Google Cloud Print enables any application (web, desktop, mobile) on any device to print to any printer.

Applications submit print jobs to the service via the web-based common print dialog or API offered by the service. Google Cloud Print then sends the print job to the selected printer which the user has previously registered with the service. A new class of cloud-aware printers connects directly to the service and offers the best user experience. Legacy printers connect to the service via a proxy.

An interesting spinoff of the CloudPrint concept is that leveraging OpenID (Google adopted OpenID some time ago) a user could potentially go to any printer at any location and use their Gmail account, Facebook account or Flickr account to send a print job.  The potential is quite staggering.

There are obvious security considerations but since the printers need to be registered with the Google CloudPrint service to work, you are enabling this functionality at your discretion and undoubtedly ACL’s will be built into the solution.

You can read more at;

http://code.google.com/apis/cloudprint/

This release puts pressure on existing browsers for Mac OS X, Mozilla, Safari and Opera to implement their own versions of the Google Gears application space in order to compete with Google.

Also a simultaneous release of Linux version of Chrome is a welcome sign of Google focusing on all operating systems, rather than sticking to the most used and popular ones.

Even though still in beta, Chrome promises to become a fresh and innovative way to use the Internet on Mac OS X.

Get it Here

Gmail is a fantastic email tool for personal and corporate use. One of the biggest drawbacks has been the inability to use the system offline the way you could with Outlook or Outlook Express. That has all changed with the introduction of Gmail Offline. Here is how to enable it.

Once this feature is activated, you can use Gmail as a regular service even when you are offline.

You can compose, star, delete, etc when you are offline, all of these actions are stored on your local computer and once you are connected to the internet these actions are synchronized with the Gmail server.

To enable this feature, log in to your Gmail account (personal or organization);

1. Click Settings and click the Labs tab.
2. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
   

1. Click Save Changes and Log out of your Gmail and restart your browser.

1. After your browser reloads, you’ll see a new “Offline0.1″ or a green beaker link in the upper right-hand corner of your account, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don’t already have it.

The rest is automatic and will be seamless. However, please NOTE!!! that this is an experimental BETA feature an will most likely come and go until it is finalized, so please be patient.

From Google’s Blog:

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.”

We here at GoITExpert will be following closely the development of this new goodness out of our beloved Google and hoping that it truly does become an ideal replacement for overbloated Redmond OS.

Also,  we would to coin the term CHOSOS as a special nickname for the Google’s new CHrome Open Source Operating System.

Cheers,

Editors of GoITExpert.com

The Azure solution has been designed to help developers deploy web-based services centred around Visual Studio quickly and easily by not having to worry about the infrastructure costs or overhead that are typically associated with application delivery.

Once a you are ready to deploy you can select how many nodes you want to use in the Microsoft cloud of computing power, you reserve a those nodes and pay for just those node.  As your web service becomes more popular, you can log in to the management web site and increase the node count with just a few clicks.
Windows Azure pricing is based on how much storage, bandwidth and computing time an application uses.

Visit the Windows Azure Community Technology Preview

Read the Microsoft Press Release

The Microsoft service is playing catch up to the Amazon.com service that has been around for quite some time, called Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2).

The major difference that pushes Amazon.com’s solution ahead of Microsoft is the fact that it is no based on one solution.   With just a few clicks you can deploy a Linux, OS X or a Windows solution with prebuilt images. 

Amazon’s solution is priced according to how much storage (cheap), bandwidth (not as cheap) and computing time (relatively cheap).
To use Amazon EC2, you simply:

• Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing your applications, libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Or use pre-configured, templated images to get up and running immediately.
• Upload the AMI into Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 provides tools that make storing the AMI simple. Amazon S3 provides a safe, reliable and fast repository to store your images.
• Use Amazon EC2 web service to configure security and network access.
• Choose which instance type(s) and operating system you want, then start, terminate, and monitor as many instances of your AMI as needed, using the web service APIs or the variety of management tools provided.
• Determine whether you want to run in multiple locations, utilize static IP endpoints, or attach persistent block storage to your instances.
• Pay only for the resources that you actually consume, like instance-hours or data transfer.

You can read more about Amazon EC2 here.

You can visit the project page here.

Or you can download the Add-on at Mouseless Browsing.

Feature List:

• Supports numeric as well as character ids; character set configurable
• Option to show ids before entire page is loaded
• Configurable modifiers to open link in new tab/window/Cooliris Previews
• Configuration option to use numpad exclusively for Mouseless Browsing
• Configuration options to define for which elements ids should be shown (form element, links, pure image links, frames)
• Smart positining of ids: Ids for image links, textfields, selectboxes are placed in the right upper corner to minimize the impact on the page layout.
• Possiblity to configure URL specific behaviour (black/whitelist)
• Configurable shortcuts for all Mouseless Browsing actions

It takes a little getting used to but overall is pretty good.  What you need to do is just identify the intended hyperlink by right index number, then use Ctrl + numeric key to bring the cursor to respective positions.

Digsby is a single solution to all your needs like, Instant messaging, Email Notifications and Social Networking. It tightly integrates all these into one single application and hence you don’t need to have multiple clients and applications to manage all of them.
The major players are all supported by Digsby including Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Configuring Digsby is very easy, just one word of caution some of the programs it wants to install do do targeted advertising.  In my opinion Google Toolbar is targeted advertising so don’t act like it’s a virus or anything, it’s just a little more intrusive than I like.  The Desktop Weather I don’t need either, I just look out the window.

You can download Digsby here!

Watching this development from the outside perspective, it is easy to see the massing of forces, on both sides, for a final technology show down in a few years. The future of the Internet and desktop applications is not going to be in the hands of Linux and Microsoft. Google, with its arsenal of tools, APIs, applications and gadgets is clearly the main threat to Microsoft’s Windows platform. Linux’s growth has been steady over the past decade or so, however, in part thanks to Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation, Google is gaining ground where Microsoft stood supreme.

So what can we expect from Google in the coming months and years. We’ve all heard of the Google Browser (posted on April 1, a few years back), yet over the past two years Firefox has become the new Google’s browser. Then there was talk of the Google OS, again rumors only, but Linux does seem like a solid choice for Google to expand into that market. And with its new Gears API and extension, which allows seem less interoperability between web applications online and your computer, Google might be headed down the road of creating a first Web OS. An operating system which lives entirely on the Web, with built in Google Office applications, games, etc. Your computer would only act as a thin client and a storage for offline data, perhaps, a Linux machine with a Firefox browser. Now that would be a true Google OS.

Since .info and .biz were established for general use in 2000, ICANN has only approved six regional and industry-specific domains, including .asia, .museum and .travel. While it did not offer specifics, ICANN said it would work to make the process smooth such that new TLDs can be created more quickly in the future. However, businesses have complained that more names leads to more cybersquatting, and pointed out that both .biz and .info have failed to take off in the marketplace.