Here at Web-Empire we have been watching for news of the fabled Chrome Operating System from Google. With rumours that it might take on Microsoft and the like we thought we would delve into the subject abit more and share it with you:

The recent news about Google’s Chrome OS has raised the interesting question of what an “OS For The Web” might be like, as Chrome OS (as the name suggests) will be based around the Google’s Chrome web browser.

Many have discussed, in the past, whether the rise of usable Web applications will one day make “desktop applications” obsolete. Applications like Google Docs already provide word processing, spreadsheets, and the like, purely through a Web interface; and web- based email has been around for over a decade now. Just about everything you do on your PC can be done on a web site, although the quality of the experience may be somewhat less in a browser window – and things don’t work too well when you’re not connected to the Internet…

But there’s no reason why those pitfalls can’t be removed. Google Gears is a browser extension that lets Web applications install themselves into protected areas on your PC with their own protected areas to store their data in, meaning they can run without an Internet connection. And ongoing improvements in HTML such as HTML5 will continue to improve the quality of the experience that browser-based apps can provide.

Details on what Chrome OS will work like are not yet available, so all we can do is suppose; but given Google’s existing work on Gears and the Chrome browser itself, it’s quite likely that Chrome OS will not necessarily be simply what “an OS with just a browser” might imply; it could well extend what apps in the browser can do until it’s enough to do everything you’d want to do on a PC.

Some of the technical implications of that are discussed in [one of our consultants comment to a posting on technovia](http://www.technovia.co.uk/2009/07/%E2%80%9Cthe-internet-is-everything%E2%80%9D-deja-vu-all-over-again-%C2%AB-gartenblog.html?dsq=12437320#comment-12437320 ).

The weekend saw the second Tech Adventure at the Trinity Arts Centre in Bristol – though the organiser pointed out that it was technically the third, but the first one happened a bit too long ago.

Web-Empire was in attendance at both this one and the one in 2008.

This one saw robotics students, a self-replicating 3D printer, DJs, a mix of motion and music though technology, various old and interesting computers with or without games, a swap shop, a 3D display device, a games table, a Wii area and various talks.

One of the talks was on parallelism and performance in systems – which doesn’t necessarily have to be about computer systems. This was by Colin Butcher and was very very interesting and deserves its own post in the future.

The event brought programmers, inventors, and roboticists all together allowing them to exchange ideas and information.

There were even musical instruments and Geek Poetry present including a competition of spot of the programming languages mentioned. The prize was a wiggly pet! These helpful and friendly creatures happen to have a blog hosted by us so we were pleased to see them out at such an event and the poetry wasn’t bad either.

Upstairs there was also a No2ID event – a subject we here at Web-Empire feel needs looking into more thoroughly for a future post.

We will hopefully also find out about the next one in time to let you all know about it.

Here at Web-Empire this microprinter project has come to our attention and we thought it looked like the sort of thing we should be letting you all know about.

They are using reciept printers connected to the internet to print out select informations, such as your to-do list for the day to say weather forecasts (these are just two of the applications for this project that we here at Web-Empire could think of). Information that comes in small written packets is perfect.

The concept I’m sure will have many applications for both the personal and the business. This is a project still underway so if you like the sound of it then go and look at their website.

We hope this has been interesting from all of us here at Web-Empire.