The desktop version of Chrome is one of my favorite browsers. Considering that I'm entrenched in Google with Google+, Gmail, Google Music, and my Android phone running 2.3.4 (Gingerbread represent!); it's nice to have everything connected.

On Android devices, depending on the hardware maker, the stock browser is bad. Meaning almost worthless to view anything. My 4G LTE connection doesn't even help. Third party browsers like Dolphin Browser HD are great alternatives, but even they have loading issues.

Now Google has Chrome in Beta, I'm very interested if the speed of the desktop program can be matched on Android 4.0.

Even in beta, Chrome is almost perfect.

Microsoft's hugely successful motion sensor technology Kinect is being released for Windows on February 1st. This will allow Windows 7 (and later Windows 8) users to interact with PCs without a keyboard or mouse.

As well as motion control, Kinect for Windows also includes voice control, which could make Windows 8 a really interesting and flexible operating system. Microsoft's Kinect for Windows SDK for developers has been available for a couple of months now, so developers can already get stuck into experimenting with Kinect integration into apps.

I am excited about the possibilities for Kinect for Windows - in recent years Apple's excellent trackpads have been my favorite navigation tools, but I can imagine Windows 8 with motion control being fantastic. Using gesture controls on an office desktop would be really comfortable as a replacement for a mouse if it's precise enough - for me motion control on a desktop makes much more sense than touchscreens, which are better used on portable devices.

With Kinect for Windows, 2012 has got off to a great start for PC users, and the potential for new software is huge.

The recent news that Google was inadvertently promoting it's own browser Google Chrome to the top of Google rankings highlights concerning issues for software users, developers and the integrity of the blogosphere.

If you don't know the story, Google were employing PR firm Unruly Media to promote Google's own browser Chrome. Nothing wrong with that but unbeknown to Google, Unruly Media were paying bloggers to promote Google Chrome on blogs. To be fair to them, the posts did state "This post is sponsored by Google" in the search results but they helped rapidly improve Chrome's search engine rankings which is strictly against Google's code of ethics on paid links.

When search engine specialist sites SEO Book and Search Engine Land spotted what was going on, Google - to their credit - immediately took action and are now "punishing" the rankings of their own browser for the next 60 days.

The incident highlights three main points of concern.

1. Potential conflict of interest

This incident was largely out of Google's control and to some extent, it has simply become a victim of it's own success. Over the past ten years, it has gone from a simple search engine company to one that develops its own software. The battle for browser supremacy is so intense - and so incredibly lucrative to the winner - that it's perfectly understandable that Google employed a PR firm to try and help boost Chrome rankings in its own search engine. The problem is exactly that however - that the battle is taking place in its own search engine and Google is caught between a rock and a hard place in how to conduct the battle. The company have to tread a very difficult line between promoting their own product Chrome, but not unfairly "favoring" it in Google rankings through various means.

2.Pitfalls of outsourcing marketing

The problem is that once Google has relinquished some marketing control over its products, it's not as easy for it to check if is living up to its own code of ethics. Presumably, any company that enters into a marketing agreement with Google has to agree to abide by the company's ethics code. However, it's obviously not as easy for Google to keep tabs on absolutely every marketing campaign being used by PR firms it works with. The result may be an unfair playing field for developers trying to develop competing products and a bum deal for users who aren't necessarily getting the best product for their needs when they perform a Google search.

3. Reliability of the blogosphere

When blogs first appeared, they were an outlet for people to express their feelings and thoughts on whatever issue took their fancy without any commercial influences and as such, have built up a highly trustworthy reputation. Today, blogs that look highly personalized may be heavily tainted by advertisers or corporate funding making it hard for users to know whether the information they are reading is trustworthy. The result is "personalized" blog posts that don't reflect the user's opinion - exactly what happened in this case as is amply highlighted here. This kind of problem has been brewing for some time and Frederic Filloux wrote one of the most thoughtful articles about it in "The Blogosphere's Soft Corruption" following the TechCruch-Arrington saga.

Of course, you can always rely on us here at OnSoftware to bring you our honest opinions and thoughts on software, and check out our reviews of Google Chrome for Windows and Mac.

[Image courtesy of Search Engine Land]

Despite the strange name, The Powder Toy is an awesome falling sand game that manages to be entertaining and, dare we say it, pretty educational.

So what's it about?

The Powder Toy is an experimental falling sand game for PC and Mac. That's great if you know what an experimental falling sand game is, but not so cool if, like the rest of us, you have no idea.Think of it this way: The Powder Toy is a blank mini-world where you create your own fun by combining elements - from the organic (wood, goo, water, soil) to the electronic (conductors, electrodes, wires, transmitters) and the chemical (radioactivity, anti-matter, photons, uranium) to tools (air, water, heat, gravity).

These elements act like they would in real life, so, for instance, if you mix an explosive and a heat source, you'll get a very convincing explosion. Likewise, if you hook an energy source up to a conductor and build a generator, you'll be able to power it. It may sound like a cliche, but with The Powder Toy, the only limit is your imagination.

The demise of Flash has been greatly exaggerated. The news that Adobe are to stop developing Flash on mobile devices has had many people declaring the war between Adobe and Apple has finally been won by Apple. But there are many reasons why Flash isn't going to disappear anytime soon. Here are five of them to consider:

1. Flash is an integral component to Adobe AIR which is increasingly the platform for more and more Adobe products. Adobe AIR consists of Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML and Ajax.

2. Adobe have only recently launched version 11 of Flash which is the most powerful yet. This means that there's still a lot of development possibilities for Flash, and lots of new potential for developers to harness.

3. Adobe is likely to make Flash open-source by releasing the source code. This means that Flash will probably continue to be developed enthusiastically by the open source community.

4. HTML5 is still a long way behind Flash in terms of video capability. Of course that will change but for now, web developers, video providers and designers will get more power out of Flash.

5. Despite Apple's refusal to support Flash, it's really not all that bad. It's certainly less buggy and clunky than other proprietary platforms such as Java. If it's good enough to have got YouTube as far it has today, it can't be that bad.

Now the trailer's been released after a week of frenzied and often pretty funny speculation, what can we say for sure about GTA V?

Where?

Vinewood appears, meaning we're returning to San Andreas. Like GTA San Andreas, this looks to be another huge game, with multiple locations. It looks like there'll be the same mix of city and countryside, but we don't know if there will be more than one city. However, the jet plane at the end suggests there may somewhere else to fly to! It also looks to have a pretty contemporary setting from the cars we see, although it could be set any time in the last decade.

Who?

Our narrator sounds a little older than what we're used to, but his story sounds like one we've heard before: a bad guy trying to go straight, but of course, it doesn't go that way. There's no indication this middle-aged family man will be the only character. The trailer is cleverly ambiguous about that...

Changes?

With the depictions of homelessness mixed with the opulence of Vinewood, it's clear Rockstar isn't shying away from the grittiness that GTA IV introduced. But at the same time, there appear to be fighter jets and airplanes, so we may see more of the excess that made so many people fall in love with the original San Andreas.

Did the trailer live up to your expectations, or are you disappointed the rumor of a Detroit setting didn't come to pass? We'll be sure to keep you updated with whatever we hear about the game in coming months!

Spending time at GDC Online 2011 was interesting.  While the conference is much smaller than the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the specific focus on all things online offered a lot of interesting content and new technologies to learn about.

Digital Harmony Games’ introduction of Dragons vs Unicorns might have been my last meeting before I flew back to San Francisco, but it showed off something I have been waiting for in mobile games for a while now.

True real-time cross platform gaming

Attending Playdom’s session with Steve Meretzky and Dave Rohrl led me to two distinct discoveries.

One: There is no magical formula for social games. Two: Most of them have a limited lifespan.

The pair discussed ten trends in the session, they highlighted a lot of the evolution of the genre as a whole and named specific titles.

When I was contacted and asked to meet Chris Ulm, I didn’t really know much about Chris or Appy Entertainment. My meeting him at the end of day two of GDC Online 2011 was a bit of a last minute thing.

But I am glad to have met him.

His history is epic, especially for a fan of comics and games. He was the Editor in Chief at Malibu Comics and the Ultraverse. Malibu published the first Image Comics. He was part of the sale of Malibu to Marvel Comics. He’s been in the gaming industry on the console side during the days of PlayStation 2 and Xbox, working for and creating his own development companies.

Now he makes mobile games with Appy Entertainment as CEO, being one of the early developers and publishers with the launch of the App Store. He also admits he rambles, but is honest in his opinions and insights.

Appy Entertainment is primarily an iOS developer and publisher.

Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” keynote is over and CEO Tim Cook (with friends) talked about the new roll-out of products and features.

But with all the hype around the next new iPhone - which is actually the iPhone 4S and not the iPhone 5 - did anything really amazing come out of it for users?

Our Mobile Lead Expert James Thornton already talked about how to get many of the features of iOS 5 through different apps, but since iOS 5 presents a unified package, there are something things worth noting.

The lack of Adobe Flash support by Apple started with the first iteration of the iPhone.  Now one year and five months after the release of the iPad and six months after the release of the iPad 2; the first Flash-based game was ported and released for the tablet.

Machinarium is a great game, first released in 2009, it's a fun interactive point and click puzzler.

Dead Island is the new action horror game from Deep Silver, that first hit the headlines with an iconic teaser trailer earlier this year, but does it live up to the hype?

My feelings after the first few minutes were pretty poor. It looked cheap, and the opening segment had annoying trigger points that meant you were forced to do things a certain way or you couldn't continue. But as soon as my character had joined the survivors holed up in Dead Island, my feelings changes entirely. Sure, it might not look as polished as the new Deus Ex, but fighting the zombies is just endlessly fun.

Mixing dynamic zombie combat with RPG character development works beautifully. Dead Island has interesting weapons crafting, and you need to repair them too if you want to survive, while you can decide which survival and combat skills you want to develop. It's mainly about up close melee combat, and it feels good. You can fight off zombies intelligently, for example hacking their legs to slow them down, and be creative by throwing a gas canister into a swarm, then blowing it up and much more.

Apple today announced the release of iCloud, the online storage service that replaces MobileMe. iCloud has a number of competitors to deal with but biggest of all is Dropbox for Windows and Mac. While iCloud may certainly be a wake up call to Dropbox which hasn't seen much innovation in recent years, it's unlikely to replace it anytime soon. Here are some reasons why:

• Dropbox is truly cross platform

Dropbox will remain by far the easiest way to share files across platforms whether you're on Windows, Mac, Android or Linux. The only mobile platform it doesn't work with is Symbian and there's even a client to fix that.  iCloud meanwhile is restricted to mainly Apple devices such as Macs, iPhones and iPads. PCs are supported (although Windows XP isn't). Basically, if you don't have an Apple ID , then iCloud will be inaccessible to you.

• Dropbox is more flexible

Dropbox can store anything you throw at it. iCloud on the other hand is much more application based and backups/syncing will rely on developers adding support for it in their apps. This is great for Mac users that use official Apple products such as  iTunes and iPhoto etc but not no good for those that rely on third party apps that don't add iCloud support. Even though the free version of iCloud offers 5GB of free space compared to 2GB on Dropbox, you can't do as much with it.

• iCloud isn't a backup solution

iCloud is fine for syncing but not for backups - at least not for photos. At the moment, iCloud only allows photos to be stored for up to 30 days. Dropbox allows you to store your files for as long as you want or maintain your account. Apple may change this if they realize it's  a deal breaker for many users but until then, iCloud will be seen more as a syncing tool than a backup one.

Like MobileMe, it goes without saying that iCloud is likely to be a big hit with those who rely only on Apple products. It may also be popular with iTunes users that want to sync their music, calendar and address book with the cloud but nothing else. Dropbox may lose users of its professional version as people opt to use iCloud for music, and use the free version of Dropbox for general storage.

Whatever happens, iCloud should at least motivate Dropbox to improve its product and that can only be good news for its users.

Download Dropbox for Windows and Mac.

Google+ may be more than "just" a social network, but it can be used in in a similar way to Facebook, and many people want to join precisely because they want a change. Facebook has suffered a number of privacy scares as it has grown, so how does it compare with new kid Google+? Let's take a look at the  privacy options of both social apps.

Privacy Settings:

Facebook's privacy dashboard has a neat table that shows you who can see what. Click Customize and you can edit these settings. You can choose to share things with just you, friends, friends of friends or specific people. You can also opt to hide certain categories from specific people. Here you can also preview your profile as it appears to any of your friends.

The Google+ privacy settings page is much longer, but every segment is clearly explained. Editing your settings takes you to your profile, letting you see exactly which part of your profile you are altering. Google+'s Circles means you choose who can see your posts and updates as you make them, giving you much greater control.

While their approaches are different, I think both are good attempts at making privacy and sharing settings accessible and user friendly.

Back in 2000 I was lucky enough to meet up with Google’s CTO, the so-called ‘Employee Number One’, Craig Silverstein. He’d invited me along to the Dorchester in London to talk about the search engine’s new AdWords solution, just before the product was rolled out.

Silverstein spoke about the idea of a new pay-per-click and site-targeted advertising system that would be integrated into Google Search. After listening to his imagination-tickling speech, I unashamedly gave Silverstein’s ego a full body massage, telling him that I thought his new AdWords product will change the business world forever and even transform Google into an industry in its own right. He flashed a knowing smile and just said “that’s what I’m hoping”.

True to our mutual optimism that day, this was to be the moment Google went supernova. AdWords went on to become the company’s main revenue stream, generating revenues of $28 billion in 2010. Moreover, it has given businesses a quick and relatively cost-effective way to bring targeted customers through their doors.

Yesterday, as  I watched Google present its new Wallet solution, I got that same tingly feeling as I had 10 years ago, that something truly game changing is about to drop.