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Google Sets Sights on Skype: Bakes Video Chat Into Chrome

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Watch you back Skype/Microsoft, Google is gunning for you. Alongside their social initiatives, Google is now implementing its open-source audio and video chat software into the Chrome browser, enabling users to chat in real-time without having to load up a secondary client like Skype.

Google has started to build its open-source WebRTC software into Chrome. WebRTC was introduced in May as a new open tech that allows developers to create quick HTML and Javascript APIs for building voice and video chat applications on the web. With WebRTC built into Chrome, users will be able to start video chats over Google Talk without the need for installing Google’s plug-in first. Oh and they’ve introduced this as royalty-free and are promising to work with other browsers developers(probably Mozilla and Opera initially, but then IE and Safari at some point too) to flesh out the project. This means that anyone building a site can make use of the new tech, and in theory, construct their own personal Skype battering ram. I bet someone is at MS is questioning if they should have spent that massive amount of money for Skype (then again, maybe they knew this was coming and they HAD to in order to compete?!).

The WebRTC (a la Google Talk via the browser) will certainly help the ChromeOS initiative, it’s one more piece of the “web as the OS” strategy coming into place. I also have to imagine that this will play VERY well in with Google’s new social initiative: Google+.

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4 New AJAX and JavaScript Tooltips

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Duplicate the jQuery home page tool tips using MooTools
The jQuery home page has a pretty suave tool tip-like effect, as seen above. Here’s how to accomplish the same effect using MooTools.

Fresh, New and Useful Javascript & Ajax Techniques

Prototip
Prototip allows you to easily create both simple and complex tool tips using the Prototype JavaScript framework. You can easily customize it, control the tool tip position and get configurable rounded corners (with no PNG images required).

Fresh, New and Useful Javascript & Ajax Techniques

Simpletip
Simpletip is a plug-in for the popular jQuery JavaScript library. It allows you to create tool tips with ease for any element on the page using the power of jQuery’s selectors and event management. The tool tips can be static, dynamic or even loaded through AJAX with a variety of different visual effects.

Fresh, New and Useful Javascript & Ajax Techniques

Coda pop-up bubbles
Re-create Coda’s ‘puff’ pop-up bubbles, shown when you mouse over a downloadable image.

Fresh, New and Useful Javascript & Ajax Techniques

Read the full article at SmashingMagazine: 70 New, Useful AJAX And JavaScript Techniques

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FireFox gains two out three users Microsoft that loses

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Long ago the king of the browsers was Netscape. Microsoft turned their massive shift very quickly once they realized exactly how important the browser would be to the future of computing and brought Internet Explorer in line with Netscape… and then the browser wars began. As a web developer I can tell you those years SUUUCKED. Each company would include “features” that only worked with their browser, build web apps when the web was young was difficult (I realize this still exists, but nothing like it did back in the day).

Last month, Microsoft’s market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. Initial data sets provided by Net Applications suggest that the Internet Explorer will drop once again significantly in December to below 69% and Mozilla will climb above 21%.

This doesn’t mean IE is out… 69% is still the lions share but it shows that other browsers are making in-roads to Microsoft’s stranglehold on browser marketshare.  The contenders are FireFox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. FireFox is clearly in the lead as the primary competitor to IE. I personally use FireFox as my daily browser; when the next release comes out and their uber JavaScript engine is in place I can’t see myself going back to IE for anything unless it requires it. Chrome has the mighty Google backing it… it seems Google can do very little wrong lately and Chrome fits nicely into their long term strategy. However, Chrome is still immature in comparison to FireFox at this point.

For crazy detailed stats on each browser gain, decline, etc check out How serious is the market share loss of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer? at TGDaily.com.

I agree with the summary of the authors of the article… I’m stunned at how Microsoft is just letting this happen. Web apps may not be able to counter desktop apps yet (ok GMail is CLOSE… if they’d just get the contacts to sync correctly!); let’s face it… Photoshop via the web ain’t happening anytime soon. However, more and more applications are moving to the cloud. Google understands this and is pushing it agressively, MICROSOFT knows this and is building out cloud architecture… so I’m completely baffled as to why they would allow this to happen. IE8 beta’s appear to be a dude… slow, proprietary, and still not comforming to standards. Whereas the new-comers are quick, have excellent plugin architectures, the new rendering engines used in Chrome and the next release of FireFox make “web 2.0” site rawk. I guess the best we can hope for at this point is that Microsoft has a card up it’s sleeve for when Windows 7 comes out.

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CyberNations

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Cyber Nations is a free persistent browser-based nation simulation game. Create a nation anywhere in the world and decide how you will rule your people by choosing a government type, a national religion, ethnicity, tax rate, currency type, and more in this new geo-political, nation, and government simulator. Build your empire by purchasing infrastructure to support your citizens, land to expand your borders, technology to increase your nation’s effectiveness, military to defend your interests, and develop national improvements and wonders to build your nation according to your choosing.

Declare war on others and purchase from a wide variety of military options including soldiers and tanks used to defend against and attack your enemies, cruise missiles to bomb their cities, and nuclear weapons to bring wrath upon those who dare cross you. View your nation on real world maps and watch as your borders expand (or recede) over time. Communicate with other nations through private internal messages or discuss and debate issues in the Cyber Nations Forums. Send foreign aid packages and trade with other nations to grow your nation and improve your status in the Cyber Nations world.


Cyber Nations is an Internet web based game about simulating nation building and management and will require you to exercise your management skills on a day to day basis. You can play Cyber Nations with most modern web browsers that have JavaScript enabled. Cyber Nations runs 24/7 so even while you are not online your nation will still be active allowing other players to interact with you through trade offers, foreign aid offers, war declarations, private messages, and much more.

Visit the Cyber Nation Forums where there is a very active community ready to help and answer your questions or the Cyber Nations Wiki for lots more information as well.

Cyber Nations, A nation simulation game

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Google Chrome – Google Chrome Speed Test – Destroys IE, FireFox and Safari

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CNET ran benchmarks on the newly release Google Chrome browser. It turns out that not only does Chrome beat the competition, it completely annihilated them.

Here’s the site description of the speed tests:

• Richards: OS kernel simulation benchmark, originally written in BCPL by Martin Richards (539 lines).

• DeltaBlue: One-way constraint solver, originally written in Smalltalk by John Maloney and Mario Wolczko (880 lines).

• Crypto: Encryption and decryption benchmark based on code by Tom Wu (1,689 lines).

• RayTrace: Ray tracer benchmark based on code by Adam Burmister (3,418 lines).

• EarleyBoyer: Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch’s Scheme2Js compiler (4,682 lines).

Get the full scoop over at CNET.

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