Categories
Technology

Google Announces Local featuring Zagat reviews, Samsung Chromebooks

Looking for local eateries? Well, here in Rochester, we can always rely on RocWiki.org for the most relevant reviews, but it isn’t always like that everywhere. Google has dabbled in the local search results thing for many years – Froogle used to allow you to shop locally, though they discontinued that service a while ago; Google search results on Android and mobile web have been tailored to local results for the past few years.

Now Google is bringing the power of social to the table by creating Google+ Local. And apparently, they’ve teamed up with the Zagat folks to provide reviews. The new “Local” tab is basically just a search engine for now, pre-filled with local restaurants, stores and other attractions based on your current location. Hard to imagine what Zagat brings to the table in this era of trusted recommendations and social networking, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Samsung Chromebooks

You may be wondering: didn’t Google just buy Motorola? Yes, they did. So why is Samsung building Chromebooks? Good question. And even better: why is the new Chromebook build on Intel processors?

Don’t know. But the Chromebook is not built around hardware at all: the paradigm seems to be a more robust version of the mobile application world we’re slowly moving towards anyway. Rather than installing apps, however, the Chromebook relies on cloud services such as – da dum!!! – Google Drive to manage your software and content.

Price is pretty reasonable for this small form factor laptops – the most powerful of which comes in at $379 on NewEgg. Though I don’t suppose there’s much reason to want more hard drive space on a computer built to not use the hard drive?