Since one of the most frequently asked questions is “Can I use a … with my Chromebook?” I thought it’d be helpful to create a resource page with the most needed accessories to use in combination with your Chrome device. I’ll add to this as I learn more, so you’ll notice that in the future I will reference this page quite often. I hope you’ll Enjoy!

A Mouse

When picking a mouse the obvious choice is to go with Samsung’s own series of mice which work fine with the Chromebook. The one I’d recommend is the Samsung Wireless USB Optical Mouse because of it’s ease in use. All you need to do is plug in the little USB plug that stores away in the bottom of the mouse and you’re good to go. Be ware though! The Chromebook Series 3 has only 1, yes one, USB 2.0 port. So if you decide to get a USB mouse you’ll either be out of USB ports, or you’ll have to get a USB hub to go with it. They’ll go from about seven dollars and up, so not to much money, just something to keep in mind.

Another option is a to go with a Bluetooth mouse. The problem with that however is that the Samsung Chromebooks do not have Bluetooth. It is in the 1st generation Acer A700 and the relatively new Samsung Series 3 Chromebox, but not in the series 5 or the newest Samsung Chromebook. So if you’re looking to connect your trusty wireless mouse you can do so, though you’ll need to plug in a Bluetooth dongle to make it work.

update: As Chris on Google+ correctly points out: The latest Chromebook does have Bluetooth. It is Bluetooth 3.0™ Compatible. Thanks for pointing that out Chris!

Webcam

Time to make you look good. Depending on the type of Chromebook you’re using you’ve either got a nice onboard HD Webcam that works well with GTalk and Google+ with its Hangout feature or you’ve got a somewhat okay VGA webcam at a measly .3-Megapixels. The first one being the Series 5 550, the latter the newest Chromebook. When you’re just into hanging out with your friends or doing a bit of one on one G-Talking, you’re fine, no need to buy anything extra. But, when you’re planning on joining Leo Laporte on TWIG you better get some gear.

Don’t really know what 1080p HD looks like? Check out these scenes! And remember, make sure it displays at 1080 since Youtube sets it to a crappy setting which is not even close to as awesome as 1080p HD is!

Unlike with any Windows or Mac machine there’s no guarantee that the webcam you pick works with your Chromebook. This complicates things a bit in choosing a great webcam but it shouldn’t hold you back either. The ones I show here are two great ones that have been reported to work in the wild, but if you want to know for sure ahead of time you might want to contact the manufacture of your webcam of choice (and that goes for any webcam) and simply ask them if it works. [If you do do that by the way I'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to let us know the outcome, either by mail or just leaving a comment. I'll add your suggestion to the list and give you all the credit you deserve ]

Now remember, being on TWIG, or your companies cost-effective, easy-to-use video conferencing solution requires 1080p HD equipment. With Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 you get exactly that. Full HD 1080p video, high quality dual mic for stereo audio and more. It’s even better than it looks because the H.264 video compression is done in the camera itself! You heard that right, we are talking about built-in hardware compression here. Usually a webcam captures the video and sends it in an uncompressed stream to the computer, where the main processor (CPU) performs the video compression.

By having the camera perform the hardware, it is possible to have excellent video quality, even on a mildly powerful computer. To me that makes this particular one the webcam to get for your Chromebook. The best thing is that it doesn’t run you broke either, you can get your hands on one for just $79.25 over at Amazon.

Just a tad less impressive but still a great webcam to get is it’s little brother the Logitech HD Portable 1080p Webcam C615, with autofocus. Yes, it says 1080p, but that is only for video recording, not for video calling as that is limited to 720p HD video in 16:9 wide-screen. The C615 is yours for only $53.26 on Amazon.

Microphone

If you’re anything like an average chrome user, you’ll find yourself using Google Talk/Voice and Google Plus Hangouts more and more. If so you will undoubtedly run into the limitations of the on-board microphone on both the old and new Chromebook models. They’re fine for a quick call to a friend, but lack the quality for continuous or professional use. A shortcoming, especially during those important calls when quality of sound is important. Not to worry though. There is an excellent solution, or two actually.

The Buddy FlamingoMic 7G Portable is a 17″ unidirectional noise cancelling microphone. It has a specially designed L shaped USB connector, designed especially for the Chromebook, notebook, netbook and tablet PC.

This microphone is ideal for use with all portable devices. Contort this microphone into any desired position to suit your needs. The use of FilteredAudio technology makes this by far Buddy’s highest quality FlamingoMic to date. The unrivaled combination of highly accurate speech recognition results and ease of use makes the Buddy FlamingoMic 7G an ideal product for use both at the office and on-the-go.

If a headset mic is not for you because of pain in the neck or because of –the most common complaint by people– you feel silly wearing it the FlamingoMic is for you. It plugs into the USB port and easily coils up neatly against your computer for portability and easily extends for dictation. Oh yes, and you have both your hands free to use the mouse or keyboard, flip through papers, hold your cup of coffee.

When a headset is more your cup of thee then the next generation of headset microphones, the Buddy HeadsetMicTM series is the way to go. Made of heavy duty, highly durable materials such a stainless steel headband and Teflon reinforced cables, Buddy headsets are backed by an industry leading 2 year warranty. Featuring a top of the line, highly unidirectional microphone element, this headset has been designed from the ground up with quality in mind.

Very important for you the Chromebook owner is to remember that the Chromebook sports a 3.5mm TRRS connector which is not your every day connector. The Buddy HeadsetMicTM is ideal for pairing with devices such as a Google Chromebook simply because it comes with such a TRRS connector, making it one of the must have Chromebook accessories.

Solid State Drive

Somehow there are ‘still’ a lot of folks who have bought into the Chrome OS story and gotten themselves a Chromebook, but that do want to store stuff locally. Being limited to the 16GB of on-board storage that is a bit of a problem. The cool thing is that the Chromebook recognizes and works with external drives, so if you really want to you can carry it with you. Here are three great choices, beginning with two external solid state drives packing 128GB and 240GB followed by a 1TB wxternal hard drive. The connect using USB 3.0, which means data transfer at a blazing speed.

“It’s the best laptop that’s ever been designed at this price,” said senior vice president Sundar Pichai, “We really want users to think about this as one extra computer for your kitchen counter, one near the bed, maybe a computer for your kids or family.”

With that Sundar positions the Chromebook much the same as their tablet. Earlier this year Google shook up the tablet market by introducing the Nexus 7 Android tablet. A pure vanilla 7 inch tablet for just $229.88,- or $264.95,- if you want that little extra storage. As we now all know the latter one is selling like hot cakes,  not just here in the US but in Europe as well. It looks like Google took notice of that and is trying to replicate that success, or at least the strategy, by introducing a $249,- Chromebook.

All the big tech blogs jumped on the story with reviews that are all surprisingly positive. The old ‘but what good is computer you can’t do half the stuff with it you can on a mac or pc’ rhetoric has faded now that cloud computing is getting more common and has been replaced by a more open stance. They did however focus on what the greater public finds interesting, but past over gold nuggets like the Chromebooks ability to take over your (a) Windows or Mac machine with the ease of a click. For those you need to watch the video.

Review Highlights

After using the new Samsung Chromebook for the better part of a workday, I have to say I’m impressed — at least, considering the constraints of its $249 price tag. – review by CNET

Google laid out the next step of its Chromebook effort on Thursday by introducing a thin, light, Samsung-built laptop attached to a killer number — $250. – review by CNN

I asked Pichai if the machine will look like a tablet alternative, and he said that it will in some cases — the fact that it has a real keyboard makes it a more practical choice in many scenarios. review by Time Techland

the new Samsung Chromebook is based an ARM chip (rather than Intel) which could help to explain the lower cost… only this particular ARM chip may perform better than most any we’ve seen before. It’s a Exynos 5 Dual processor, which makes it the very first device to use ARM’s new Cortex-A15 architecture. review by The Verge

Laptopmag.com wrote a nice review and came up with this verdict: The Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 offers an improved cloud-computing experience inside a slick and comfortable design, but it’s too pricey given its limited functionality.

Basically I can sum up all the reviews out there by saying that everyone agrees that the Chromebook series 5 550 is a definite improvement over the earlier model. It’s generally judged as a good looking machine that works flawlessly. Also Chrome OS comes of good by showing to be a much matured operating system. Negative points are the price versus functionality, mostly it not being a windows machine which means you can’t run windows programs on it. Where they go wrong in my view is that there are apps online for about every daily use case you can come up with. You just need to look for ‘m.

Chrome OS devices for sale right now

Thumbnail	Model	Manufacturer	Specs	Price
	Chromebook C7 (Wi-Fi)	Acer	- 11.6" (1366x768) HD display - 1.10 GHz Phenom Dual-Core - 2.00 GB RAM - 320 GB HDD 5400 rpm - Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n - 1.10 GHz Phenom Dual-Core Processor - HDMI - Intel® HD Graphics - No Bluetooth	$224.99
	Series 3 Chromebook (Wi-Fi)	Samsung	- 11.6’’ (1366x768) display - 0.8 inches thin - 2.5 lbs / 1.1 kg - Over 6.5 hours of battery 1 - Samsung Exynos 5 Dual 1.7 GHz Processor - 100 GB Google Drive Cloud Storage2 with Solid State Drive - Built-in dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n - VGA Camera - 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 - HDMI Port - Bluetooth 3.0™ Compatible	$249.00
	Series 3 Chromebook (3G)	Samsung	- Verizon 3G WWAN included (2 years) - 11.6’’ (1366x768) display - 0.8 inches thin - 2.5 lbs / 1.1 kg - Over 6.5 hours of battery 1 - Samsung Exynos 5 Dual 1.7 GHz Processor - 100 GB Google Drive Cloud Storage2 with Solid State Drive - Built-in dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n - VGA Camera - 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 - HDMI Port - Bluetooth 3.0™ Compatible	$329.99
	Series 5 550 Chromebook (3G)	Samsung	- Verizon 3G WWAN for 2 years, (up to 100MB per month) of Mobile Broadband Service by Verizon Wireless - 4GB DDR3 Memory - 2 high-speed USB 2.0 ports - 16GB Solid State Drive - Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/n) - 1.3 GHz Celeron 867 processor - 4-in-1 memory card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC) - Microphone and headphone jacks - 1 megapixel webcam	$549.99
	Series 5 Chromebook (3G)	Samsung	- 1.66 GHz Intel Atom dual-core N570 processor - 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD) - 2 GB system memory - Wireless-N Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) - integrated 3G (via optional Verizon Wireless subscription) - Two USB 2.0 - 4-in-1 memory card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC) - Built-in stereo speakers, combo headphone/microphone jack - 4-cell battery for up to 6.5 hours of use	$379.99
	Series 3 Chromebox	Samsung	- 1.9 GHz Intel Celeron dual-core processor (2 MB cache) - 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD) - 4 GB of installed DDR3 RAM (1333 MHz; maximum) - Intel HD Graphics - Built-in 2-watt mono speaker - Wireless-N Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) - Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity - Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) - 6 standard USB 2.0 ports (4 rear, 2 front) - 2 DisplayPort video outputs - DVI video output - Microphone and headphone combo jack	$329.99
	AC700-1090 (3G)	Acer	- Intel Atom N570 Processor 1.66GHz (1MB Cache) - 2GB SDRAM RAM - 16GB Solid-State Hard Drive - 11.6-Inch Screen, Intel GMA 3150 - 6 hours Battery Life - Wireless 802.11bgn - 2 USB 2 ports	$409.34
	Series 5 550 Chromebook (WiFi)	Samsung	- 4GB DDR3 Memory - 2 high-speed USB 2.0 ports - 16GB Solid State Drive - Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/n) - 1.3 GHz Celeron 867 processor - 4-in-1 memory card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC) - Microphone and headphone jacks - 1 megapixel webcam	$449.99
This model is no longer for sale on Amazon.com	Series 5 Chromebook (Wi-Fi)	Samsung	- 1.66 GHz Intel Atom dual-core N570 processor - 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD) - 2 GB system memory - Wireless-N Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) - Two USB 2.0 - 4-in-1 memory card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC) - Built-in stereo speakers, combo headphone/microphone jack - 4-cell battery for up to 6.5 hours of use	$349.99

Google Drive comes to Chrome OS

Yes, I did write about Google Drive coming to Chrome OS here earlier as well. It’s such a huge step forward for Chromies however that I decided to head of the Weekly Roundup with it anyway. Because although it’s to the average consumer primarily geared towards cloud storage for regular Windows/ Apple/ Linux systems, it’s not. It is an integral part of Google’s road-map in moving everything to the cloud. Something that CNET’s senior writer and complete stranger to me Stephen Shankland touched on in his piece.

Google Chrome OS: A New Aura

Is it an attempt by Google to woo the weary and rake in bunch more users that until now resisted the Browser look? Maybe. Fact is: it’s coming. Google is redesigning it’s Chrome OS to look more like a regular ol’ laptop. Yes, you’ll even be getting to choose your wallpaper. Back to the world of flowing hills of grass. It’s not definitively implemented yet, so if you’d like a taste of Aura yourself you should set your Chromebooks to the “Developers’” download channel (in Settings). At The Verge they’ve gone hands-on with it,they’ve got a great 1:36min video showing Aura here.

Frontdesk Anywhere brings Hotel Software to Google Chrome Web Store

Great news for small and medium sized hotels, motels, B&Bs and inns! Frontdesk Anywhere is a web-based, all-in-one Hotel Management System that helps simplify daily operations while selling more online via an online booking engine. 2 way integration with GDS, Expedia and Hotels.com comes with it, and that’s good news for getting your rooms booked. It packs quite a few great features to help boost your business. It’s a bit of a commercial, I know. But I just thought it a nice idea to promote an App that brings functionality to the Chromebook which is normally reserved for the big guns only. At a very affordable price.

Google Extends Cloud Print Service

Google’s Cloud Print service, which lets you print out documents remotely over the Web, has been linked with FedEx Office establishments in the U.S.vNow, Cloud Print users will get the option of printing out documents at FedEx Office Print & Go self-service devices at about 1,800 locations across the country.

Announced on the Dev channel blog today the news that Google Drive has been integrated into the file manager as a part of Chrome OS. For your non Chrome OS devices Google has downloadable software that will link Drive to the respective file systems, much like we’re used to with Dropbox, allowing for files to sync. With this latest update to the operating system, essentially adding a full hard drive, synced files storage is becoming part of Chrome OS itself. It will be as if you’re back on your old, or other, machine working with regular data storage, only now completely save and backed-up online. The OS is becoming much better in mimicking the more traditional windows experience. And I say that with the Google’s hardware-accelerated Aura UI in the back of my mind.

Or as Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai himself said in an interview with Wired: “With Chromebooks, [Google Drive] is even more powerful,”, “because it just starts working naturally. Your local drive is also Google Drive. This makes it really powerful because you just don’t think about it.”

The best to come with Drive is that it will help enable, or complete rather the move from local computing to working online. Sundar Pichai: “The focus is on applications — powerful applications — that let people live and work in the cloud, create and collaborate. We started by letting people upload files to Google Docs, and GDrive is an evolution of this. It’s a place where you go to create and collaborate and share documents…Users are not just looking for file systems and storage.”

Let’s start with the specs(and just to be sure, they’re rumored specs dating back to march 2011):
11.6 inch Screen: Size wise slightly smaller then the 12.1 that comes with the Samsung series 5. See it’s specs here. The user experience will on that part be equally nice as with the current Chromebooks.

tag that says

1.2 GHz Processor: When compared to the 1.66 Ghz Intel® ATOM Processor N570 in use on current models, the Vaio will be a nice leap forward. It is however in more or less the same league as the next-gen Samsung Series 5 Chromebook which will sport a dual-core Intel Celeron processor, as a Samsung rep told CNET at CES 2012. On the bottom of the Vaio there’s a tag that says “T25″, this could indicate a Nvidia Tegra 250 T25 ARM processor, which is 1.2 GHz dual-core.
16 GB SSD Storage: That surely won’t do you much good, when you’d be talking about a regular old school laptop. But as you’ve been able to read in my series of Making the Switch articles, you can do pretty much everything you’d like online using Chrome apps. And the great thing is that those apps offer the possibility to store related files on their respective servers. In case you’re still in dire need of more storage you can choose a file storage service. Google Drive being the best choice since you are living inside the Google sphere, amongst other great reasons of course.
1 or 2 GB of Ram: Depending on what source you go with tha Vaio comes with either 1 or 2 GB of RAM. I myself think it is most likely for Sony to opt for 2 GB of RAM. This matches better with the 1.2 GHz processor and it’s already on the current models. 1 GB would just feel like a step back to me. But, that’s all me speculating here.
8 Hour Battery Life: For those of us that are students or have a location free work style like me, battery life is everything. 8 hours would be great. No more half day battery recharge sessions. If Sony did opt for the energy efficient ARM processor 8 hours does seem very possible.
2 USB ports and SD card reader:
Headphone / microphone jacks and HDMI port:

Bluetooth & Wireless-N: Peripherals with no strings attached, or Bluetooth, will greatly enhance the usability of your Chromebook. Having it build in to the Vaio Chromebook opens the door to easy use of Bluetooth mice and headsets.

Changes are possible
As you’ve read above, a lot about the Sony Vaio Chromebook is still unclear. There are no official specs, no official announcement even. So for now we’ll have to do with what I’ve covered so far. Do I think it’s accurate? For the most part I think it is, but when a manual on a Chrome OS device references the Windows Start button to get to the Help and Support section and the complete Userguide, you they aren’t done yet. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Can’t wait and want to buy your very own Chromebook right now? You can, just hop over to Amazon and pick one up starting at $299.00 for the ACER WiFi only. If the Samsung Series 5 3G Chromebook is more your cup of tea you can get that at $436.89.

Full disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate which means I get a small commission in case you decide to purchase through the links provided above. If you do decide to buy though ChromebookHQ, thank you very much. I really appreciate you taking the time and effort doing so.

It’s a little bit of a catch-up this time around since the whole thing with fighting off the lords of spam did put a bit of a dent into the otherwise flawless record of two straight weeks of weekly roundups. Fortunately not much happened.

Feel free to add any articles you miss in the comments. Thank you in advance, I really appreciate the time you take out of your busy day doing so.

Next-gen Chromebooks built on faster Ivy Bridge chips?

Signs that the new Chromebooks will be a faster machines are definitely looking more positive. Over at CNET Stephen Shankland writes about Google making an important tell tale contribution to the Linux operating system. That contribution makes it possible for Linux to run on Cougar Point and Panther Point, Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, respectively. Both are Intel processors which will do much better then the current Atom-based processors.

More functionality for the Chromebook with offline support for MS Office

Chrome OS beta channel received an updated recently which enables Chromebooks to open MS Office files without an internet connection. We will soon see this in a stable release, making this feature available to all Chromebook users. more..

Sony entering Chromebook arena very soon

Next to the already well known Acer and Samsung Chromebook models we can expect there to be a third choice coming soon. Sony insiders have released specs and e few photographs of the new model. For short: 11.6 inch, 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB storage and 8 hour battery life. PCMAG also wrote about it talking about how the FCC leaked information about it. So far it sounds a lot like the current Series 5 model by Samsung. But we all liked that, so Sony might have a popular model on it’s hands. more..

As a blogger you mostly depend on your own skills to maintain your blog, maybe even to build it. At the very least you’ll want to tweak the code every now and again to keep your blog afloat. And if you’re anything like me you’ll do most of your writing and quick code editing away from your home office and trusted setup. In other words, if we’re gonna buy a Chromebook it’s going to be the machine doing most of the work, it should be able to handle that.

There are quite a lot of programming languages out there, so I will be specific in what I seek. I need to be able to work on my website’s CSS and create, edit and store PHP, C++ and maybe HTML5 files online. It would be nice if I could find some kind of sandbox or service that offers that option where you can trial run your code. Preferably in the same IDE (integrated development environment), and for free.

Like I just don’t want to learn I was again completely surprised by how advanced the developments are and what great quality services you can find. Not only can I get free apps for programming online in the languages I want, the ones I tested also performed better, were more user friendly and had a richer set of features than I had imagined possible.

When you’re looking to move your coding to the web, do give the following five IDE’s a bit of your time. Try them out. I’m sure that one of them will be of your liking. Do not forget to F11 for the full screen experience, that really makes it better!

Shift Edit

It blew my mind. An online PHP, Ruby, Java, HTML, CSS and JavaScript editor with built-in (S) FTP and the ability to store your files in Dropbox! It does everything you expect from an IDE like full syntax highlighting and it handles easy too. It literally took me only 1 minute to set the IDE up on the ChromebookHQ website after which I could immediately start editing my site. In design mode, or split pane or just code, you choose. Find the app here.

Cloud IDE

Again, awesome! Supported languages are HMTL, CSS, XML, Javascript, Groovy, Java, JSP, Ruby and PHP. An extensive online IDE which makes programming on a professional level certainly possible. To help you get started their site comes with some sample projects, provides extensive user documentation such as tutorials, video demos, webinar archives, product screenshot galleries, datasheets, features and benefits tables and more. It’s hosted development environment enables teams to collaboratively build gadgets, mashups, REST APIs, and HTML5 / JavaScript applications. Find the app here.

Source Lair

A deceptively simple IDE which you can use to write code in C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran 90/95, Javascript, PHP, CSS, HTML, and Pascal everywhere. How far you can go with it I do not know, but for the novice C++ coder this is certainly a good solution. You can also use SourceLair for its highlighted editing capabilities for Python, Ruby, Java, HTML ( with previewing ), CSS, Javascript and PHP. Find the app here.

Cloud9

Without a doubt the IDE with the best user interface I’ve seen so far. Perhaps the main reason why I am so enthusiastic about Cloud9. Not to say that it’s lacking on other parts, definitely not. In addition it offers seamless integration with the two most popular web-based hosting services where you can find full software development projects and host Github and Bitbucket. And to sum up there’s collaboration, you can edit, run, and debug your code live and much more. Find the app here.

Codeanywhere

It’s in the name.. Codeanywhere lets you code anywhere, without the need to bring anything along with you. Just install Codeanywhere in Chrome, and all your servers, files, everything is waiting for you, even the files you left open will be open when you login again. Best of all everything is synchronized with your Codeanywhere.net account. It offers: FTP Client, PHP Editor, HTML Editor, CSS Editor, Javascript Editor, XML Editor and a bunch more. Find the app here.

Conclusion to date

These five IDE’s are all just very good tools in their own right. Yes, I prefer some over others. But that’s more due to what it is I use them for than that the others wouldn’t be as good. Overall I can say that what I summed up in my previous post is all possible. It’s that good that I myself have switched over these past couple of days from coding locally to coding online.

Up Next

I really don’t know what to check out next. I believe I’ve covered the most important things so far! Let’s go back to my mind map from post number one and see what I’ve forgotten. In the mean time let me just ask you to leave any comment if you so wish. Maybe you’ve got a good idea for my challenge to test.

Have fun Chroming and until next time!

Feel free to add any articles you miss in the comments. Thank you in advance for doing so. We really appreciate the time you take out of your busy day doing so.

Chrome Adds “Suggested” Pages – Wants To Show You Some Cool Stuff

Even though it is an a very early stages of development, this thing is going to make you curious. Chrome team has added a new experimental section on the new tab page where it shows “Most Visited Pages” and “Apps” now. >> ChromeStory.com

Technology enhances teachable moments

By many counts, today’s students must be as fluent in Excel spreadsheets and Chromebook computing as they are in traditional mathematics and social studies. “So much is emerging — it’s kind of like a renaissance,” Sea Crest School Director of Curriculum and Instruction Michelle Giacotto said. This year Sea Crest piloted Google Chromebooks for each student in middle school. >> hmbreview.com

Google welcomes students to redesign its logo

Doodle 4 Google is a contest where students in the United States are invited to use their artistic talents to think big and redesign Google’s homepage logo for millions to see. This year, Google is asking students to exercise their creative imaginations around the theme, “If I could travel in time, I’d visit …” >> lakeconews.com

Norfolk County Council deploys Google Apps to 148,000 users

By deploying Google Apps for Education to some 148,000 registered users Norfolk County Council has been involved in the largest rollout of Google Apps, in terms of user numbers. The council deployed Google Apps for Education to their registered users – school staff and children, with a buffer for leavers and joiners – nearly two years ago. >> idg.no

I jumped into it by asking the Google about online image editors. The sheer number of tools Google came up with was downright frightening. Unfortunately I hadn’t much of a choice so I CTRL+ Left clicked the results one by one and checked them all out. Well, the first five pages at least. A lot of it was total junk or just not what I was looking for. I wasn’t looking for some fun loving add stars to your birthday pictures site. I wanted a worthy online replacement for Photoshop. And you know what, I think I found three apps that are just that.

Aviary

update: Aviary has decided not to directly focus on the consumer side of their business anymore, and is therefore no longer available. Here’s an excerpt from there blog explaining the move: “we have officially closed the advanced suite of Flash tools (previously located at advanced.aviary.com) in order to focus on our new company direction powering the photo experience in 3rd party apps.”
Aviary was a suite of powerful creative applications that ran directly in your browser. You can find the Chrome app here. It’s image editor was among the best I’ve seen. One nice differentiating thing about Aviary was that it added a social element to the experience, which you noticed right away on how your account was set up. You could share your creations with your community on Facebook or Twitter for example and you could also “discover” what others had created with Aviary. You didn’t have to learn how all the features and tricks worked by yourself. Aviary offered great support on how to use the editor with tutorials which are available on the site. I wish them all the best with their future endeavors.

Pixlr

In Pixlr’s own words they are the most popular image editor on the web. And yes, when you’re used to Gimp or Photoshop you will feel right at home with the Pixlr Chrome app. It has many features you normally get in a desktop application. Such as a toolbar, menubar and of to the right a Navigator, Layers and History panel. Just the way you like it. And on top of that the speed and ease of editing are stunningly good. That combination of the many features, ease of use and speed makes Pixlr a strong candidate to become your favorite online editor.

Sumo Paint

Last but definitively not least is the number three best online image editor, Sumo Paint. A very complete online equivalent of Photoshop. It offers all the great features like a wide mix of layer effects and blending modes, filters for all kinds of effects and of course a full and complete left hand Toolbar with the tools you use most. In addition to the basic free transform tool, Sumo Paint features warp and distort transform modes. Unlike the common transform tool, you can stretch an image in any direction freely. Amazing stuff.

Sumo Paint offers a Pro version that gives you a couple more, truly amazing features and the ability to install Sumo locally on your Windows, Mac or Linux machine. But honestly, that last part doesn’t excite me that much since I’m doing the opposite by moving everything online. Nevertheless, it might come in handy for those of use using the Chromebook outdoors, but also have a full fledged PC at home for example.

Conclusion to date

I must admit, the outcome of this search for a Photoshop replacement did surprise me a bit. I truly didn’t think it was possible to do good image editing online. For free at that. With that challenge out of the way I can say with complete conviction that it is totally possible to move your image editing online. And because of that I can continue with my Making the switch to a Chromebook series. But before I tell you what I’ll be looking at next time I do want to share with you the two runner ups.

The list could have been longer you see. For a while there I had the title at ‘Five Best Image Editors’. The two services that didn’t make the cut were iPiccy and Adobe Photoshop Express. iPiccy looked real nice and has easy access to it’s many features. But it didn’t give me the smooth and professional results I got with the top three and it had a child like feel to it that I personally don’t like. Do check it out though, maybe you get more out of it then I. Adobe seems to be competing with it’s paid products and that gives me an uneasy feeling of being sold to. On top of that I could only upload JPEG’s which is a real shortcoming.

Up Next

Next time I’ll take a good look at all the ways you can code online. For that challenge to be successful I need to be able to work on my website’s CSS and write PHP, C++ and maybe HTML5 online. It would be nice if I could find some kind of sandbox or service that offers that option where you can trial run your code.

I would love it if you leave a comment, preferably a nice one, telling me what you think of online image editors. Maybe you have tips to share with us, I’d like to know.

Have fun Chroming and until next time!