. And any of us that use a smartphone know where Android is at today. So, I would not pass judgment this early. The future of computing does lie in the cloud, and ChromeOS was written from the ground up to be a “cloud friendly” operating system. It’s worried Microsoft enough where they are making their own push into the cloud.

More choices for the consumer is always a good thing. It also encourages innovation amongst competing companies. That’s why I hope ChromeOS is able to gain a foothold, even if it’s only a small one. For too many years, Microsoft and Apple have told us what to do with our machines. They need competition, and Google has the technical know-how, and the cash, to encourage them to do better by their customers.

Related articles

• Chrome OS Subscriptions: (Possibly) A Step Forward (pcworld.com)
• Will Google Sell Chrome OS Portables for Low, Monthly Subscriptions? (ostatic.com)
• Google’s Chrome OS Windows rival to launch in May? (telegraph.co.uk)