OnLive

First teased at CES 2012, Vizio's Google TV plans are now moving forward with the launch of the Co-Star Stream Player.

While we're still waiting for Google TV to fulfill its promise, the Co-Star makes the most of the platform's current capabilities by combining live TV and streaming services. Along with wired and wireless Internet connections for Web surfing using Google Chrome with Adobe Flash Player and HTML 5 support, apps, and streaming video and music services, the player can be connected to a cable or satellite TV box.… Read more

If you need to create or edit the occasional Word doc, Excel sheet, or PowerPoint presentation on your iPad, OnLive Desktop is a app that provides a virtual Windows 7 PC. The app is free, and it does not require any previous Microsoft purchases or licenses to use Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. With each free account comes 2GB of storage on OnLive's servers.

OnLive just released OnLive Desktop Plus, which adds Internet Explorer to the mix, along with priority access when tunneling into OnLive Desktop. The free account delivers access "as available," and I was occasionally denied access before I upgraded to the Plus account.… Read more

OnLive Desktop is essentially a virtual Windows 7 desktop with access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Reader. It's available for the Apple iPad and select Android tablets in Standard and Plus versions, with a Pro version coming later. We'll go over the free, OnLive Desktop Standard for Android tablets in this tutorial.

To get started with OnLive Desktop for Android tablets, you'll first need to create an account from OnLive's Web site. Unfortunately, you can't just create an account from within the app.

After installing the app from the Android Market, log in to … Read more

OnLive's Desktop Plus service turns your tablet into a virtual Windows 7 PC. The app-based service rolled out to iPad customers last week, and today made the jump to Android tablets.

The Desktop Plus app is a free download, though the service costs $4.99 per month. For the price, you get a full Windows 7 desktop hosted remotely on OnLive's servers and connected to the Web over a Gigabit Ethernet connection. On top of that, OnLive provides 2GB of cloud storage, which can be used to back up any documents created on the virtualized Windows 7 computer. … Read more

During CES 2012, the surprise appearance of OnLive Desktop was an intriguing idea for Windows lovers: rent a Windows 7 computer remotely and stream the whole experience to your iPad.

Helping the cause for the first iteration of OnLive Desktop was its price: free. That version had only 2GB of cloud storage, and the Windows 7 environment ran only a suite of Microsoft Office applications (sans Outlook), but for the cloud-curious and those who lack a word processor for their iPad, OnLive's streaming solution is a clever way to explore a mobile office.

OnLive was slated to release a Pro version with more dedicated servers, 50GB of storage, and access to an assortment of other applications, including a Flash-enabled browser, for $9.99 a month; that's hardly inexpensive, and likely to appeal largely to business executives with expense accounts. Today's launch of OnLive Desktop Plus is a surprise half-step: for $4.99 a month, users get the same 2GB of storage, but added access to that long-promised Flash browser; Microsoft Internet Explorer is included; and users also get Adobe PDF compatibility, and Dropbox support. … Read more

Is Microsoft cooking up a version of Office for the iPad? News site The Daily says yes, Microsoft doesn't exactly say no but claims that The Daily's story is inaccurate.

Yesterday, The Daily's Matt Hickey reported that he had seen a working prototype of Office on the iPad and that sources indicated the app would soon be sent to Apple for approval.

Microsoft quickly went into denial mode, saying The Daily's story was "based on inaccurate rumors and speculation" and that the photo displayed by The Daily is "not a real picture of … Read more

Verizon goes all in for 4G, the first Android watch is pleasing on the eyes, and Google TV adds cloud gaming from OnLive.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded, from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

LAS VEGAS--Google TV looked like it might be on the ropes after the disappointing Honeycomb update to Android, but it's making its presence felt at CES 2012.

Vizio announced two Google TV products here at the Consumer Electronics Show: the VAP430 set-top box and the VBR430 Blu-ray. The VAP430 is one of the smallest Google TV devices available so far, looking more like a jumbo Roku box than the larger design of the Logitech Revue.

The remote included with the VAP430 will be slightly different from some of the Google TV remotes available with other products, in that apparently it will also fire IR commands to control other devices, rather than IR using blasters. There are also dedicated buttons on the remote for Amazon Instant, Netflix, and Vudu, which should be helpful for getting around Google TV's somewhat clunky interface.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Finally, a unique and worthwhile "app" comes to Google TV.

Google announced today that its much-maligned connected TV platform would support the OnLive gaming service.

OnLive's "cloud" gaming allows users to play a variety of console-quality titles on devices like PCs, tablets, and now select Google TV hardware like TVs, streaming boxes, and Blu-ray players, without having to use an actual game console.… Read more