It’s been four months since Google dropped a bombshell with its announcement that it is getting into the PC operating system game, in a direct challenge to Microsoft and Apple.

Now the world may get the first glimpse of Chrome OS, the PC operating system as envisioned by the folks in Mountain View, California.

According to a report in TechCrunch citing “a reliable source,” a version of the Chrome operating system will be available for public download within a week.

TechCrunch said Google has a legion of engineers working on hardware driver support, and notes that the software may only run on a limited set of PCs at first:

We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one.

Google said in July that it was working with PC manufacturers including Acer, Asus and Hewlett-Packard and promised that the first devices running the Chrome OS would be available in the second half of 2010.

Google also said at the time that the Chrome OS code would be “open sourced” later this year, so next week’s rumored release would be in keeping with the original timeline.

As PC world puts it, however, open source code is not the same as a ready-for-prime-time product.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean the average person will be able to download these files and get the OS up and running. Source code is just a collection of text files meant for software developers to tinker with.
As I understand it, to get the source code to work as a computer program, you need a compiler that brings all the source code together and turns it into something your computer can actually boot up.

So, if you’re a developer, you may soon get a taste of Chrome. The rest of the world may have to wait a bit longer.

……is the cash cow for Chinese company Shanda Literature Ltd, a
subsidiary of Shanda Interactive Entertainment.

The company’s business model is simple: read the first half
of a book online for free, and if you want to know the rest
(which usually is the case if you have read that far) you need
to pay for it. Revenues are split with the stories’ authors.

In China, this proves to be successful. According to Shanda
Literature CEO Hou Xiaoqing, the company now has cash reserves
of $1.8 billion, with 800,000 authors creating up to 80,000 new
pages of content per day, he said at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

On web portals such as www.qidian.com and www.hongxiu.com,
customers can chose from a huge variety of stories, and the best
even make it into print.

Xiaoqing said the company has also teamed up with China
Mobile to distribute literature via mobile phones, a
business model that he said was “very promising”.

He added it was now for Shanda to explore whether those
business ideas also work in other parts of the world, including
Europe.

Could this be a business model for other publishing companies as well?

What do you think?

Cellphone giant Nokia showed off its first netbook on Tuesday and announced that it would go on sale at Best Buy and would connect to the Web using AT&T’s network.

John Hwang, general manger for Nokia’s brand new connected computers division was coy about discussing future plans for Nokia computing products except to say that “there are other products in the works.”

Hwang said he would look at all options for future products when asked whether Nokia, currently using the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system,  would consider making netbooks using other technologies such as systems from Google, a rival in the cellphone world.

“We certainly wouldn’t rule out other technologies,” the executive said. Unlike in the cellphone market where Nokia has to protect its leadership position, the Finnish giant will have to be more open-minded in computing, he said. “As a newcomer we’re trying to take a different attitude.”

Here are some short video demonstrations of the product. The company is betting that the device’s slim form and 12-hour battery life will give it a good start in the computing market.

Nokia has also set up the device to easily synch services such as texting and photos with its cellphones using its Ovi service.

Netbook makers say the small laptop computers are perfect for Goldilocks - not too big, not too small, just right. But Nvidia wonders if smaller Internet-connected smartbooks might make the netbooks line look like a fairy tale.

“I wonder if the netbook is not enough satisfaction for a PC, not enough battery life to be mobile? I kind of feel like the netbook is a ‘tweener’,” Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said on Monday on the sidelines of a conference on the Stanford University campus, later adding that he thought netbooks would be replaced by “smartbooks.”

That would be great for Nvidia Corp, since it is making ARM-based chips for smartbooks while its rival Intel Corp’s Atom powers most netbooks. The bet on lower-power ARM chips is that consumers will privilege battery life over computing power.

But Nvidia’s chief spoke in the face of big headwinds: Mobile phone maker Nokia said it would enter the low-cost, low-power PC market with a “booklet” using Intel’s Atom chip.

Nvidia so far has announced only one device based on its ARM-technology Tegra chip– Microsoft’s Zune HD — but Huang has said 50 more designs, 35 of which are “smartbooks,” will be announced in the second half of 2009 or in early 2010.

Nvidia also sells an Ion chipset that can be paired with Intel’s Atom in netbooks.

(Reporting by Clare Baldwin)

Slowly but surely, the netbook is growing up.

At first these sub-notebook machines were seen as weaklings. Now Nvidia Corp, which makes computer graphics cards, has teamed up with Lenovo to offer its second “ion” Netbook, following an announcement last month with Acer.  Nvidia’s suggestion for computer makers is to soup up the low-powered Intel Atom chips which run netbooks by combining them with Nvidia graphics cards.

The new product, the Lenovo IdeaPad S12, is touted by the companies as having the long life of Netbooks, but the quick graphics performance of Nvidia chips. It has a 12-inch screen and a keyboard, which puts it closer in size to the average laptop than to the average netbook.  Of course, the machine is priced closer to a low-powered laptop than it is to a traditional netbook, at $499 (if netbooks, being of such recent vintage, can be characterized as traditional).

The machine is said to run video games and other applications that usually can only limp along on a normal netbook. It runs all recent versions of Windows and will show high-definition Blue-ray movies.

Do not, however, try to buy one yet. It won’t be around until “later this summer” a press release says.

Netbooks: flavor of the month? Not according to Dell's Steven Schuckenbrock.

The PC giant's head of enterprise sales was quick to point out flaws in the stripped-down, no-frills mini-computers that have garnered rave reiews for their ultra-portability and anywhere-connectivity.

"Netbooks are a secondary device. The user experience of a netbook is just not as good. It's slower than a conventional notebook computer," Schuckenbrock said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.

Perhaps that's why Dell was slow to get into a space dominated early on by aggressive Taiwanese upstarts like Asustek. Dell, the once-preminent U.S. personal computer manufacturer, which has steadily given away market share to rivals from Hewlett Packard to Lenovo, unveiled its first netbook only in September.

Schuckenbrock, however, acknowledged that the netbook was an ideal device for non-demanding consumers. "I carried one with me on the road this week to check it out. A great device. Light, easy to use. But a different performance. If I'm in my office, it's probably not gonna work."

Which is fine by some investors. Dell had endured criticism from the Wall Street community for appearing at times to see-saw between different and sometimes contradictory corporate strategies, from its initial tardiness in latching onto the netbook craze to its flirtation with the hand-held device market.

AT&T says it sees a lot of promise for the netbook and the connection fees that come with the devices as a growing source of revenue as consumers look to take broadband connectivity on the road. But will consumers be as enthusiatic to sign another contract for the service? Click below to hear AT&T's President of Mobile & Consumer Markets talk about what he sees as the future of the netbook.

AT&T: Netbook popularity on the rise from Reuters TV on Vimeo.

Amid a wave of hype about wireless gadgets like netbook computers and mobile internet devices, Research In Motion’s Co-CEO Jim Balsillie says he will keep focused on the BlackBerry maker’s core business of phones even as computer makers are starting to make phones and phone rival Nokia eyes netbooks.  

This means that Balsillie is focused on developing more new versions of each of BlackBerry phones: those shaped like candy-bars, with touch-screen controls and devices with mini-QWERTY keypads. 

“Form factor is a personal preference but it’s got to be something that lasts the better part of the day and you can hold up to your ear and clip onto your belt,” he said  in response to our question about his vision for future products. “Those are a very tight systems constraints for a netbook.” 

And, if a phone’s dimensions seems too cramped for the increasingly sophisticated media, entertainment and business services offered, Balsillie said this:
“If you want richer keyboards and richer displays you can just use perphiperals and bluetooth.”
 
Bob Stutz an executive from business software supplier SAP, which delivers business applications to BlackBerry devices, was dismissive of the relevance of devices like netbooks for his clients. 

“We’ve been down this route with these kinds of devices,” he said, referring to “iPaqs, fliptop notebooks and other specialist devices.”

“Why we are doing this with RIM today is because these (other) devices don’t work,” he said, noting that consumers want sturdy, inexpensive and well connected devices.
“Customers really have been down the gamut … They’ve been down this path. At the end of the day what we’ve really found is that if they can do it on a BlackBerry that’s what they’ll want.”

(Photo: Reuters)

*Verizon to sell wirelessly enabled netbook computers from HP (Reuters)
* Facebook to test payments platform (Silicon Alley Insider) 
* $13,000 bid for Huffington Post Internship (AdvertisingAge)

Given the phenomenal success of netbooks — small, cheap, lower-performance PCs — everybody wants to know what plans Apple, the only major PC player that doesn’t have a netbook offering, might have for the space. Netbooks are one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak PC landscape.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs openly dismissed netbooks.  And when the company was asked again asked about them on the conference call following its quarterly results Wednesday, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook sounded similarly unimpressed. Current netbooks, he said, suffer from “cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware.”

“Not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. And so, it is not a space as it exists today, that we’re interested in. Nor do we believe that customers in the long-term would be interested in. It is a segment we would choose not to play in.”

Cook continued: “We do look at the space and are interested to see how customers respond to it. People that want a small computer, so to speak, that does browsing and e-mail might want to buy an iPod Touch or they might want to buy an iPhone. So, we have other products to accomplish some of what people are buying netbooks for. So, in that particular way, we play on an indirect basis.”

And finally: “Then, of course, if we find a way where we can deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, then we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas in the space.”

Apple is widely rumored to be developing some sort of small touchscreen PC or similar device.

Nvidia and Acer on Tuesday unveiled a low-cost, full-featured desktop computer the size of hardback book, the first device based on Nvidia’s Ion platform.

The new Acer AspireRevo features an Nvidia graphics processing unit along with Intel Atom microprocessor. (Although they might sit comfortably together in the new PC, Intel and Nvidia continue to be bitter rivals in the chip world and battle each other in court.)

Nvida says the AspireRevo uses one-quarter the power of standard desktops and is 10 times faster than comparably priced PCs.  The system can do most things a full-sized PC can, including play high-definition video and games, share digital pics and Web surfing.

Although Acer hasn’t yet announced a price for the PC, Nvidia says it expects Ion-based desktops to sell for less than $300. Ion-based notebooks are expected in the second half of the year, with price points expected to be below $500.