Tag Archives: google

Where are the home and end keys on a Chromebook?

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I’m writing to you on my shiny new Samsung Series 5 Chromebook, which I was sent by Google after the Google I/O conference in San Francisco earlier this year. It doesn’t have a normal keyboad. Which is somewhat annoying, as it’s missing several keys.

So, for your reference, here are the key combinations for some of the missing keys:

Home
Ctrl+Alt+Up
End
Ctrl+Alt+Down
Page Up
Alt+Up
Page Down
Alt+Down
Delete
Alt+Backspace

I originally found this information over at chromeoslounge.com.

Other key combinations like Ctrl+W to close and Alt+Tab to switch windows also seem to work. I assume that the same key combinations that apply to the Linux version of Chrome would apply to Chromebooks.

As an aside, I’m not sure how these keystrokes are recognised in JavaScript. If I can be bothered I will investigate and report back. I’ll probably forget, though.

Also annoying is that it has a British keyboard, which I am not that used to any more, after working on iOS development a fair bit recently, and on my NZ-bought ThinkPad, as well. Wonder if I can switch layouts?

You can’t use Google Analytics on wordpress.com

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I wish I knew this before I spent $12 on a custom domain for blog.zoopcast.com. You can’t use Google Analytics on a WordPress.com site.

I think the advantages of hosting the blog on their infrastructure outweigh the inconvenience of not having all metrics in one place (at least at this early stage), but it sure is an inconvenience.

Hopefully the WordPress.com Stats feature is good enough. From what I’ve read on TechCrunch though (and this is what sparked that whole “RSS is dead” fight last week), the stats that WordPress.com gathers don’t always match up with Google Analytics.

Nexus One update trashes Twitter?

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Here’s a weird one. I have just updated my Nexus One to build FRF83D. And the official Twitter app has disappeared. Completely. I had to reinstall it from Android Market.

The app was preinstalled with the previous build, and you couldn’t get rid of it. But removing it when it is already installed and being used, without asking, is a little weird.

I don’t know if it’s just my phone (and if so, what did I do to cause it?) but if it’s more widespread, to quote hungrybear9562, “what does this mean?”

The Twitter app was launched at Google I/O back in May, and was apparently built by Google. They announced that the source code would be released. It never happened, and the most recent refresh of the app changed the UI to be very similar to the iPhone app. Which is odd, because the Twitter app was one of the first to use the new UI features of Android.

Perhaps something soured in the relationship between the two companies after the updates?

Or perhaps this has something to do with Google’s social play, whatever that will be.

Or perhaps it’s just Google realising people don’t want apps bundled with their phones.

It’s probably the latter, but it would be more fun if something sinister was going on.

In other news, beta testing of Zoopcast is going well. We should be with Apple for approval this week. Follow @zoopcast (if you’ve still got the Twitter app) for updates.

iAd in the UK

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In my (it seems) continuing series on things that work in the US but not in the UK, Apple’s new iAd network doesn’t seem to be serving ads to people in the UK.

I am not sure if Apple are actively selling inventory in the UK, or if they even have plans to in the short term.

I really wish these American-based companies would clarify when things are U.S. only. Apple said that they had a lot of ads, but I haven’t seen one. So if I had created an app with a primarily non-U.S. audience, hoping to monetise it with iAd, I would be very disappointed.

Apple aren’t the only ones that have a habit of forgetting 6.3 billion people. At Google I/O, they said that everybody attending would have access to AdSense for mobile (which was in closed beta) but on signing up it said U.S. only. There was also a big press release saying that Google Voice was open to everyone. But it was still limited to the U.S. Funny definition of everyone. They did correct it later, but still, it’s not on!

Google.com from the UK

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Today is 4th of July. There’s a Google doodle for it, but you wouldn’t know if you’re from the UK. Google.com is completely different if you are coming from a UK IP address. There is no 4th of July doodle, and what’s worse, you will get entirely different search results, with UK sites having more prominence. The results are slightly different from google.co.uk, as well.

I think it would be better for the regionalised Googles to be the same no matter where you come from, and that includes the US Google.com. What’s the point of the “Go to Google.com” link if going back there isn’t the real American Google?

I haven’t taken a look at Google.cn or Google.com.hk!

Rant over!