Developer Francois Beaufort, the guy who first pointed out that Chrome would be receiving Google Now-like notifications, posted up the screenshot you are seeing above to his G+ account, today. In the shot, we are seeing at least two things that have grabbed our attention – rich notifications in Chrome OS and an icon that looks a lot like one that would be for a messenger client of sorts. 

Just recently, Chromium, which is an open source developer-friendly web browser from Google, was updated for Windows. Inside the update is a brand new notification center that brings Google Now-like cards and results right to your desktop. Above is a snapshot of what the notifications look like and behind that is apparently code for users to even create their own cards. 

Typically when a new Android statue arrives on Google’s campus, it’s coupled with an official announcement of the new version of Android. We’ve seen the Jelly Bean statue as it arrives, the Ice Cream Sandwich, Honeycomb, Gingerbread, and Froyo statues too, all around the time that the Android team drops new code on us. Today’s statue included no such party, though the Android community manager that posted it sure teased the hell out of us. 

If tinkering in Chrome is something that warms your pants, then be sure to install the latest version of Chrome Beta for Android, as it added support for “chrome://flags” and its experimental features. In this section, you’ll see a number of items listed, some of which work in Android, others that are desktop specific. Things like disabling deferred 2D canvas, adding an FPS counter, and WebGL are some of your choices.

To access this new section, simply type in “chrome://flags” in the address bar of Chrome Beta.

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Via:  Chrome Releases

Chrome Beta on Android received its third update in under a week, today. As usual, it contains a list of fixes and another list of bugs. We aren’t seeing any new features, so be sure to update to at least get on a more stable build. 

After hitting the Google Play store last week with a laundry list of bugs, we were eagerly anticipating the first update to Chrome Beta on Android. That update is now live and certainly fixes a bunch of bugs. As with any beta, though, it introduces another list of issues.

Jump through to see the entire list of fixes and new issues. Hit up the direct play link to install the beta. 

Google Chrome came out of “beta” back in June, as it had become a stable enough product. But since Google is continuing to create new features for it, they still need a platform to be able to test, similarly to what they do with Chrome for desktops. So today, they introduced Chrome Beta, again, as a way to get new features in your hands and to fix issues much faster.

In the release notes, they mention that this build brings a “slew of updates and improvements” over the stable channel build that you are already running, however, they didn’t provide any specifics. They did go ahead and tell you what’s broken, though, more than likely to keep down the complaints. 

So, you got a fancy new Android phone for the holidays! Congratulations! Now that you’re all set up, the only thing left to do is find the best apps and start having some fun. Google Play offers thousands of different applications and games to choose from, so without getting lost looking through countless pages of apps, allow us to drop some knowledge on you.

These are our top 10 recommendations to get you started with Android.