When Google announced that the Chrome browser would become its own operating system and run on netbooks, the thought around the tech community was that eventually Google would have to merge Chrome with Android. After all, what is the point of supporting two disparate mobile operating systems? The convergence has not yet occurred but may have taken a step further today as Google announced Chrome for Android available on devices running version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Chrome for Android is a win for everybody. Except, of course, most users. As of Google's latest Android platform numbers, only 1% of devices are running Ice Cream Sandwich. That will change as 2012 moves along with adoption accelerating from new device purchases and updates. Chrome for Android immediately becomes on of the go-to browsers on the platform, will be good for HTML5 development, reliability and security.

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A Big Day For HTML5

The best thing that Chrome for Android brings to the table is robust HTML5 integration. The native Android browser is known to have mediocre HTML5 performance (pre-Ice Cream Sandwich) but Chrome for Android promises to make up what has been lacking.

That will include a hardware-accelerated canvas, overflow scroll support, HTML5 video specs support along with Indexed DB (for offline caching, presumably), WebWorkers and WebSockets.

The biggest advantage for mobile HTML5 though will be the ability to bring Chrome tools to the Android platform. If a developer knows how to work in Chromium, working in Chrome for Android will be a seamless transition. This is where the possible convergence of the Chrome and Android platforms will take place.

"Much of the code for Chrome for Android is already shared with Chromium and over the coming weeks, the Chromium team will be upstreaming many new components developed for Chrome for Android to Chromium, WebKit and other projects," Arnaud Weber, Google's engineering manager for Chrome, wrote in a blog post.

Chrome for Android has already been put through its initial HTML5 tests with a score of 343 (+10 bonus) on HTML5Test.com. The native ICS browser scored 256 (+3 bonus) which put it in the middle of the pack in terms of mobile browsers.

Enhancements For Users

Chrome for Android promises to be fast, simple and reliable. It pre-loads pages with the Chrome Omnibox (only when Wi-Fi is enabled) and predicts where and what you want to navigate to. It also brings a simple user interface to the Android browser environment, something that many users will be very grateful for after dealing with some of the more complicated UIs from third-party options like Opera, Dolphin HD and Skyfire.

The best aspect of Chrome for Android though will be the ability to sign in to your Chrome browser and have access to all of your bookmarks, tabs and browsing history from anywhere. If you leave your computer with open tabs, Chrome for Android will recognize those and open them for you. Chrome will also be able to track your browsing history to better provide search suggestions. Like many other mobile browsers with desktop presences, Chrome for Android will also be able to sync your bookmarks to your mobile device.

This 1% Problem

We are going to be perfectly honest. No writer at ReadWriteWeb has a device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we could not put the Chrome Beta through the paces (most RWWers use iPhones as well).

And there is the rub. Next to no one outside a couple Galaxy Nexus users has Ice Cream Sandwich yet. This poses a problem, if a temporary one. Many existing Android devices are never going to get the ICS upgrade and the devices that have it pre-installed are still in early adopter/Android geek territory.

For many, the Chrome for Android is just an exciting announcement to shrug at since most users will never see it on their current devices. So, Chrome for Android developers have plenty of time to roll out dynamic Web apps before the mass of Android users actually gets the browser. So, perhaps there is a positive side.

Excited for Chrome for Android? Will you develop for it? What about signing in to Chrome across all your devices? Let us know your reactions in the comments.

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Fewer people are relying on the Internet in general and social media specifically for election news and information than some social media "experts" would have us believe, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

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While many in tech journalism circles have been quick to call the 2012 presidential race "the Social Media Election," the poll found that few of us are relying on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for election information. While 25% say they regularly learn something about the election from the Internet, tha's almost unchanged from 2008, when 24% said they regularly got election information from the Internet.

Even more telling is where on the Internet that information comes from: 6% of poll respondents said they are regularly learning about the campaign from Facebook, followed by YouTube videos (3%) and Twitter (2%), according to Pew.

One reason social media hasn't grown by the leaps and bounds predicted is less engagement by young people. In 2008, there were two contested primaries, including a Democratic primary which has traditional drawn younger and arguably more tech-savvy voters. This year, only one in five people under 30 say they have been following the campaigns "very closely," down from 31% in 2008.

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Wolfram Alpha isn't the "Google killer" that many hyped it up to be prior to its 2009 launch. Instead, the self-described computational knowledge engine takes a completely different approach to letting users find and analyze information. Rather than scouring the Web and ranking everybody's pages in the order it thinks we'd find them useful, it uses its own data sets and computational power to return detailed reports and analysis about whatever topics users query it for.

Tomorrow, the service will ramp things up a notch when its "pro" version launches. For $5 per month, Wolfram Alpha Pro will allow users to do way more with its data, as well as enable them to upload their own. The premium offering will be discounted for students and enterprise users.

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This is freemium done right. What Wolfram Alpha is bolting onto its core offering is powerful and useful enough to justify what is undeniably a very reasonable price tag. For more users, what Wolfram Alpha's standard version does will continue to be enough for educational and other research purposes. For those with more specialized or comprehensive data needs, paying $5 will be well worth it.

The value offered by Wolfram Alpha Pro is two-fold, and it sits at both ends of the query process. First, users can upload their own data sets and have the service crunch through it for them, try to understand it and built out reports and graphs that previously could have taken them hours in Excel or elsewhere. In addition to text, you can even input images and get a detailed report about their visual characteristics.

Second, once a report is built - be it from Wolfram's data or your own - you can export the end results, images and all. This allows you to take the data analysis one step further using whatever other tools you want, effectively open-sourcing Wolfram Alpha's results. You can also turn charts and graphs into interactive versions of themselves. The Verge put together a detailed, hands-on overview of Wolfram Alpha Pro that is well worth checking out.

The potential these features have for people like journalists, business owners and Web analytics professionals is enormous. Just plug in a spreadsheet or other data set and let the knowledge engine work its computational magic. So much of the heavy lifting is shifted over to Wolfram Alpha's servers, freeing up the individual to spend time understanding the information, more easily spotting important trends and deciding if any further analysis is needed.

The premium plan is the latest part of the company's monetization strategy, which to date has included paid mobile apps, licensing of its API to third parties and various enterprise services.

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Path is a lovely app. It pushes all the right buttons. It's mobile, it's tactile, it's personal, it's full of people we love and moments that matter to us. It makes us feel good. It's got all the greatest hits a post-Facebook social app should have. It's also free.

"Facebook will always be free," it tells us, so free is now the standard. Free apps are expensive, though; we pay with our data. Whenever Facebook or Google messes with our privacy, this is the cost of doing business for free. Path is no different. It's already using our personal data in ways we didn't expect. Arun Thampi discovered today that it uploads the entire iPhone address book to its servers. Surprised? Don't be.

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Thampi was using a cool new tool to observe Path's API calls, just out of curiosity. The first thing that surprised him was a POST request to https://api.path.com/3/contacts/add. When he looked into it, he found that the entire address book - names, email addresses, phone numbers, everything - was being sent to Path's servers. He created a new Path and duplicated the results.

It's a secure exchange of information between Path's servers and your phone, and it's not necessarily doing anything flat-out wrong with the information. But Path never asked its users if it can do this. It may be using our contacts for the benefit of our user experience, for finding friends on Path, for example. But we need an explanation.

Why didn't we know about this until an enterprising hacker stumbled over it by accident? Is this a sign of how Path will treat user data in the future? What do Path's adoring users do now? Well, they should get used to it. This is the price of free.

The functionality is opt-in on Android, and CEO Dave Morin says it will be opt-in on iOS soon, but the fact is, the app added it before asking.

All I want @Path to say is "Oops, our mistake. We'll update the app and our servers to keep only hashes, and be opt-in. We're sorry."

— Matt Gemmell (@mattgemmell) February 7, 2012

UPDATE 11:53 a.m.: Path CEO Dave Morin replied to Thampi's post in the comments:

"We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and effeciently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more.

We believe that this type of friend finding & matching is important to the industry and that it is important that users clearly understand it, so we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval."

Translation: We did it first, and we'll ask you for permission in a little while. Also, this makes clear that Path uploads Android contacts as well.

Developer/blogger/legend Matt Gemmell raises three questions missing from Morin's explanation:

"1. Why are you uploading the actual address book data, rather than (say) generating hashes of the user's email addresses locally, then uploading just those hashes? You'd be able to do friend-finding that way, and similarly if you uploaded hashes of all email addresses in the user's address book, you'd be able to do your notifications of when a friend joins. At no point would your servers ever need to see the actual email addresses or phone numbers from our contacts.

2. Why wasn't this an opt-in situation to begin with? Isn't that against Apple's own T&Cs?

3. How can we have our contact information deleted from your servers, if we wish to do that?"

UPDATE 12:22 p.m.: Morin responds to Gemmell's questions point-by-point:

"1. This is a good alternative solution which we'll look into. Thanks for the idea.

2. This is currently the industry best practice and the App Store guidelines do not specifically discuss contact information. However, as mentioned, we believe users need further transparency on how this works, so we've been proactively addressing this.

3. As I mentioned in the previous answer, we are rolling out this functionality for 2.0.6. In the meantime, if you would like your data deleted from our servers please contact our service team at service@path.com. We take this same policy for any of your data, if you'd like your account deleted, including all data, we're happy to do this as well. We fundamentally believe that you as a user should always have control over your information and data and you can always email our service team and we will remove anything you'd like from our servers."

The response is in the right spirit, but Path should now see the repercussions of setting it up this way. The only opt-out for users is to manually email the support team, and the opt-in version is coming to the App Store after the fact. If Path had just asked its users before adding this functionality, and if the app hashed the sensitive info locally before uploading it, everyone probably would have said "yes," and this wouldn't be a story.

Are you using Path? What do you think about this news?

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In 2008, a UK-based Adobe Acrobat engineer remarked, "I believe in striving to minimize the use of paper, but I do believe that we will probably never reach a position where paper is eliminated from our workplaces." This morning, his predictions were clearly confirmed by a study published by the information professionals organization AIIM.

The study shows that while the exchange of PDF files as e-mail attachments has reduced the volume of paperwork traded between IT professionals, that reduction is not only minimal, but quite possibly made up for. Over three-quarters of IT professionals surveyed say one of the first things they do with a PDF-based invoice... is print it out.

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And after those 77% of AIIM's 395 respondents print out their invoices, some 16% then scan them right back into the system for use as PDF attachments... some 77% of whose recipients print them right back out again.

Of the 358 respondents who provided detail for AIIM's study, entitled "The Paper Free Office: Dream or Reality?" some 10% said they actually print out their PDF invoices multiple times. And 10% say they print out at least one copy for archival purposes.

"Although many of the larger companies are pressing to have all-electronic billing and payment systems, we are still a long way from this ideal," the study reads. "Around a quarter or respondents are able to feed PDF invoices and fax images directly into a capture and/or workflow system. Another fairly common paper-intensive practice with faxes, especially with contracts and application forms, is to print the fax, sign it, and feed it back into the scanner or fax machine."

Ironically, some 45% of the documents being printed on paper originated, respondents said, not from scanned paper to begin with but from a word processor.

AIIM's respondents tended to fall into two groups: those whose companies do not scan their paper-based forms (including invoices) prior to their being processed, and those who do. Both groups were asked to list all the costs involved in the handling process, including labor. For the former, the average cost for processing each paper form prior to mailing it was $3.63 per form. For those who do scan, the cost falls to $2.83 per form.

So companies look at the 80¢ they're saving per form, and conclude they have the right to proclaim themselves "green." As AIIM noted, these businesses are failing to recognize that their business processes continue to revolve around paper. One astounding finding is that almost 30% of respondents scan their mail upon arrival, ostensibly for archival purposes, but many of them with the intent of printing out the scans since businesses tend to believe paper storage to be more permanent than electronic.

The study makes this... fairly obvious suggestion: "Keying the data at source into a Web form or a mobile device, rather than filling out a paper form, will save all of these costs."

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When developers think of application testing, it always centers around how an app will perform on a particular device. This is especially important in the Android ecosystem that has upwards of 300 devices from a variety of original equipment manufacturers worldwide. From the inverse perspective, nobody ever thinks of the testing needs of the carriers and OEMs.

Cloud-based testing platform Apkudo thought about manufacturers and carriers with a new release of device analytics platform. Manufacturers can now test devices against the top Android apps before releasing. The idea is that if a device is tested from the supplier side, fewer handsets will be returned by consumers, potentially saving manufacturers billions of dollars.

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Apkudo tests with what it calls a "device cloud." The configuration of more than 300 Android devices are set up in the cloud and mobile app developers can run their projects through that cloud to make sure it will work across OEMs and Android system versions.

For Apkudo's device analytics, the opposite approach is taken. Manufacturers and network operators can test their apps against the contents of the Android Market. Apkudo will run a device against the top 200 apps in the Market to test functionality with the touchscreen, keyboard, audio, device access (accelerometer and GPS, for instance) along with performance characteristics.

This should provide developers, network operators and manufacturers with tools against Android fragmentation. As we noted last week, there is actually less fragmentation of Android devices than many think, with the optimal Android handset running on a 4.3-inch screen on version 2.3 Gingerbread. Yet, with the sheer volume of devices and applications available in the Android ecosystem, testing is still one giant headache.

Apkudo can speed up on the process that OEMs must go through to test devices. According to CEO Josh Matthews the process normally takes 6-8 weeks. Apkudo says it can do it in three days.

Device analytics will break down the results into two categories: characterization and optimization benefits. Characterization benefits help operators target competing devices while expanding their own portfolios. Imagine it as a bench mark against the rest of the ecosystem. Optimization benefits recommends how devices can be made better before release to be truly competitive in the market place.

The first U.S. carrier to sign on with Apkudo is MetroPCS. Apkudo also has agreements with "most major OEMs" in the Android ecosystem.

App developers should be happy with Apkudo's testing abilities because it means that the OEMs could have a more efficient testing program to make sure apps work on their devices. When it comes to app functionality on Android, developers need to work the manufacturers and carriers to ensure a quality experience. The end of fragmentation, after all, is a two way street.

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It's an attention economy, and the good people at Jones-Dilworth have built a tool that will help you get some. Totem launches today, a free app that helps anyone build a great press page. Whether you're a giant company, a start-up, or even a solo act, you shouldn't have to think too hard about a press page. For that matter, neither should I.

A press page is a place for you to put all the info a reporter needs about you, your company, your product and your news. It's not the whole story; it's just the colorful details. But you'd be amazed at how hard it is to find that stuff sometimes. Jones-Dilworth has a wealth of experience, it has worked with reporters, and Totem reflects all the right priorities. If you want to make a good impression on the press, this is the way to go.

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Free Totem users can build unlimited press pages with all the right info, bios, articles and image resources in all the right places. The pro version costs $99 - a one-time upgrade - and it lets you host Totem at your own domain (press.YourNameHere.com) or embed it as an iframe on your site. Pro users can customize the color and background and remove the Totem branding.

Here's an example. This is the press page for Totem itself.

The front page includes the basic gist, links to social feeds, and all the video and image resources a reporter will need to grab. There's a separate page for full team bios. The press contact is always in the upper right corner, because that's the person a reporter needs to get to quickly if something is wrong or missing.

The right side also features a few feeds to keep things fresh, such as company press releases and featured blog posts. It also has a ticker of recent articles, which can be viewed in full on the articles page.

The back end of Totem lets moderators input stories there, but there's also a browser bookmarklet that lets you add new articles with one click as you find them online.

Have you noticed those nice rows of publication logos at the bottom of start-ups' websites highlighting good coverage? Totem lets you easily create one of those and embed it on your site, linking to these articles.

Business depends upon good storytelling. The press (yours truly) is the filter through which the stories get to the public. If you want to tell the public your story, you have to get through us. But lest this sound self-important, let me tell you, we're lazy, frantic people. If you can make that story easier for us, we're much more likely to tell it.

I saw the Totem-built press page for Parse.ly before I knew what it was, and believe me, I noticed it. I spend so much time in Google Image Search looking for the least-crappy logo I can find. This time, there was just one link, and there I found everything I needed laid out exactly where I wanted it. If your boss needs more evidence that this is really worth doing for reporters, this is me saying, "Yes."

Check out Totem at totemapp.com.

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Here at ReadWriteWeb, we encourage safer Internet use. We try to bring you the stories that help you navigate the World Wide Interwebs.

So we wanted to make sure you know that today is Safer Internet Day, and it's meant especially for children and young people. Past Safer Internet Day themes have focused on cyberbullying and social networking. This year's very apropos topic is "connecting generations." How do we make sure everyone on the Internet - from young kids to grandparents - feel safe?

Safer Internet Day began as an initiative of the EU SafeBorders project in 2004. Today more than 70 countries worldwide on six of the seven continents participate. Take a look at the map after the jump.

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91% off Gen-Y'ers surveyed say that they have used the Internet in the bathroom from their mobile phones. Acts that take place in the bathroom are not exactly social - yet people are connecting to others from that private space. People use the Internet from their mobile phones less as the ages go up; only 41% of Internet users in the silent generation use their phones in the bathroom. From this study, one could infer that people who use the Internet less are safer - not so. Young people and older people are both vulnerable when it comes to the Internet.

This is exactly why Safer Internet Day is of vast importance.

In 1999, the European Commission created the Safer Internet Programme. Today, the Insafe network has set-up 30 Safer Internet Centres, one in each of the 27 EU states, in addition to Iceland, Norway and Russia. These Safer Internet Centers have an awareness center, helpline, hotline and youth panel.

More Tips for Staying Safe on the Internet

Be Careful Whom You Befriend on Social Networks

Why Using 2 or 3 Simple Words May Be the Best Password Protection of All

Where Is the iPhone Malware? Lookout Releases iOS Security App

5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe and Private on Facebook

Stop Sharing Your Files When You Travel

Internet Safety Facts and Stats

Safer Internet Day has also released some interesting facts about European Internet user experience and safety. Take a look:

• 26% of kids have a social networking profile
• 12% of European 9-16 year-olds say that something they saw on the Internet has bothered them
• 56% of parents whose kids received mean messages online had no idea that this had happened
• 1 in 8 parents do not mediate their kids' Internet use
• 36% of 9-16 year-olds say that they know about the Internet than their parents
• 87% of kids use the Internet at home
• 48% of parents get online safety advice mostly from friends and family
• 63% of kids say they get online safety advice from their parents

Kids need to know about how to stay safe online - but if kids are coming to parents before teachers, relatives and peers, it is parents' responsibility to know how to stay safe online.

To find out how you can participate in Safer Internet Day, go here: http://www.saferinternetday.org/web/guest/sid-2012

If you don't have a national contact point, email the SID helpdesk at SID-helpdesk@eun.org. They can help you create your own.

Are you a parent of an Internet-using kid? Share your experience about Internet safety in the comments.

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My friend and colleague Esther Schindler has written a wonderful post over on SoftwareQuality Connection about encouraging user-centric design. The only trouble is figuring out the right set of users that your software is designed for. Put another way, this is the classic programming problem: the person who hires you (or who sets up the job) isn't the ultimate end-user audience for the actual program.

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Schindler mentions the Abomination That Is Taleo as Exhibit A. For those of you that haven't been in the job market lately, this is one of the go-to apps that employers use to collect resumes and screen applicants. The only trouble is that its UI is bad, really bad. As she says, "Features and functionality that would give joy to the most common hands-on-the-keyboard user (the hundreds of job applicants applying for a given position) may not even appear on the list of application requirements."

And having agile programming practices can actually remove programmers from the ultimate consumers of the app, because you write so quickly and get close enough in your first build that you stop doing anything further. Or don't get to have any further discussions beyond the initial meetings, if you even meet with your programming team at all, because the budget for the project gets cut.

Some of the problem is the Dilbert-ization of corporate life, where a boss gets the overview and the devil is in the details. Part of it is the level of communication in modern companies can be frighteningly bad, as work teams are more distributed and we all have more work to do as layoffs have decimated most IT departments.

It is a great article, and one that you should email to your boss when it comes time to put together your next project. Along with the appropriate Dilbert cartoon, of course.

N.B.: The agile turtle is from Sarah Maddox' FFeathers blog.

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In PaaS Makes Progress in 2011, I argued that the previous 12 months had been pivotal to the advancement of platform-as-a-service. As a result of this fast-paced evolution, the PaaS of 2012 is quite a different beast than that of just a couple of years ago. While this second-generation PaaS differs in many ways from initial forays in the field, one of the most important distinctions is that this new PaaS has been disintegrated, or at least made more modular.

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Before you run off thinking I'm advocating the destruction of PaaS platforms, please realize that I am not. Rather, I'm referring to the shift away from monolithic, one-size-fits-all PaaS systems towards more open, loosely coupled platforms that makes it easy to consume code and services provided by third parties.

Early PaaS offerings, circa 2007-2009, were conceived of as all-in-one affairs. In fact, a big part of the value proposition that providers envisioned was its delivery via proprietary services and custom APIs that developers would use in their applications. Examples include App Engine's data store and Memcache services, the Force.com data store, the distributed cache and storage systems we built at Appistry and many more.

The fact is, the early players in the space had little choice but to roll their own. At the time, there were critical gaps in the market that needed to be filled in order for developers on PaaS platforms to be able to deliver rich, scalable applications. Fortunately for PaaS users, this is no longer the case for most application-level services.

Sam Charrington is the principal of CloudPulse Strategies, an analyst and consulting firm focusing exclusively on cloud computing, big data and related technologies and markets. He can be followed on Twitter at @samcharrington.

REST Assured, We've Got Git

In order to build modern, scalable, connected web applications, developers must have access to a wide variety of third-party components and services upon which to build. With the proliferation of open source and SaaS services, these are now readily available on the open market. While both open source and SaaS predated the earliest PaaS offerings, in recent years the advent of GitHub and the popularity of REST-based Web services has played a significant role in expanding the selection of building blocks available to developers.

GitHub, by dramatically lowering the barriers to collaborating on and sharing open source projects, has become an "App Store" of sorts for developers, and is home to over one million projects. Likewise, the popularization of Roy Fielding's REST model for web service APIs has simplified developer access to the many application- and app-infrastructure-oriented SaaS services now available. It's now possible to store files, query and analyze data, send emails, create maps, subscribe to messages, encode videos, and much more, just by sending simple HTTP-based commands. (If you've never visited the ProgrammableWeb API Directory, the selection will blow your mind.)

This Cambrian explosion of high quality components and services has made web application development a much more productive affair for developers. And because the market has removed the burden of providing these low-level building blocks, those PaaS providers ready to embrace openness stand to gain great advantage.

Modular PaaS is Better for Providers, Too

While the end-user benefits of an open approach to PaaS, namely increased choice and reduced lock-in are apparent, the advantages of a modular approach to PaaS are two-sided, benefiting providers at least as much as users. This is because, as a PaaS provider, it's simply too hard to deliver both a solid application platform and the services that plug into it. For most businesses, such a thing would spread their development resources too thinly, even if they had the necessary domain expertise, which most don't. In addition, because the open source and SaaS genies have left their bottles, trying to do it all puts the provider at odds with their customers.

By building and offering an open platform able to easily consume third-party components and services, and by cultivating a thriving ecosystem of the tools' providers, second-generation PaaS vendors can improve their own chances of success while creating a better world for their users.

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