Speaking in the shadows of Steve Jobs keynotes past, the first day of Google I/O seemed to work around the elephant in the room of Apple and Google's recent conflicts and ongoing battles in mobile, advertising and the OS. Apple, of course, was not a speaker at the conference, is not participating in any of the breakout sessions, and it seemed as if Google's spokespeople went out of their way to work around Apple's positions on app stores, standards, and most notoriously, Flash. The war between Apple and Google has been heating up over the last year, and as of January, the two companies were said to consider the other as primary enemies, even as Google has made it easier for traditional Mac fans to seek out an alternative. But today, not only did the speakers not bring up Apple, or note their lack of inclusion in some standards, but practically every Mac laptop that was used saw the familiar glowing Apple covered with a Google sticker of some sort.

While the morning's keynote did not slam Apple or its products, as some light teasing was reserved exclusively for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, consistently highlighted as a non-modern browser, it was clear that the speakers wanted to promote open standards wherever possible, gave significant stage time to Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe, the purveyors of the much-aligned Flash, and it wasn't until 10:40, 100 minutes into a near two-hour keynote that you even saw an Apple product - the iPad, which was used to display a lengthy demo of Google Web Toolkit, integrated with VMware's SpringSource.

Additionally, as Daring Fireball noticed, the ambitious WebM Project, based on the VP8 video codec, was shown as being supported by practically every major browser and application vendor - with Apple being a clear exception.

Without presenting themselves as the anti-Apple, Google's call for openness, its drive for support of Adobe Flash, its demonstration of Android-based phones in all cases, masking of Apple logos whenever possible, and its seeming lack of awareness of walking in the same halls as Macworlds past, seemed to drive home that the team from Mountain View has a very different objective than does the team from Cupertino. In light of the fact that many seemed to think that the iPad would be the savior of media, it's eye-opening that Sports Illustrated spent so much time this morning championing the Web and Google's Chrome offering. Google looks like they're moving beyond Apple's control and is finding a way to deliver the same experience, on their terms, no matter what Steve Jobs says.

Following Google's introduction of the Web-centric Chrome Operating System, my biggest questions around the project have largely been divided into two pieces - the first being the expectation of pervasive high speed Internet and the second being the availability of high quality Web applications that could replace the desktop environment. And while the first issue's answer depends largely on your location, the second issue is showing serious signs of being filled with this morning's introduction of the Chrome Web Store. At Google I/O today, the tease of the upcoming Web store brought serious intrigue and as one of the major highlights in what was an extensive and comprehensive near two hour keynote. And avoiding all hyperbole, as best as I am able, I came away so impressed with the potential of the Web store that it had me rethinking how the introduction could radically change the paradigms of how we obtain applications today and how we interact with our operating systems, desktop apps and online commerce.

As Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, explained, customers have long struggled to find Web applications - lacking ratings and reviews. In the world of mobile phones, this has largely been solved with fantastic examples of Apple's iTunes Store and the Android Marketplace, but for Web Apps, there has not been a centralized source to obtain these apps, run these apps and - should the option be available - pay for these applications.


Pichai said the problem pointed in two directions - first in users struggling to find the apps, and second, the developers finding ways to be discovered. Additionally, users' tendency has always been to think Web applications should be free of cost, forcing most developers to go the advertising route to make revenue. The Chrome Web Store intends to shake that up. One major benefit of shaking up the way users find Web apps, developers promote Web apps and Web apps make revenue? Centralizing a source for applications for Google Chrome - not just as a browser, but .

In April, I wondered about how developers were going to have to work in a world with so many different platforms vying for their attention. Developers are having to decide not just between the major operating systems, but also between the different mobile operating systems, like iPhone and Android - with WebOS from Palm also facing an uncertain future in its new home at HP. One alternative, and one that Google certainly hopes will become the future of app development, is to leverage Web standards and code for the browser.

While the Web's origin was around static documents, it is obviously becoming a platform for rich and social applications. New capabilities, many of which leverage the much discussed HTML 5, enable Web application developers to create high quality rich experience applications that run within the browser, not on the desktop.

"The future of the Web is HTML 5," Pichai said, adding that the 70 million Chrome users who use the browser, contrasted with 30 million last year at this time, would have access to the new Web store in their browser every time they started up. And this future demonstrated a number of full-featured applications, not scaled-down options or dumbed down options we've grown used to in a Web browser experience, but the real thing - and sometimes even more.

Today's demonstration from Sports Illustrated's Editor, Terry McDonnell, of the company offering a full magazine experience - plus interactive, updated, scores and rich media, looked like the first real alternative to the print edition I would possibly be interested in paying for - oddly, the same thing people said about apps on the iPad when Apple's tablet launched. And yet, at times, I was thinking that this kind of a Web store could potentially even have more of an impact on the future of Web development than a single tablet could - creating the opportunity for Web applications to make money in the same way that Apple's iTunes Store has, and start to help customers realize the value of high quality apps, based on leading technology standards, that could drive incremental revenue.

If Web services and Web app developers find a Web store - for profit - compelling, this could potentially drive the same kind of gold rush to Chrome's Web Store as we have seen to iPhone and iPod Touch and iPad in the last few years, helping to further promote Google's Chrome browser, and of course, the planned operating system. The more apps available for the operating system, pushing data stored to the cloud, the fewer holes and questions there are around Chrome's future.

This announcement was more than flashy cover photos on Sports Illustrated (which were cool) or seeing a Lego version of Star Wars played in the browser (doubly geeky). This was about redefining the approach to online commerce for Web apps and redefining what we can expect from quality apps deployed in the browser, further paving the way for users to commit to Chrome. It's early, but as McDonnel said, we are "at the beginning of a storm of innovation." While skeptics may see this introduction as yet another hook into Chrome from Google, or offered only to a subset of users on the Web today, it's forging a new approach the other players aren't promoting, and one that benefits both users and developers.

Following the site's March debut, Qwotebook has been racking up an archive of interesting quotes - from history and from the present - as the site's earliest users stored interesting quotes from friends, from public figures, and random strangers who may have said something remembering. Tonight, and you can quote me on it, the site opens up to all, without needing an invite code - letting you start posting quotes, and their context, and follow friends' quotes.

In the last six weeks, Qwotebook has been working behind the scenes to integrate with the big players in the world of social networking, first by implementing Twitter's @Anywhere, so you can connect directly to folks quoted from Twitter, and with tonight's roll-out, the ability to log in with Facebook connect, and post "liked" quotes (or Qwotes) to your wall.


The concept is simple, but the collection of interesting "nuggets of knowledge", as the team put it, have, so far, been without a home - despite us having archives for things like videos, photos, people and articles all over the Web. And as the team promised in a blog post tonight: "Join us, because what you see today on Qwotebook isn’t anywhere close to what you’re going to see next week, next month, or next year. You can Qwote us on that."

Start your own Qwotebook at http://www.qwotebook.com. You can find me at http://qwotebook.com/louisgray.

Regardless of your feelings on the utility of location apps, or their value in comparison to other updates in your social streams, a lot of people are using products like Foursquare and Gowalla to announce their location and learn what places are trending. With the availability of Foursquare's API, third party applications, including Seesmic, are giving the product prime real estate, letting you keep tabs on your friends' comings and goings without peeking at the dedicated app on your smartphone.

As Twitter has recently taken aggressive moves that clash with some parts of the developer community, thanks to their acquisition of Tweetie, and creation of an official Android client, third party clients are trying to find a way to drive differentiation, opening up their doors to data beyond Twitter. Some, like TweetDeck, have opened up to LinkedIn. Brizzly serves as a Facebook client, as do many others. Now, Seesmic, at least on its Web version, is adding Foursquare. In theory, the more services offered, the less the reliance on Twitter, despite its dominant position.


If you have a Seesmic account, and a Foursquare account, connecting the two is very simple. Go to the Seesmic Web interface (at http://seesmic.com/web/), log in as you, and then click your settings, in the top right corner. You can "Add a new account" for Foursquare, as well as Ping.fm, if you prefer, and the service will connect, using OAuth, to ensure it's actually you.


Once completed, Foursquare can be displayed as a single column in your Seesmic Web.

With Foursquare having great visibility, integration of the service into products like Seesmic seems like a foregone conclusion - and I have already talked to other Twitter clients who are going to do the same shortly, but Seesmic Web looks like it was first to the game. If Foursquare is important to you, set your location to Seesmic Web and become mayor of your Web browser.