The HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook

It's an exciting time in computing. Now more than ever, you have so many choices when it comes to software, hardware and services. With Chromebooks, people tell us they love its ease-of-use, speed and security, and also enjoy having options when it comes to shape, size and price. So today we’re happy to announce that our newest partner HP is introducing the latest addition to the Chromebook line—the HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook.



This HP Chromebook is a great home companion that offers the built-in security, speed and simplicity you’d expect from a Chromebook on a brilliant 14” screen. Enjoy your favorite videos, photos and more in new detail, and with its versatile HDMI and USB ports, the HP Chromebook is easy to customize with peripherals. It’s less than an inch thick and powered by an Intel® Celeron® Processor, so you can work and play at full speed.

With popular products like Gmail, Google+ Hangouts, YouTube and Maps built in, the best of Google is always at your fingertips. With the new HP Chromebook, you can also take advantage of 100GB of free storage on Google Drive*, making it easy to backup stuff in the cloud so that it can be accessed anywhere and from other devices.



Starting today, the HP Chromebook will be available for $329.99 in the US at HPDirect.com and at other retailers soon.



The HP Chromebook is a great new addition to the Chromebook family, and we hope you’ll enjoy it within yours, too. New Chromebooks, more options, for everyone.



Posted by Felix Lin, Director of Product Management



*You will have 100 GB of free storage for 2 years, starting on the date you redeem the offer on eligible Chrome devices.


by Google Chrome Blog via Google Chrome Blog

Hello Browser

Using your voice to search on your computer or phone is handy, but there’s so much more you can do with voice commands. Imagine if you could dictate documents, have a freestyle rap battle, or control game characters with your browser using only your voice. With today’s Chrome Beta release, this future is closer than you think.



With the inclusion of the Web Speech API for developers, users can start enjoying new, interactive experiences with web apps, like in this demo where you can compose an email by speaking. With this new JavaScript API, developers can integrate speech recognition into their web apps. So, in the near future you’ll be able to talk apps into doing all sorts of things.



To make sure your Chrome installation isn’t being slowed down, today’s Chrome Beta will automatically disable some extensions on Windows that may have been added by third party programs without proper acknowledgement from users. The original intent was to give people an option to add useful extensions when installing applications, but unfortunately this feature has been widely abused by third parties who added extensions without user consent. A notification will appear with the option to re-enable the affected extensions.



Download Chrome Beta to give these latest enhancements a test drive. If you dig APIs more than chocolate cake you can get more details on the Web Speech API and this Chrome release over on the Chromium blog.



Posted by Glen Shires, Software Engineer and Speech Specialist

by Google Chrome Blog via Google Chrome Blog

Our newest Beta, for Android phones and tablets

Release early, release often. Today, we’re introducing Chrome Beta channel for phones and tablets on Android 4.0+. The Beta channel was launched in the early days of Chrome to test out new features and fix issues fast. Our newest Beta channel for phones and tablets now joins our Beta versions of Chrome for Mac, Windows, Linux and Chrome OS.



You can expect early access to new features (and bugs!), as well as a chance to provide feedback on what’s on the way. Just like our other Beta versions, the new features may be a little rough around the edges, but we’ll be pushing periodic updates so you can test out our latest work as soon as it’s ready. Even better, you can install the Beta alongside your current version of Chrome for Android.



Chrome for Android now benefits from all the speed, security and other improvements that have been landing on Chrome’s other platforms. For example, in today’s Beta update we have improved the Octane performance benchmark on average by 25-30%. In addition, this update includes interesting HTML5 features for developers such as CSS Filters. This is just one step of many towards bringing beautiful experiences to the mobile web.



Ready? Use it, abuse it, and tell us what you think. Our new Chrome Beta for Android is available now on Google Play (use the link, you won't find it in search)!



Posted by Jason Kersey, Technical Program Manager & Mobile Cat Herder

by Google Chrome Blog via Google Chrome Blog

13 killer Chrome apps to replace your desktop software

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the first Web browser in 1990, it was just an application made to read HTML pages passively. Fast-forward to today, and the modern Web browser has become a powerful platform in itself—almost a miniature operating system, capable of running complex JavaScript code and interacting with Flash plug-ins.

Indeed, Web pages have evolved into Web apps, to the point where we can do much of our productivity work in a browser window without ever having to invest in traditional desktop software.

But how much work can you really do from a browser? Could you replace all of your desktop apps with Chrome extensions, and be none the worse for wear? After testing a bunch of Chrome apps, I found mixed results: Web apps simply aren’t designed to be complete replicas of their desktop counterparts. Although these apps have gotten a lot better in the past couple of years, you might encounter a few peccadilloes, and desktop software may still be the better choice for your unique needs.

That said, if you haven't been keeping a close watch on the growing power of Chrome extensions and Web apps, you might be pleasantly surprised by our top alternatives to popular desktop software.

Word processing: Google Drive Documents

No matter what you do for a living, you've probably spent some time using a word processor in the past week, probably even in the past 24 hours. Unless you're doing some very complicated work, you could ditch your word processor for Google Drive right now without missing a beat. Sure, the interface is different: You'll find no Ribbon of commands and functions at the top of the screen, and you'll see far fewer buttons. But Google Drive's Documents let you do all of the important things, such as format text, create titles and lists, embed images into your documents, and more.

With its powerful collaboration features, Google Docs is ideal for working on documents with friends and colleagues.

If you often find yourself emailing Word files back and forth, Google Drive might be even better than its desktop counterparts: You can just invite another person to view your document, and you can both edit the document at the same time, watching each other’s cursors at work. Add Skype to the mix, and it's just like working in the same room, even if the other person is a continent away.