Bridging the gap

My employer is moving my family and me to be based out of our company's Seattle office. We'll be leaving Utah at the end of June, probably right in time for the first Chromebooks to hit the market. My daughter is the first grand child, and for a little while now, my dad has been considering ways to stay in touch. Sure, there's the good old fashioned telephone, but with the available technologies, he wants to try to find a way to make use of a video phone so he can talk to his only granddaughter face to face. Problem is, I don't think there is an out of the box solution that's going to work.

Issue #1, they don't have a computer with a web cam or microphone enabled. Issue easily resolved with a Chromebook. Built in mic and cam, and it couldn't be easier to launch Google talk to get this thing going.

Issue #2, no WiFi. I really have to do some research here, but I think I'm looking at a minor issue with living in the cloud. My parents do not have any internet connectivity in their home. It's not because of the inability to get connectivity. The fact is that they can easily get cable, my dad just isn't willing to allow the cable carrier to dig a trench and lay the cable in spite of the fact that these days, the machines used to lay the cable, leave little to no trace of the trench. I won't get in to the whys of his issues, it simply is what it is. Satellite is not an option in my mind. I've used that type of service myself, and it's unreliable, and overages are expensive. As far as I know, they're not in range for DSL, and they currently live outside of a 4g area.

I do plan to try to get him to pick up a Chromebook when it's available, along with a cheap data plan, but I don't know if that's going to solve the issue. I just don't know how we'll go about getting his Chromebook online. Maybe this will be the thing that pushes him past his fear of digging a trench for cable in his back yard.

I don't think I agree

Since the GoogleIO announcement of the Chromebooks (no, I wasn't there, and yes, I am beyond jealous of all the killer goodies and learning that took place there, count me in next year if I can get tickets) I've been seeing a surprising amount of negative press. Surprising to me, anyway, and since I have a little time to kill, I thought I'd share my thoughts.
Basically there are a few recurring themes, and I'll list out and address a couple of my favorites, and offer my side as a member of the ChromeOS pilot program.

• The Chromebook is useless because it's little more than a web browser. A dumbed down version of a computer, and at the prices being stated, you can get a much more useful machine.

This is essentially true, but completely discounts the target audience and intended purpose of this machine. It is little more than a web browser. There are currently some limited storage options, and rumors are that we'll soon see offline Google docs, but really not much more than that, and that's the point. All your stuff is stored to the cloud. Don't like that? Fine. Don't buy one, but as for me, I've been amazed at the convenience of using Google docs, not only on my Cr-48, but also the rest of my computers. I don't need a thumb drive, don't need to remote desktop in to any of my machines, I can access any of my documents anywhere, no matter what computer I'm using, or where I happen to be using it. That now includes my Android phone. It means that my working environment is literally anywhere. I'm not crippled by the lack of Office licenses on my personal machine, or trying to figure out how to download something to my phone, all my documents are everywhere, all the time. Through the use of my Cr-48, the lack of offline documents is the one thing that has made it unusable as a work computer. Get me offline documents, and the only thing I can't do is code.
I cannot speak to the pricing, I buy computers as rarely as possible, but I can tell you that these Chromebooks are priced lower than my Nexus S phone.
Finally, sure, you can get a Windows netbook, but have you ever tried really doing much more that writing documents? Netbooks are not powerful machines, they are intended for web consumption, not heavy content creation, and if you take a Windows netbook set side by side with a Chromebook, what you'll find is the only thing you can't do on a Chromebook that you can do with a netbook is function where there's no internet connectivity. For some, this is a deal breaker. For me, it's not. The Chromebook is much easier to maintain. Why? You don't have to maintain it. It goes to the web, gets the latest version of the OS, and updates itself. For me, this is important. I am a programmer, I love technology, but I don't want to maintain my computers. I want to work with them, I want to play with them, but if I can avoid it, I'd prefer not to be bothered with maintenance tasks like backups, virus scans, disk scans, and if my disk does crash, I'd love to not have to be bothered with restoring backed up data. In spite of the geek who wants to impress people may tell you, computer maintenance sucks, it is not fun, and it detracts from getting the job done. I'd argue that with Windows on a netbook you're not getting a more useful machine. You're getting a machine that you can, and do, have to do more stuff with. To clarify, the Chromebook is nowhere near replacing my laptop or desktop where I write code, or my portable hard drives where I store audio/video/pictures/other stuff, but that is not the Chromebook's intended purpose.

• IT will never go for it because they don't like the loss of control of someone else managing their computers in a corporate environment.

I can't argue against this in alot of cases. Often IT people want to control every aspect of their environment whether that control serves a useful purpose or not. If I sound like I'm slamming IT people a little, it's because I am. I've had the (mis)pleasure of working with too many admins who control things simply because they can. On the other hand, if the admins are the type who can see the big picture, they're likely going to love the idea that they don't have to worry about security policies on machines, making sure the users aren't trying to block those policies, making sure the users aren't installing crap on their machines that they shouldn't be, making sure workstation backups are running, making sure patches are pushed out organization wide, burning up valuable hours pre-validating patches in a sandbox before pushing them out to the organization, well, those admins might realize that they're free of alot of tedious crap, and they can concentrate on getting some real work done.

• It'll never fly because people don't trust the cloud.

In fact, most of us do trust the cloud. Smart phones, Internet, email, nearly everything we do when a wire is plugged in to our device, or the device is talking over a wireless connection, is in the cloud. The real issue is Google bias. In this context, you say you don't trust the cloud, you're most likely really saying you don't trust the Google. 

1. Your data is safer with Google because they have far more redundancy than you could ever dream about.
2. Your data is safer with Google because their backups are far better than yours (if for no other reason than if they became unreliable their empire would likely collapse).
3. They are not the ones you should be afraid of for misusing your data, because they are very open with how they use your data. You want to be afraid? Worry about the organizations who skirt the issue of what they do with your data, and don't think for a second Google is the only one collecting your data. Everybody is collecting your data to some extent. 

I dunno, just some rambling thoughts while I burn off a little time. I don't believe the Chromebook is going to take over the world any time soon, but after using a Cr-48 since December, I can tell you that this thing is not a fad. It is a useful, capable machine that will fill the needs of many of the users out there. It's not for everyone, but neither is Windows, Mac, or various flavors of Linux. It will appeal to users who simply want a way to interact with the wired world, and it will appeal to users whose needs are limited to wired communication and standard desktop content creation. It will appeal to people who need a secondary portable machine. Try it. You'll probably like it.

The perfect kitchen computer?

One of the first things I thought of when I saw the iPad was "Kitchen Computer." When I heard about the Android tablets, I knew I had to get one, and the kitchen would be the first application for it.
Why? Well, it's pretty simple. When I'm at home, especially weekends, I spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen doing various things. Polishing the stainless steel, cooking stuff, making beer, drinking coffee, what ever. While I'm doing that I like to have a computer near by. I use my laptop as a cook book, mainly using Evernote, when I'm not looking at recipes I'm watching video or listening to music, occasionally chatting online, researching something or another, or just browsing the web over coffee. Why it really took me this long to put the Cr-48 through the kitchen paces, I don't know, but it did. This last weekend I made just about full use of my kitchen needs, and for the most part, I was very impressed. My setup was simple. A cheap pair of PC speakers, and the Cr-48.
Of course, looking up recipes is easy. That hasn't changed from my regular laptop. I open Evernote, and do a little searching. I'm covered. I want some music, open up Audiogalaxy, and I'm good to go. In the past, video hasn't been great, but I tried something a little different this time around...Now stay with me, this is relevant...I've recently gotten a Logitech Revue and in conjunction with that, I've learned that TVersity is an extremely cool application. Back to my Cr-48, I decided to load the TVersity flash library on my Cr-48, and to my surprise, I got much better streaming than I do with Hulu. Pop my browser in to full screen mode, and I've got a small, lightweight TV in my kitchen serving up my own movies and tv shows. The only issue I had was when the video froze up while the audio kept going, and I was unable to get out of the full screen browser mode until I actually shut down my computer. Sounds pretty bad, but I attribute this to someone trying to start a Facebook chat session with me on another tab. I can't prove it, but that's when it happened, and I could not reproduce the issue. My kitchen experience could potentially be enhanced by a touch screen, but until I have one to compare against, the Cr-48 performs extremely well.

What's up with that shift lock key???

During the day I live the life of a mild mannered programmer. Most of my work is c#, a little bit is java on an evil, mobile, non-tree-born-food-item platform that I shall not name just now, and currently all my work is in Windows. I can't use this cr-48 as much as I'd like, but I use it almost exclusively (aside from pumping video to my TV) when at home.
What was that ramble about? Well, I use shift lock quite a bit. Google, for what I have determined must be a joke...and really, a pretty funny one at that, has decided to place their search key in the exact location that the rest of the world expects the shift lock key. Once in a while I like to yell on twitter or facebook, or I'm actually doing something productive that requires all caps, and I just start typing. I'm on my cr-48, and I hit the shift lock, and my cr-48 spazzes out and opens a new tab. I say, "woah, what the hell was that?" I close the tab, go back to typing, hit the shift lock, and my cr-48 spazzes out, etc. I usually do this maybe 3 to 5 times before I look at the keyboard and remember which computer I'm on. Why I can't remember this, I don't know, but to remove the shift key and replace it with something that opens new tabs has got to be a joke.

A few complaints

So I’ve been using this thing for a little while now, and I’m getting to like it. I haven’t touched my personal laptop for any reason other than to use it as a media center, and I’ve done all my personal web stuff on this. I’ve tried to use the Cr48 at work with little success. Due to some rather interesting network policies, and even more interesting ways of enforcing them, the only resource I can actually reach with this thing is my personal TVersity site...cool service, but I don’t go to work to watch streaming video. There are some changes coming down the pike that are supposed to separate us from our host company in that regard, so I’ll keep trying. I may get use out of this thing in meetings yet.
With that out of the way, I’d like to complain a little about some of the little issues that will hopefully get covered when the Chrome OS finally goes prime time. Yes, I’ve complained through the requested Google channels (I hope they’ll act on them), but now I’m bored, so I’ll complain here, tweet about the complaints, and if you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested. If not, please stop reading now. I’ll not be held responsible for forcing you to read something that doesn’t interest you.
1) I’ve set up three profiles on my Cr48. I thought it was cool, I’m a geek, what ever. One for my personal gmail account, one for my Google apps account, and finally one for my employer’s Google apps account. All Google, all the time. If they had a position for a c# developer, there’s a damn good chance I’d take it. I go back and forth between these three accounts a little bit. Well, quite a bit, because switching from one user to the next really isn’t all that painful. I’ve noticed that from time to time, if I log out of one profile, in to another, out of the other, and back to the first, the first profile loads with an error stating that the browser failed to shut down property, would I like to restore it. That really ought to be fixed.
2) Logon profile names - This annoys me. As it turns out, each of my profiles are based on my name. As such, they are each very similar. The multiple profiles are a nice touch, but it would be even better if you could provide an alias for the login. Something like “My Personal Profile,” and “My Work Profile” to differentiate between profiles with very similar user names.
3) Useless without network access - I’ve mentioned this before, and yeah, I know it’s supposed to be a Web portal, and nothing more, but I was quite surprised to find that I can download and save files to the local drive. Google has been kind enough to provide offline access in the browser, and that feature would increase the usefulness of the Cr48 by many times. I’ll refer to the rather interesting network policies I mentioned earlier. With offline access, I can make use of my Cr48 in the office, in conference rooms with no network access (it seems to happen quite a bit), and other situations where Internet access is limited or not available. Yes, it has 3g, but that’s another issue. Let’s call it 3a)
3a) Wifi and 3g only. Yes, I can buy a 3g plan from Verizon, but there are a couple of problems with that. First, I’m not going to buy yet another data plan. I already have one with my Internet at home, another to power my Android, and yet a third to power my wife’s Android. I am not going to buy another data plan for my Cr48. Second, if I was going to buy a data plan, I certainly wouldn’t buy it from Verizon. I’ve been with t-mobile since they were VoiceStream, a good 10 or so years, and I’m not about to jump ship now. I’ve got my eye on a Nexus S. When I get my hands on that I’ll give it a shot and see if I can use that to get me online.
4) It seems slow since the recent update. I admit I haven’t paid much attention to speeds, and when it started to seem to slow down, but I think all of that happened around the same time. I hope that one gets cleared up next time they push out an update.

Facebook is doing weird things to my Cr48

Wanna see a dead body!?
Ok, not really, but it’s really kinda weird. My wife was setting up a facebook profile page for me on my Cr48. She wanted to know how to get pictures from one location to another, so I thought I’d show off my knowledge of my little Cr48, and show her how to download pictures locally, then upload them somewhere else. Right-click the image you want to save, give it a name, and save. Open the page you want to upload to, choose browse, and...Hey! What the hell are you doing to my computer?...She didn’t get the little file list that I was expecting to show her, she’d managed to open a file system browser. It took us a little time to find the location of the images we wanted to upload cause neither one of us is a Linux user, but when we finally did, there were the files, all ready to be uploaded. I haven’t figured out an easy way to get to this file system browser, but it is easy to reproduce. The following is the only way I’ve managed to do it.
Open your facebook profile, click on your Photos link. Click on the “Upload Photos” button. Click “Select Photos.”
What you get is a file system browser that appears to give you full access, well, as far as I, a Windows guy can tell, to your file system.
This is particularly odd because it’s my understanding that one of the major features of the Cr48 is that it doesn’t allow the normal user access to the file system, but Facebook wanders in, shoves a java file system browser in there, and bypasses all that.
The file type filter is limiting the view to image files, but it’s probably very easy to bypass that yourself, especially if you decide to write your own page to do this. I guess the major issue is that it seems to be so easy to do it in an environment where the average user isn’t supposed to be going there.

Storing files locally

Stupid Cr-48 Tricks
So, a short back story. In order to track some Android projects I’ve put together an apps account (apps.google.com) with a private google sites account (sites.google.com). I won’t post the details on that just yet because I’m in the process of shifting things around, and my sites are in a bit of disarray. Anyway, I finish publishing my first Android app (Yay!) and I suddenly realize...we’ll not suddenly, but it’s become a problem that I want to be rid of...that I’ve tied my projects google sites account to my personal gmail account. Not a huge deal, but it has resulted in some very annoying repeated log-ins and log-outs. I don’t have alot of data there, so I decided to bite the bullet and duplicate my sites data under the right account. The majority of the content in my sites account is text in pages, so it was just about a half hour of typing to move things over. There are, however, three documents stored in my sites. I’m trying to perform my data migration on the cr-48, and I thought I was going to have to go sit at my desktop to finish the migration due to the need to move 3 files from site to site. Since I’m sitting on the couch, and not much interested in moving, I figured I’d mess around and see what I could accomplish with the tools at hand. To my surprise, it was amazingly, and unexpectedly, simple.
I clicked on the file, and chose download. The file saved locally. I went to the destination page, chose upload file, chose browse, and a list of local files popped up. From this list I chose a file, and uploaded.
Now where I’m caught off guard is that it was my understanding that the normal user wouldn’t have access to data on the local drive. My mistake. The user can download, save, and upload files using the standard configuration of the Cr48. They can’t, of course, be edited, but that’s reasonable because all of your editing tools live in the cloud.
I don’t know how much local storage the Cr48 has, but I assume that it is also possible to download to an SD card.
I had no idea. Very cool.

Cr-48 and Netflix

Getting ready to do some dishes, thought I would throw on The Jerk to keep me distracted, so I pulled out my trusty Cr-48, loaded up netflix, logged in, and clicked on The Jerk. Imagine my surprise when I was brought to a page explaining the system requirements for viewing movies, and a message stating “Our apologies - streaming is not supported for your operating system.” I don’t know the technology they’re using to stream movies, but I figure if Hulu can manage secure streaming, why not netflix?

It's been brought to my attention that Netflix uses Silverlight for their streaming technology rather than flash, and the Cr-48 does not support Silverlight. Seems like an issue to me.

Accessing my own media on the Cr-48

This one is actually a pretty big deal to me. I’ve got a sizable music collection, nearly completely managed by iTunes...we’ll try to avoid a discussion regarding the general shittiness of iTunes just now...along with a collection of movies and tv shows, also managed by iTunes, that I like to watch regularly. My listening and viewing habits are such that having access to my own files that I’ve ripped or purchased is much more valuable to me than any of the available subscription services. I have built my collection because I enjoy what I’ve collected, and intend to consume it.

So, what am I getting at? I want to be able to listen to my music and watch my videos on my Cr-48, and Android for that matter, without paying someone (other than my ISP) for access rights to files stored on my computers. As a side note, no I will not pay money to a “locker” service to access my own stuff. That’s why I have a WHS.

Music is covered pretty well. The single server application Audiogalaxy gives me access on the Cr-48, Android, and even my iPod touch. It covers all of the file types in my library, including FLAC (although this doesn’t work in the browser yet), and it just works. You download the server app, point it at your music folders, let it scan your data, log in to the Audiogalaxy web site with your account, and there’s your music collection.
The UI is about as simple as it gets, but it is an extremely good design. It lists music in terms of Artists, Albums, or Playlists; basically how I would expect my CD collection to appear on the shelf. It also has a genre tab which is pretty cool, but not of great use to me just yet.
The problem there is video. It isn’t supported, and I don’t know if it ever will be.

My second option seems to be the Orb/Winamp remote server. I don’t like this thing. The interface is ugly and clunky, they have the guts to charge for poorly implemented mobile clients, and it doesn’t support all of the formats in my music collection. The one thing it has is video support...sort of...I can browse my video collection, load up a file, and in a little while, literally a few minutes, nothing happens. I’ve tried to work with this thing on and off for the last year or so, and I have yet to successfully watch a video of any format. I keep coming back to Orb server because it advertises itself so well as a server that will allow me to stream my own audio and video from my own server, and every time I try, I end up as disappointed as the last time I tried. In fact, the only reason I even bring this up is because I keep hoping they’ve done something to improve it.

Finally, and into an experiment here, there is TVersity. You download and install the server on the computer that has access to your media files, set up the server to share over the internet, and point your browser to your shared ip address, and there’s your media. I won’t likely be using this for music for a couple of reasons. The UI tries to be comprehensive, and ends up just being messy, my playlists are gone, and surprisingly, through the flash UI the playback was a little choppy. For video, however, this worked out pretty cool. I tried a handful of files in different formats, long movies, tv episodes, and music videos, and all played quite well. I can’t believe I haven’t tried this sooner.
The major drawback I’ve found in about an hour of futzing around is the same issue I have with music. The UI tries to be comprehensive, and ends up generally sucking. This is one place where iTunes has really done a pretty good job. If you can get the UI to respond in a timely manner, it’s a very nice layout, and people could take a lesson from Apple’s design guys.

In short, today’s playing around can be summerized as follows:
If you’re like me, and you have a personal collection on your own server that you want to stream from anywhere,
For streaming your music to anything, including the Cr-48, you can’t beat Audiogalaxy. It’s simple, intuitive, and just works.
For streaming your video to a browser that supports flash, including the Cr-48, TVersity free edition is a cool option. It transcodes on the fly, and streams over flash to provide a comfortable viewing experience, but I am not a fan of the file system based navigation.
Most importantly, it is possible to access your personal music and video collection through the browser of the Cr-48, and if you own your own server space, you can do it for free.

Adventures with Google Cloud Print

Take 1:
In order to set this up, the Cr-48 chrome browser told me to go to a computer attached to a printer to set it up. First, I do not have one of those. My printer is networked. I figured I’d try it anyway, so I used LogMeIn to remote control my desktop, and went through the process of setting up Google Cloud Print. The set up was easy, and went through with no issues. Well, one issue. No printers were found. I chalked this up to the fact that I don’t have an attached printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.

Take 2:
About a day later I was messing around with my Cr-48, typing up something or another, and clicked “Print” from inside of google docs. To my surprise, all of my printers were found. This includes the two instances of my network printer (I don’t know why there are two, there just are), PDF writer from MS Office, print to OneNote, print to file. So, I figured I’d try to print something. I don’t care about those Microsoft “Printers,” and I may never get around to testing them. Maybe I will, we’ll see. The box popped up, it had all the standard printer settings, I looked those over, and clicked print. The print box told me it had added the print job, and it just sat there staring at me. I had to click cancel to get it to go away. I tried again, same thing. Just so that you are aware, I was expecting the box to go away after the print job was added. Again, I figured it just didn’t work due to the fact that I was trying to print to a networked printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.

Take 3:
Working part of the day from home a day later. I go down to my office, log in, and I get a notice that I have two print jobs in queue. My print jobs from before are sitting in the queue and doing absolutely nothing. After clicking on them and looking at the properties, I decided to cancel and re-setup Cloud Printing on my desktop computer. I browsed to the web site and spent a half hour of trying to open the cloud print setup page and getting prompted to install the google chrome beta. After about three installs of the beta, I browsed around a bit more to see if I could just set it up and get passed that page that thought I still needed to update to the Chrome Beta. Found the setting, saw that my printers were still set up from Take 1, and proceeded to try to print a test page. After about 5 minutes of print buttons refusing to respond as I expected, I read the documentation stating that Cloud Printing wasn’t supported there yet, and I’d have to use a device like my Cr-48 to print. Refer to Take 1. I still don’t know if this works, doesn’t work, or is just messing with me, but I will be logging a bug about my print jobs going to the queue and staying there without errors or completion of the print job...after making sure I can actually print from my desktop. If I don’t follow up, assume that I can print from my desktop, and the bug has been logged.

Take 4:
Fine, so there is a print error when printing from my desktop, but there is still an issue. When trying to print directly from my desktop, I get a failure to print due to a communication error. I expect the print jobs submitted by Cloud Print to give me the same info.

Cr-48 as my only computer?

As my only computer?
I’m getting ready to go back to work after a little over a week off for the holidays. Being the geek that I am, I haven’t been a day away from the computer. I thought I’d take a minute and throw out some thoughts on my computing away from work.
First, it is pretty clear that for me, this platform will not be my only computing device. I am a programmer professionally, but it turns out that I also like to do a little coding for fun...damn, I used to be so cool...when did I become a geek? Anyway, coding for me, on this, simply isn’t possible. Next, I had to do a little ripping and burning and converting of old cassettes of some of my dad’s old bands. This, I don’t do often, but it’s also something that simply is not possible. I need an analog in to get the sound, a converter to convert the wav to mp3 or flac or what ever format I’m using, and then I need to copy the ripped files to an ipod. None of that can be done on this platform. I also had to make CD copies of those same tapes, and of course that’s not possible either.
The fact of the matter, however, is that these activities were in the minority of my computing. Most of what I did was a little video watching, hulu, netflix, that sort of thing; a little music listening while cooking, done by way of Audiogalaxy, cooking using recipes that I have stored in evernote, facebook, twitter, and a little of this document writing. All of these things worked without a hitch, and of course they did. All of these activities are web/browser based.
Hulu/netflix, I’ll be frank. I did these just to see how well it would work. I was a bit disappointed. The cr-48 just does not have the hardware power to do video in full screen. It’s ok if I drop the bit rate to the lowest possible, but if you have any of the other many devices for web based video viewing, use those for your movies.
Music through AudioGalaxy (www.AudioGalaxy.com) - This is just awesome. Go to their website for details on what they are, but for listening, point your browser to their web site, log in to get your collection, and you have reasonable quality streaming music. Over the built in speakers, it’s not bad sound quality, it doesn’t skip, you have music. It rocks. Of course, this won’t replace your stereo system, but my good system is in the basement, nowhere near my computer, and with the open layout of my house, cranking up another stereo while my daughter is watching a DVD just isn’t a good option.
Cooking - No, the Cr-48 will not make you a better cook. If you suck, you suck, but what it does nicely, is give you access to Evernote (www.Evernote.com). And for now, Evernote is where I keep most of my recipes. Is this unique to a Cr-48, no, but it is just one more thing that makes this device a very attractive option for those who do not need to be able to create “speciality” content. Plus, it has great battery life, so you don’t need to keep the charger near by.
Of course we also have facebook and twitter, web based, works well, and google docs for creating content.
All of this is very boring stuff, and it’s stuff that fits what most people do with their computers. The most interesting thing that hit me over the holidays was the concept of what this device really is. My wife and I spent several hours with my brother-in-law who managed to get himself in to a rather nasty spot with his netbook. Lack of computer knowledge mixed with a little paranoid web page clicking that enabled him to install a couple of rather nasty viruses, coupled with the irrational fear that trying to install my recommended virus protection would somehow delete all his files made for a very long afternoon. This computer is perfect for him. He has the ability to do literally everything he could possibly want with a computer, with no maintenance needs and no ability to allow some scareware page to get him to install malware on his own computer. I also took the opportunity to talk up the chrome OS to some of the other older family members that I came across. From conversations, the Cr-48 filled their needs as well. Email, document writing, facebook, none of those conversations brought up anything that could not be accomplished through the web.
The last cool little thing that I came across was the login to the Cr-48. Just like the standard android world, you log in to the device by supplying google account credentials. This logs you in, and gives you access to your stuff. I also have a free google apps account. With the google apps updates, you can also use an apps account login to log in to the Cr48. So, I have my personal messing around stuff, and I have my apps account profile. I have not been able to log in with my work credentials yet (they’ve recently migrated to google apps), but I expect that to be coming soon, and I’m looking forward to that. I should be able to log in with my work credentials, giving me access to a work profile on a computer that is much more portable than my dev box. No, I can’t code on this, but the sad reality is that my job consists of quite a bit of crap in addition to sitting at my favorite IDE and developing.