Interesting Topics

Corning Willow Glass is flexible, bendable, could define the future of displays

If you don’t think that glass can bend like shown in the image below, you’re wrong. Corning has just proved this with its new Willow Glass, a type of glass made using 100-micron technology.

This type of glass could be used for LCD and OLED displays, and the biggest advantage it brings is reduced weight and thickness of the actual device. Now, what’s also remarkable is that even at the razor thin 100-microns, the Willow Glass still retains the toughness and resistance to scratches of the familiar Gorilla Glass.

The immediate use will be in smartphones, but the glass could end up in all sorts of different products - solar cells and lighting units. There’s a video which is just as beautiful as the product itself, showing how Corning rolls Gorilla Glass. It’s all below, along with the full press release.

Chrome OS to Merge with Android  

Google has made known that the next phase of the Chrome OS is to gradually merge it with the Android OS instead of Chrome OS based tablets. Both Google’s Chrome OS and Android are Google products and as such why shouldn’t they combine them into one super mobile/desktop OS.
While the Chrome OS will still be around as a desktop system it will be seamlessly integrated with Android. The result will be the same idea behind Apple’s Mac OSX and their mobile OS and its integration between the two. The idea behind the new system is to allow them to coexist with different sets of expectations but tie together in a way that they are closely related.

The new steps for Chrome should allow Android apps to run within the OS along with the web apps already supported. Not only would this open the doors for Google Apps to run on the desktop Google OS but also sync with your mobile devices without syncing being app specific. We will ultimately have to wait and see where the Chrome OS is taken over the next several months and hope for the same ease of use as always.

  Google acquires Meebo to integrate it with Google+

Web chat service provider Meebo has been acquired by Google. The terms of the deal have not been announced but it was earlier rumored to be valued by Google for $100 million. Meebo had recently launched Meebo bar that enabled site owners to not only share more of their content and engage with users but also deliver ads.

Meebo announced the acquisition on its blog.
We are happy to announce that Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google! For more than seven years we’ve been helping publishers find deeper relationships with their users and to make their sites more social and engaging. Together with Google, we’re super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike.
Google is looking at integrating Meebo’s team with its own Google+ team, where its experience could either be used to spread Google+ to non-Google sites beyond the +1 button or to monetize with its expertise to deliver ads along with social experiences or both. Google gave the following statement to TNW confirming Meebo’s integration with Google+.
We are always looking for better ways to help users share content and connect with others across the web, just as they do in real life. With the Meebo team’s expertise in social publisher tools, we believe they will be a great fit with the Google+ team. We look forward to closing the transaction and working with the Meebo team to create more ways for users to engage online.