Articles about Chrome

In the classic film, Back to the Future II, some children remark to the main character that his use of hands to play a classic video game is essentially uncool and lame. In the real future, maybe mind-controlled input for games and apps will become a mainstream reality, but in the interim, mice, keyboards and game pads will reign supreme for computing overall.

A less futuristic alternative to using hands is dictation -- computers converting speech to text. Solutions have been offered for quite some time, but only in recent years have they become fairly usable and reliable. Google has been a huge proponent of voice, and today, the company announces it is enhancing 'voice typing' in Docs for Chrome to be much more than just dictation.

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Copyfish is a free Chrome extension which can extract text from just about anything in a browser tab -- images, videos, documents, more -- and optionally translate it, too.

That’s great, but it’s just got even better, with new support for desktop OCR.

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While many people type with on-screen keyboards every day, let's be honest -- a physical variant can be much better. Typing on a piece of glass fails to give the user true feedback, which can lead to typos. Even worse, auto-correction on those typos can create messages that are not only wrong, but potentially embarrassing. On a smartphone in particular, the smaller screen means a smaller keyboard -- that can be frustrating.

Luckily, Bluetooth keyboards have been a godsend in this regard. While a smartphone or tablet are primarily consumption devices, a good wireless keyboard can make them productivity powerhouses too. Today, VisionTek unveils a new such Bluetooth keyboard. This wireless input device has one really cool feature that sets it apart from many -- it is waterproof.

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For many of us, a web browser is our window to the world. It is how we get news, send emails and access social media to stay in touch with friends and family. Modern browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari, are very mature and stable, lending to a positive overall web-surfing experience.

Unfortunately, today, a malicious website has been going viral. If you visit this website by either typing in the URL or clicking a link, the browser will crash by consuming huge amounts of RAM.

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From tutorials to troubleshooting, game walkthroughs, presentations or just sharing desktop activity, everyone can use a screen recorder occasionally.

This used to mean tracking down and installing some low-level native application, but there are now some surprisingly capable Chrome extensions which just might do everything you need.

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If you have an online porn habit you like to indulge from time to time, you're probably well-acquainted with Chrome's Incognito mode. Like Microsoft Edge's InPrivate browsing, and Firefox's Private browsing, Google's browser includes a mode that can be used to keep your browsing secret. At least that's the idea...

One gamer and unashamed porn consumer found that his X-rated browsing sessions were exposed by Diablo III. Running the game on his Mac, Evan Andersen found that cached images from his Incognito browsing sessions were displayed as the RPG title loaded. He managed to grab screenshots of the bug in action, and even went as far as writing a program to show what's happening.

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In less than a week, Microsoft will only offer support for Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft Edge. As of Tuesday 12 January, Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 will die. The aging browsers will receive one more update, and then will be consigned to the trash.

Tuesday is the day that older versions of IE reach the end of their support cycles, and Microsoft is keen for everyone to move to either Microsoft Edge or -- for the diehards -- Internet Explorer 11. If you have not already made the switch (or jumped to Chrome or Firefox), one more patch, KB3123303, will pester you into upgrading.

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Welcome to 2016, dear BetaNews readers. Another year is here, and some trends will continue as before. The most intriguing being Google's push into both education and home with its wonderful Chrome OS. While a bit limited, devices with Google's Linux-based desktop operating system are perfection for many; especially as more and more time is spent in the browser.

Today, Acer announces some new Chrome OS devices that look really impressive. Its new Chromebook 11 and Chromebase 24 should meet the needs for many, and in typical Acer fashion, shouldn't break the bank. The Chromebase is particularly newsworthy, as it is the first-ever such all-in-one "base" device with an Intel Core processor. Quite frankly, it should make an absolutely glorious family PC.

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Microsoft must have hoped that in walking away from Internet Explorer and moving towards Edge it could successfully shake off its reputation for producing terrible web browsers. There's a joke that everyone has used Internet Explorer at some point, even if it's just once to download Firefox or Chrome; sadly for Microsoft, it seems the trend continues.

The launch of Windows 10 provided an opportunity to attract a new audience to Microsoft Edge -- but people are still jumping ship. It's likely that Edge's continued lack of extension support is partly to blame, but usage stats from numerous analysts paint the same picture: Edge is tanking.

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Chrome's a great browser, but open too many tabs and it can turn into a real resource hog, grabbing vast amounts of RAM and maybe impacting your system's performance.

Tabr is a new Chrome tab manager which helps you deal with this, by providing new ways to browse, archive and control your browser tabs.

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Edward Snowden-endorsed developer Open Whisper Systems has announced the first public beta of Signal Desktop, a secure chat app for Chrome.

The new release enables users of its popular mobile app, Signal Private Messenger, to carry on a conversation across even more devices.

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Stock photo vendor Shutterstock has released Shutterstock Tab, a free Chrome extension which displays a gorgeous image as a background for every new Chrome tab.

As a bonus, there’s also a clock, a 5-day weather forecast, and a tiny toolbar with links to recently visited sites.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation claims that Google is gathering data about school children, including their web searches. In a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about the search giant, the EFF gives details of the deceptive usage tracking it says was uncovered while conducting research for its Spying on Students campaign.

The campaign, which launches today, aims to "spread the word about companies collecting students' data and launching a campaign to educate parents and administrators about these risks to student privacy". At the center of the controversy are Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education.

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Websites are rapidly growing in size, making it harder for mobile device users to keep their data usage at reasonable levels. Connecting to Wi-Fi can make a huge difference, but free hotspots are not available everywhere. This is especially true when we are talking about developing markets where, for many, browsing the Web can prove to be a too costly affair.

But, at least in Chrome's case, it is possible to minimize data consumption by turning on Data Saver. In my experience, I see data savings of around 40 percent with this mode enabled. And now Google is rolling out an even more aggressive version for the Android version of its mobile browser, which promises to cut down data usage even further.

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If you live in the web browser, using a Linux-based operating system makes a lot of sense. By combining say, Ubuntu and Google Chrome, you can have a very secure and easy-to-use platform running the world's best web browser. A bloated and heavy Windows 10, for instance, could be unnecessary.

Sadly, if you are like me, and the first thing you install on any fresh Linux-based operating system is Google Chrome, you might be in for a world of trouble. You see, Google is killing Chrome for Linux; well, the 32-bit version at least. Is Google making a big mistake?

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