Google Chrome descends from the Mother Ship: 10 reasons to try this browser

Are you a geek? Start with this comic book explanation of Google Chrome. (Seen the comic? Try this parody of it. Or this one.) Looking for a slightly longer review?

Most of us already have several programs that browse the web (browsers). Why download another browser?

• Click any of the links in the list below for more information. 
• Tips for using Google Chrome.
• Keep abreast of updates to Chrome.
  

If you use more than one browser, I recommend using Google Chrome. I have set my Gmail notifier to show me email in chrome, for example.

Ten Reasons

Here are the reasons, in order of importance, I think you should consider downloading and trying Google Chrome:

1. More secure by design. Very important!
   
2. Better protection from crashes by design;
   
3. Makes your computer run faster (uses less memory);
4. Runs advanced web pages very fast: Test results. (okay, soon Firefox will too, but Chrome is poised to get very fast);
   
5. The best pop-up blocking ;
   
6. Fast browsing (page loading, memory leak protection);
7. Better search features (such as automating Open Search sites);
8. Useful features not found on other browsers, although you can enable a lot of similar features using Firefox add-ons;
9. It's open source;
10. It's easier for developers to create for (incorporates Google Gears).
    

However, I'm going to wait until they add a few more features (and it's been tested a little longer--today is day 1) before installing this for my mother. Here's another review: 7 reasons for, 7 reasons against.

How much faster is it TODAY?

Click the image to enlarge and add IE test results

Does Google Chrome have a security problem ?

Note that you actually have to have Internet Explorer installed for this to work, although in principle it could take advantage of other programs.

So here's the story: Currently, there are places all over the internet that offer harmful files for you to download. Google does a better job than any other company at identifying which web sites have harmful files, and has integrated this nicely into Chrome: they warn you about these places before you can browse to their pages.

So, to get a harmful file onto your computer, and get it cause harm, you have to:

1. Click a link to reach a page with a link click that will download a file;
2. Have your browser fail to warn you that the page has harmful files on it;
   
3. Click the link on that page to open a box asking you to download the file;
   
4. Click "Save" in the box that pops up, authorizing Windows to save that file;
5. Have your anti-virus program fail to block the program from downloading;
   
6. Find that file on your computer and try to run it;
7. Have your anti-virus program fail to stop the program from running.

If you make it through all seven of these steps, it doesn't matter what your browser is. These steps have nothing to do with Google Chrome.

So, how does the "Carpet Bombing" problem with Google's Chrome make these steps worse? In step #3 above, the download box opens automatically, but only if it's a particular type of file (java JAR). Everything else is the same. That's all!

How bad is this, really?

This problem has been known about for awhile now, and was left unfixed by Apple in their Safari browser for several weeks. Microsoft reports that there is no known example of anyone being affected by this (read their advisory about it).

If you manage to find and click on harmful links without realizing and save harmful stuff, and run it on your computer, harmful things can happen. Having the download box open automatically when you reach a page seems as likely to RAISE suspicion as to trick you into clicking "Save."

Furthermore, if you try to run the file from within Google Chrome, Windows Explorer will show a warning (that Google Chrome passed to it) that this file was downloaded from the Internet. (If you close Chrome and browse to it, Windows Explorer will run it without warning).

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Before there was Photoshop, before there was photography, there was artistry

 

Alastair Heseltine

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The difference between your life and a cartoon?

Who hasn't seen these "fatal" accidents befall one of their favorite cartoon characters?

1. He falls out out of plane, but lands in a giant haystack and walks away with only minor injuries.
   
2. A giant oncoming truck forces him to drive his car off a cliff, but he somehow falls out of the car, catches safely on a convenient tree branch, and watches the car explode in flames 300 feet below.
3. His train derails at high speed and plunges into an icy river, and he's found with his arm in a funny position, but only scrapes and bruises otherwise.
4. A flame thrower blasts him in the face at short range, but he only loses some hair and ends up covered in soot. Alternatively, his car is engulfed in flames, and he walks away unharmed.
5. He's hit by a bus, but suffers only minor injuries.
   
6. Of course, after suffering through a bunch of these, the happy ending has the character being given exactly one million dollars.

What do these six cartoon events have in common?

Even in a movie (like "Unbreakable") it's too unbelievable to see stuff like this happening to a real person, right? Hold on ...

The answer is they actually happened in real life, and although 37 people died in the various accidents, at least one person did survive each time.

But, most amazing of all ...

They didn't just happen, they all happened to the SAME man: Frane Selak, a Croatian music teacher (what would a cartoon be without music?). And they happened exactly as described above.

Frane (pictured above at left) was born in 1929, and in January, 1962, his "luck" changed for the first time. He was riding a train (#3 below).

Real life events more amazing than any movie

Here's his amazing story, exactly following the cartoon events listed above:

1. FELL OUT OF A PLANE: How? A DOOR blew out on a plane flying from Zagreb to Rijeka in 1963. While it was flying. At high speed. High above the earth. Etc., etc., etc. Twenty people were sucked out to a certain death, because, c'mon, how's he gonna survive that?
   Oh wait. That's exactly what happened. Only 19 people died, because, I kid you not, #20 was Frane, and he landed in a giant haystack and walked away.
   
   
2. DROVE OFF A CLIFF: What can I say? The truck, the cliff, caught in the tree, the car exploding 300 feet below, all true. That's exactly what happened to him in 1996.
   
   
3. TRAIN PLUNGED INTO RIVER: Yup, in 1962 nineteen people faced likely death when their moving train derailed and plunged into an icy river, but only eighteen died, because when they found #19, it was Frane. His arm was broken, but he had just a few scrapes and bruises otherwise.
   
   
4. FLAMETHROWER IN FACE: As amazing as the others are, I know you've been asking, c'mon, a flamethrower? Okay, this was a car fire forced through air vents, but if that happened in YOUR face, I think you'd agree that "flamethrower" is a pretty good description. Happened to Frane in 1973. He lost most of his hair but had no other injuries.
   
   ENGULFED IN FLAMES: Of course, by this point in his life, flames in a car weren't that big a deal for Frane. Three years earlier his car was engulfed in flames from a faulty fuel pump. He escaped, and walked away unharmed.
   
   
5. HIT BY A BUS: Yup, in 1995 he was hit by a city bus and suffered only minor injuries
   
   
6. AN EVEN MILLION: In 2003, Frane won EXACTLY $1,000,000 dollars in the Croatian lottery. Almost like a heavenly award at that point!
   

World's luckiest man? Or unluckiest?

Considering what he's been through, surviving mortal terror without a heart attack is probably is among his greatest achievements.

"I know God was watching me over all these years," Frane said, and has reputedly refused to fly to Australia to air on a Doritos commercial, saying he "didn't want to test his luck."

Finally, for the big question: Good luck, or bad? We'll give Frane the final word. "I prefer to be called the world's luckiest man," he said, admitting that some people call him "The World's Unluckiest Man."

So, how's YOUR luck?

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Is a new generation of smart objects about to change our lives?

An MTI Micro Mobion fuel-cell recently worked for 2,700 hours of continuous use in a cell phone. (Press release.)  



While amazing, what really startles me is how much this could change our world. This was a very small, lightweight battery. Combined with technologies like Skyhook, a technology that can fit on a mere camera memory card and yet can pinpoint your location without GPS in 70% of populated areas in the U.S. and Canada (and 50% of Europe), our world---and privacy---is changing rapidly.



For example, the just-released iPhone pinpoints your location in three (!) ways: by GPS, and by triangulating from both Wi-Fi hot spots (Skyhook) and cellphone tower proximity (Google system). It really strikes me how there has been a very small technology barrier--mostly having to do with cost---that has kept a lot of new "smart devices" from invading our lives. As new products come faster and faster to market (particularly in Japan) it seems there is very little keeping smart objects in products and materials from dramatically changing our lives.  



How could smart objects change our world?



How about sensors built throughout bridges, transmitting data about stress, aging and damage? Locks could transmit their state. Know the status of all doors at your house, business, storage unit, vacation cabin, etc. What if you could call your key ring (or purse, bicycle, pet collar, etc.) and have it beep, flash a light, send a GPS coordinate and a low-res 180 degree photo from it's current location? Any valuable object of sufficient size could come pre-built with an embedded device for tracking.



Kiss your privacy goodbye?



The forces that want to track our every movement have several technology barriers to doing so. The biggest one is not being able to use inexpensive devices with simple power requirements. Add wireless, GPS and RFIDs to self-powered smart objects and it's game-changing. Low power sensors and displays could last for decades with this kind of technology, all without being connected to any kind of power. Security cameras could be in a lot more places. You could embed RFIDs into building components and have workers wear transmitters at work (or vice-versa) to quickly find workers on large projects.  



Instantly more popular devices



Things like wearable computers, wireless photo frames, battery-operated lights (like stick-up closet lights) and electric screwdrivers just got a lot more popular. Toy designers can now look forward to what they can create with a lot more action to them now that worrying about frequent charging or battery changes can be a thing of the past. But add a little solar power boosting and a wireless data connection and it's mind-boggling what is possible (not to mention GPS, RFIDs, motion sensing, etc.) Smart objects could be everywhere and anywhere.  



Remote controls



This means more things could be operated with a remote control. Your office chair could work like the electric seat adjustments in a luxury car, with a touch control under the armrest operating a battery pack under the chair. You could have stick lights under railings that glow to illuminate the stairs for safety, recharging via solar when bright, glowing only when needed.  



Combine with RFIDs, GPS and motion sensors



For things that move, put a motion sensor and GPS on them and transmit via the mobile phone network or local wireless to a computer interpreting their data. The problem with RFIDs is that something has to generate power to read their data. Now, anything can generate power so you can have more data reading stations, or make them mobile.



Instead of putting an RFID chip on a pet collar, you could put the reader in the collar, and put the chips throughout the home. Now the pet can transmit their location by having a computer triagulate to RFIDs they are near. Will computers one day track the 3D travels of your pets throughout the house to analyze if their health has changed?



While this is all just top-of-my-head speculation, long-life portable power DOES have huge implications for the world we live in.

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Is play much more important than we realized?

One of my favorite wildlife stories is the wild (and said to be very hungry ) 1200-pound polar bear that came to play--every night for a week--with tethered sled dogs. The director of the national institute for play gives a great presentation on the event.


Great photos, inspiring moments

German photographer and frequent National Geographic contributor Norbert Rosing took these photos, and Stuart Brown on Speaking of Faith describes the play that happened in this inspiring video. Brown is a psychiatrist who specializes in the study of the evolution of human and animal play, and the founder of the National Institute for Play.

What's so great about play?

Brown points out (Why Didn't the Wild Polar Bear eat the Husky?) that if you've ever thrown a Frisbee with a dog, you knows playfulness is inter-species. Play can be a universal kind of training and language of trust. Knowing you are safe with another is a trust formed over time by engaging in regular play. Trust brings about intimacy, cooperation, creativity, successful work, and more.

Play is also a great way to connect when there is an age difference. In my work with kids and youth volunteers through New Reality Delivery, Improv play has shown itself as a great way of connecting and communicating as equals.

Video (from a different situation) of this kind of playing:

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All-Time Gravity-Defying Great Original Videos: Dance and Movement!

Videos that always give me a lift -- hope they do the same for you! Also see my collection of greatest uplifting music videos.

Includes the "Greatest dance number ever filmed," the "Best video of all time," one dancer becoming many dancers, many dancers becoming one dancer, the smallest, the legends, as well as the great, the merely famous, the funny and the viral ... not to mention parkour, acrobatics, and amazing fight choreographies!

Enjoy!

The Nicholas Brothers
Don't miss the second half! Landing in splits from bigger and bigger leaps .. incredible! (And a lolpic version of brothers dancing--couldn't resist!)

Cab Calloway, "Stormy Weather" (movie)
"Greatest dance number ever filmed." - Fred Astaire

Related famous tap dance:

• Fred Astaire: Highlights Bio; Dancing on the ceiling (short; full; improved sound); with Eleanor Powell/Begin the Beguine
• Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis and Legends of Tap
• Savion Glover: Solo; as a young kid

Christopher Walken
Drawing on his early dance and musical theater training Walken won awards for this unique approach to dance (and flight!) he created shortly before his 60th birthday.

Fatboy Slim, "Weapon Of Choice"
2002's "Best video of all time," six MTV awards

Related famous dance and videos:

• John Travolta: Saturday Night Fever; Pulp Fiction
  
• Michael Jackson: Billie Jean, Dangerous
• Billy Ray Cyrus, Achy Breaky Heart: Music video; dance popularity
  

Bboy Junior (aka Buana)
(France) A frequent European competition winner, his gravity-defying acrobatic style is based on his tremendous strength. Watch from 1:11 how long it takes before his feet touch the ground again!

Red Bull BC One Competition, 2004
One-on-one Breakdance

Related amazing movement:

• Parkour
• Acrobatics/Trickers
• Ben Dova: The Drunk Daredevil (no net, no camera tricks: don't faint!)
  
  
  

David Elsewhere (Bernal)
Digitally plays all dancers in his commercials:
iPod; Singing in the Rain; Heineken; Music video: Kinky, "Sister Twisted"

Mikhail Baryshnikov: Giselle; Don Quixote

Acrobat and Circus Artists:

• Chinese Ballet Circus: Swan Lake
• Dima Shine, one-man show: Cirque de Demain
• Dralion: Duo Flying Trapeze
• Mouvance: Tango Trapeze
• Cirque du Soleil: The Varekai
• Related Acrobat Performances: Beijing Acrobatic Troupe; chinese Duo

Deaf Child Dancers: Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva
(China) Performing the amazing Kwan-yin (Buddhist goddess of mercy) in sync by following two women instructing them in sign language—because they can't hear the music! About the Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe

Fight Choreographies:

• The Matrix: Vampire Chateau; Agent Smith Reloaded; Neo v Morpheus; Lobby Scene; Revolutions Final Fight (actual scenes, not remixes)
  
• Choreographed Fight Competitions: 10th All China Games; winner

Funny Dancers:

• Judson Laipply, The Evolution of Dance
• Little Superstar
• Weird Al Yankovic: White and Nerdy; I'm Fat
  
• Napoleon Dynamite Dance Scene

Viral Dance and Movement Stars:

• Soulja Boy (and the one by the white kids)
• 1500 Inmates perform Michael Jackson's Thriller
• OK Go, Here It Goes Again (treadmill choreography)
  
• Star Wars Kid: Matrix; Drunken Jedi
  
• Matrix Ping-pong
• Steven Colbert Green Screen Highlights

And all this time, you haven't been Rick Rolled ... yet!

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Try reverse Déjà Vu for inspiration

What's Reverse Déjà Vu for inspiration? Do something uplifting you've NEVER done before! I'm betting NO ONE has seen ALL of the videos below before. If you have leave a comment with something new for the next visitor. There are some new variations of well-known ones here, but NO WAY have you seen all of these!

New inputs = new inspiration

Why did I put these together? It's important to seek out things to be motivated by, not to just stick to the same inputs, day in and day out. To find new things to lift yourself up, forget all the time-wasters and get energized or just relax deeper than ever before. To remember what you want most out of life, and feel that it can happen.

Sometimes when something inspires you, it feels like remembering something that you've forgotten. Peaceful music and imagery is what often does it for me, that and really cool, gravity or body-defying dance! Here's one of my favorites nature videos to start things off:

Remember the best things you want from life

I hope you find something here that helps you feel and remember the best side of yourself, and remember the best things you want out of life. Hopefully there will be something here you love but have never seen or heard before. (Yeah, I've also got puns, cats, photoshopped and large desktop pics*sigh*)

Links in most cases take you to other popular videos by the same artist, or style of video. All photos below are by me.)

Enjoy!

Oh, and a suggestion: Watch and listen to these here but then watch your favorites in full screen. (How? Click on the YouTube logo in the lower right corner to go the video's main page, and then click on the tiny icon in the lower right to open the video in full screen. Viewing controls at the bottom of your screen, press the Esc key on your keyboard to exit full screen mode.)

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet." -Rumi

Okay, this is a viral video ad (Schweppes Burst), but it's great! Slow motion of water balloons bursting, with music. Won me over. Wait for the one that hits the guy in the face

Davy Spillane plays a lament on the Uilleann pipes to Cuchulain composed by Bill Whelan for Riverdance. (Once you've heard this sound, you'll never need to look up the meaning of "lament.")

Ray Lynch, "Celestial Soda Pop" (comments?)

Flowing Sand Art will blow you away. Don't skip this one if you've never seen this kind of artist perform before (comments?) 

Kitaro, "Silk Road." For fans, here's a version of Symphony of the forest (comments?)

Glass Harp on wine glasses (comments?) 

Enya, Watermark Orinoco Flow and May it be are great too! (comments?)

Laughing Baby What a great audience! Thank you, I'm here all week! (comments?)

Saraswa, "Trees" (comments?)

Nessun Dorm by the Three Tenors. You really owe it yourself to hear how it develops--listen to the whole thing and it will bring tears to your eyes. Made popular recently by Paul Potts version (comments?)

Okay, this is straight-up comedy: Tripod, "Make You Happy Tonight." At 1:07 the real meaning of this song comes out. "Turn the lights down low .. it helps me feel like I'm in a spaceship" (comments?)

Tchaikowsky, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Glass Armonica (comments?)

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Easy piano improvisation for anyone

I'm sure you heard this one before! But this is different from anything else I've seen. Really!! I can teach you (free) to play in under five minutes, and you'll be learning to improvise, read music and understand music theory at the same time. And you can keep playing, WITHOUT FURTHER LESSONS, and have a great time! It's incredible, and I wouldn't have believed it if I, a non-piano player hadn't stumbled into it myself. I play all the time now, and have a great time!

Here's an example of me just playing around after I had been improvising for a few weeks: Night Sky Over Water. You can easily do as well! It will sound a lot better than you can imagine, but remember, I've taught this method to a four-year-old successfully! (On this recording, I was just playing around and hit the "Record" button on my electric piano. Frustratingly, everytime I press "Record" I play worse!)

If you want to get an idea of why it's easy to improvise melodies (harmonies are even easier), try this cool music composition tool, or this free online music tool (press "C" on your keyboard once it loads): click on different dots to create melodies. And if you really want to play around with easy music online, don't miss the barbershop quartet site. (Hint: click on the horses.)

I used to buy or try to learn more about all the "Easy Piano" methods out there. None of it worked for me. The enjoyment wasn't there. I even tried (gasp!) practicing. But since I don't know how to play the piano or read music, "practice" wasn't too successful. I learned to play three pieces by rote with a LOT of effort. Yes, I can hear you saying it: take lessons! But somehow I knew there was something else for me.

I've taught this to kids UNDER the age of five (and over the age of seventy) with great success. And I'll teach it to you for free! I want to get some more experience with how different people learn, and this is such a great addition to anyone's life I love sharing it with people.

Click the big blue Call Me button down to the right (it won't show me your number so your privacy is safe, you can read about the Call Me button here) and let's set something up! If you want to wait for some written instruction with tips and tools, I'll be putting it up at Really Easy Piano.

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Stand-up comedy by Sarah Jones-Larson! No one is safe!!

After watching our good friend Tina Nagy appear on Conan O'Brien a few nights ago, Sarah started putting a "full steam ahead" effort into doing stand-up comedy.

Her first performance of stand-up comedy was this weekend, and she was terrific! I predict great things to come!! Take a look:

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Wireless music streaming on the ultra-cheap

Picked up a Logitech Wireless DJ system. Terrific reviews, and now that it is out of the main stores (Logitech has moved on to different versions of the same technology), great price. Instead of $250 original list price, now well under $100 at eBay and many internet retailers.

The remote works great for browsing internet radio and all music on our PC. (Give the remote a few minutes to update changes you make to your music player before you see them on the LCD display).

But pick up a wireless speaker system and you can stream music to multiple rooms simultaneously. I like Innovation Lab's Blue Tango Rock BT Wireless Audio System, which can be had for as low as $20 before shipping (computer Geeks unadvertised sale). If you had bought Logitech's solution for multiple rooms at list, it would have cost $500! Combining Logitech and IL's Blue Tango to knock $400 off that is pretty nice.

Set up the Blue Tango system on the rooms list of the Logitech remote and you can turn music on or off in any room you set sound up in. Get multiple Blue Tango systems for multiple rooms.

Note that Blue Tango connects to any existing stereo system, but also comes with speakers. I'm streaming the same internet radio in the study (under computer control) and the living room (Logitech control) and the bedroom (computer control with Blue Tango). Amazing to have so much wireless music control for only around $100 (before shipping)

(Yes, also cool is just use the Blue Tango alone. You don't get a remote so have to control everything from the PC, but .. only $20!)

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Will multi-touch change computing?

While the first sales of this system have been to the military, what might this mean for the internet?

I think the number of educational flash-using sites/blogs will skyrocket .. eventually. Flash is great for educational "videos," and blogging has pushed the amount of educational material up tremendously on the web. But flash is too complicated to learn (not to mention expensive) for most people. Even though there are less expensive packages that create flash, alas, they are still too complicated for most people.

If Apple (who else?) one day includes this kind of on-screen intuitive interface, people will start using it to create educational content very widely. (Update: Of course, they have now included it on the iPhone). You could eventually see a kind of YouTube for flash, as average people will be able to create flash content as easy as creating video.

Article, New Video; Original site.

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Freeze reality into slow motion right before your eyes

The time fountain LED experiment is a stroboscopic light experiment that makes the water drops seem to freeze in the air or move in slow motion. You can actually touch them while they are frozen in mid-air .. watch at 0:53 into the video---don't miss this part!

Found here, but see the real thing here.

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Not a camera trick: Real world speed that is INCREDIBLE!!

Know those ads for high speed internet where they rub some magical substance on their hands and do everything at hyper speed? Here's someone who can actually move that fast in the real world ... and set a world record at the same time, of course. Incredible!! It's hard to imagine a robot in a sci-fi movie being able to do this much faster---This is Emily Fox setting her world record cup stacking time of 7.43 seconds. (Provided by www.speedstacks.com)

Tag it

What are all these icons?

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