Over the past two months we have been rolling out updates for Chromemote, and an updates to the logo and website. We felt it was time to officially announce the recent changes. Chromemote now has a new logo and a matching website. Thanks to the generous support of graphic designer Alex Smith (@DesignAlexSmith) for volunteering to make the logo and website.

With the new website we have added the ability to install Chromemote directly from Chromemote.com. Also we added a frequently asked questions section where we will continually be updating it with answers to the most common questions.

We have also made several updates to Chromemote itself. First the major change that has been made is with the backend Google TV communication and pairing pairing session. Initially Chromemote had to re-establish a connection every single time the pop-up Chromemote remote was opened.

Now we have enabled Chromemote to sustain a connection to a paired Google TV in the background for as long as Chrome is running. This greatly improves connectivity and reduces the pain of having to reconnect every time. Running the communication plugin in the background has enabled the possibility for several new features.

Many users requested the ability to pin the Chromemote pop-up remote to always stay open, so we made it happen by adding a feature that allows Chromemote to open in a full Chrome pinned tab.

Also now that Chromemote is connected even when the UI is not active, we have been able to make it so much easier to Fling web content from your computer to your Google TV by adding context menus. Right click on web pages, links, images, and even selected text within Chrome to access the new context menu options included with Chromemote. After right clicking a web link, you can simple click Fling to Google TV to have it instantly load up on your TV.

We went ahead and included the settings UI to give users a glimpse of what is to come. These features are currently under development and will be coming in future updates.

Several weeks ago all Mac OSX users that updated Chrome to version 22, experienced issues with Chromemote. This was due to changes within Chrome that basically broke the communication plugin used by Chromemote to pair and communicate with Google TV devices.

Thankfully with the support of Googler, Dave Hawkey and several emails we were able to solve the problem with Google’s GTV Chrome plugin. We owe Mr. Hawkey big time! If you love Chromemote, then send him your love. Thanks again Dave, you have made many Google TV users very happy!!

In the process of solving this issue, it actually solved a larger issue that many users were having. Chromemote is now compatible with more than just the stable version. It now is working with the beta, developer, and canary builds as well. Also now working correctly with builds of Chromium.

It was also discovered that the plugin for Linux is only compatible with Ubuntu 12. I am working with Mr. Hawkey to broaden Linux support to more distros and versions of Linux OS’s. Chromemote currently supports Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux (Ubuntu 12). Unfortunately ChromeOS is still not compatible with the plugin used by Chromemote to communicate with Google TVs.

Chromemote uses a specially built NPAPI plugin and these sort of plugins are not supported by ChromeOS. We are actively working on an alternative solution that will allow ChromeOS. We are Chromebook users ourselves so we believe this is a really important feature to come in future updates.

Within the last week we have made drastic updates to some of the inner programming of Chromemote, in order to insure that we will be able to continue to upload Chromemote updates to the Chrome Web Store.

Google is phasing out older Google Chrome extensions that have not been upgraded to the stricter manifest 2 specifications, so we updated and replaced everything in the guts of Chromemote that is being phased out. This has made Chromemote even more secure and will keep Chromemote from being removed from the Chrome Web Store as these older extensions are phased out by Google.

Lastly we would like to say THANK YOU! to all of our Chromemote donors and supporters! Everybody that has reached out, made donations, and volunteered time and energy have made this all possible and give use the fuel to keep moving forward with our dreams. It has been a long journey through the process to launch our startup and it wouldn’t be possible without the tremendous support and love from the fans.