Over the next couple weeks we will be looking at Google app alternatives available in Ubuntu. We’ll see if these apps are suitable or even come close to Googles products.

“Enough with Google”.

This is what we kept hearing from our closest friends and colleagues these days. The steps Google is taking to become the biblical moloch that knows everything about our surfing habits made many of us, tech-savvy people, consider a total shut-down of all the Google services we use.

Today I want to talk about browsers. Can Ubuntu offer a decent alternative to Google Chrome, one of the fastest and best browsers in town? The short answer: yes, it can.
Ubuntu has Firefox web browser installed by default. Firefox has gone through many changes in the past 6 months to up its game and compete against Google Chrome. Let’s be honest here, Google Chrome has become possibly best browser for desktop computers these days with all of its nifty features. Make no mistake Firefox is stepping up and can offer fast rendering, loading and displaying of webpages = Firefox is cool again.

What is even better is that Firefox is the browser of choice of the vast community behind Ubuntu, so that you will have plenty of possibilities to customize it, simply adding add-ons, which are really easy to install and offer plenty of possibilities for anybody.

About speed, we can honestly say that the guys behind Firefox did a great job, and in many cases Firefox is on-par if not better than Google Chrome. At least until Chrome will see a new major release which, according to Google, will be twice as fast as the previous one.

And to conclude, Firefox is RAM friendly. Google Chrome creates a separate process for each open tab, which while offering more stability, at the same time consumes as much as three times what Firefox consumes, given the same number of tabs.

So, if you want to go light and fast, Ubuntu has an answer to Google Chrome: its name is Firefox and if you never used it before, we strongly suggest you to start right now.

FireFox is Open Source, and hence its code can be modified and redistributed, in case you are not happy with parts of its functioning. And even if you are not a coder, you should love Open Source anyway, because there is nothing like using a software that cares about privacy and freedom.

Ubuntu users rejoice! Google has been working on Netflix support at least since February. This affects not only Ubuntu users, but any linux users who also use the Chrome/Chromium web browser. It was reported this morning during the Chromebook presentation at Google I/O that there would be Netflix support. With the Chromebooks being released June 15th, we should all see Netflix support in Google Chrome within the month.

On June 15th 2011 Google will begin to offer the Chromebook starting at $20 a month for students and teachers, and $28 a month for businesses. These will be available at both Best Buy and Amazon. Apparently, you can also buy the computers outright from Samsung ($429 with wi-fi, $499 with 3G) and from Acer ($349). According to Google, any hardware updates would mean free laptop replacements.

Google is changing the game once again by putting low cost internet laptops into the hands of most anyone now at a controlled price most all people could afford.

But how will this affect Ubuntu? Positively? Negatively? How will this dent Mark Shuttleworths plan of obtaining 200 million Ubuntu users in just a few years? How will Chromebook users handle games? Do you trust all of your data in the cloud and not on your own computer? Are these computers really YOUR computers anymore if you are basically just renting them? Lots of unanswered questions.

While I’d love to test one of these computers out, I’ll stick with Ubuntu as I believe it will be a bastion of privacy in a world that is increasingly becoming an open book (an open Chromebook) to a “police state” like world. Viva freedom and privacy!

Read more about the Chromebook here:
http://blogs.forbes.com/quentinhardy/2011/05/10/google-to-announce-chrome-laptops-20month/

and here:
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20110511/google-uncrates-the-chromebook/

With the recent updates to Moonlight, the newest version now works great in Google Chrome & Chromium. Its pretty easy to get it going..

Download the appropriate CRX file (32 bit or 64 bit) and let it install.
http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/download.aspx

Head over to an MLS Soccer page such as:
http://www.mlssoccer.com/videos

… and see if a video works for you. If you get nothing, try right clicking where the video should be, and install the Microsoft Media Pack and once thats finishes, reload the page and videos should work!

I recently read Chromium 11 will have text to voice built in. Thats awesome, isnt it? I did not have to the time to see if 11 was available, if there was a PPA, etc so I just went to the Chrome Web Store and looked for an app or extension for text to voice. There was one so I proceeded to click the install button. Up came this note…

Im giving some random extension access to not only my tabs and my browsing activity for God knows what reasons, but also MY DATA ON ALL WEBSITES. I could not install this. This is just one extension out of hundreds of thousands available. Heck, we even made an I Heart Ubuntu web store app, which is nothing more than a weblink to our site. I wrote the code so I know whats in it… its just a visual web link, no scraping of data. Certainly not all my data across all the websites i’ve visited. And this extension was kind enough to tell me its sinister plans, imagine some apps not going into detail their true intentions.

Privacy is important to me. Security is important to me. These Chrome apps and extensions concern me enough to consider making the switch back to Firefox 100% (I jump between the two browsers).

In this brave new world where Apple and Google are collecting our GPS data and giving it to the GOV, where TomTom is now selling personal traffic and driving data to police, where schools are monitoring teens at home secretly with built in webcams, where web browser monitor you… are we safe anymore? Are we private? Are we secure? How do you cover your tracks from intrusive behavior? Do you stop using Google products? Or Apple products? Do you switch operating systems (like I did to Ubuntu?). What steps to do you take?

While its not possible for everyone to do this, I also recommend people be careful when downloading DEB files floating all around the internet or installing random PPAs people suggest. Get them direct from the company that makes the files and even ask around if they are legitimate and trustworthy.

I write this uneasily after a simple app was almost able to retrieve pretty much ALL OF MY DATA. I read this to mean my CC info, my name, address, birth date, whatever I may have entered in some time in the past. Be careful out there my Ubuntu friends. Be very careful.

FINAL NOTE: For an interesting look into some of this, Frontline did a great 90 minute story called Digital Nation. You can find it here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/

[ end rant ]

In your google chrome panel icon or desktop icon, you’ll want to select the properties and edit the command to include “–enable-default-apps”. For example, on our computer we have:

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome –enable-default-apps

as our Google Chrome command line. Without further adieu, here is the Google Web Store…