First up, Google unveiled a $250 chromebook running Arm, rather than the X86 that most of them have been so far. The 11.6″ device will have 6.5 hours of battery life, weigh 2.5 lbs, have a 100Gb hard drive plug Google Drive integration, and an HDMI port. What more could you want from a $250 device?
Ubuntu revealed the next iteration of its Linux operating system today, Rarin Ringtail. In addition to the systematic improvements that each new version number brings, Raring Ringtail begins an increased focus on mobile. Specifically, this new version starts introducing the software and design elements necessary to get Ubuntu running on phones and tablets. Canonical might have a bit of an uphill battle to fight, but I personally would love to be able to run a full Linux distribution on my tablet. Of course, the focus on power and memory management won’t only benefit mobile. We should see some pretty decent performance increases thanks to the work being done on the system level.
Finally, Forrester Research noted the first ever decline in internet usage. But they urge caution: the statistical blip might be more due to what people perceive as being online. Interestingly, a large number of people being surveyed didn’t think of using Facebook or other social networking sites as ‘being online.’ Considering that those are activities that most definitely need an internet connection to work, well, we’re entering a time when the internet is so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice we are accessing it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the trend continues, even as actual internet usage increases.