In fact, I am posting from it now.

I was skeptical, and I wasn’t alone in that feeling, but I only had one day to be skeptical because they only announced this thing yesterday!  (Kudos for keeping it under wraps).

Google Chrome is a web browser built on WebKit, which powers other well known browsers such as Apple’s safari and KDE’s Konqueror.  Google included a cute online comic book to explain the technology here.  The gist being that the web browser uses entirely separate processes to load each separate tab.  This goes beyond simple multi-threading, and gets into OS territory.  They want to do this to eliminate browser hangups from ultiple tasks needing to use the same process.  While this can and will usitilize more memory and processor power, it also allows one to regulate it easier, especially memory-wise.  Plug-ins (when they appear) will also use separate processes.

The comic gets into computer science territory when they explain how they built their V8 from Webkit.  It streamlines object manipulization and pointer calls and other things you can read about there.

I’m impressed.  First off at the ease of slipping into it right from Firefox.  It handles the same keyboard commands I’m used to, and tabs behave much the same.  Two things it does not have that firefox has:

• Memory munching.  Yes, it uses a spearate process and memory space for each tab, but these are confined spaces, unlike Firefox which could eat all my memory if I let it.
• Addons. none. Zilch.  Yeah, it’s a beta, but man I need my add-ons.

The lack of add-ons will make me only piddle with Chrome when I feel like, not use it for a main browser.  For one, I have many that are hard to live without.  And two, Firefox is damn snappy without any add-ons, too, so it’s unfair to compare Chrome until it’s got the same capablities as a fully-loaded Firefox browser.

But the technology is impressive, and obviously since everything is open source, we are going to have a flood of add-ons coming very soon.

Google has changed their news a little, by allowing participants in a story, or those referenced or related to it, to post comments in reference to it.

Here’s the first example I saw.

I’m not sure how they verify people’s identities, but this is a neat idea… they are opening news up to a form of public forum.

• How to make ANIMATED Sprays » for source games (Half-Life Team Fortress 2, etc)
• Ghostbusters 3… the game » The whole team of Ghostbusters actors will be reprising their roles in a Ghostbusters game by Vivendi/Sony to be released in 2008 on consoles and PC.
• Portal Papercraft »
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• Chowhound » food forums
• Black Friday Ads - The Official Black Friday 2007 Website »
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• Newsvine - Leonardo Painting Has Coded ‘Soundtrack’ » An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci’s "Last Supper"
• Definition Changing for People’s Privacy »
• Open Handset Alliance » Google and other partners strive to create an open source cellphone platform.

• BeetlesMod CSSource Admin Plugin »
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People have gone after Google in every way imaginable. Since the big G cornered the search engine market, “competitors” have been trying to build a better mousetrap to beat them. Many theorized Google killers would be the likes of Ask.com with natural language entries or about.com with added content and insight to searches. But things boiled down to simply fighting over who would be #2.

ChaCha.com is going at it from another angle. To put it bluntly: people search for you. The concept is: you can plug your keywords into the engine, but the results that appear are ones that actual people searched for and chose. The searchers are called “Guides”. If the keyword combo entered doesn’t produce any results, that means it hasn’t been searched by a guide yet, and you are asked if you want a guide to help you search. You could also start with a guide, there’s nothing stopping that.

Honestly, it sounds kinda hokey. It feels like a reversal from the automation of the internet, which we are so used to. Human interaction on most websites is all secondhand or in editorial or published style. But with ChaCha, the guide consults you directly, does your searching for you as per their expertise, and that’s it. There’s no charge to the user beyond seeing some ads on the side of your results. The guide initiates a one-on-one chat session while searching and showing the end-user the links chosen.

The hokeyness subsided when I realized I had a chance to try out the guide program. You see, guides are paid to help you search. It’s not a lot… but I’ve reverted to starving student status, and super flexible things that pay money (on a special debit card, no less) are right up my alley.

Guide applications are by invite only, but I have yet to find a online invitation scheme that I could not wiggle my way into. As it turns out, I have a few spare invites for all one of you readers. If you leave a comment on this post, I will send you one. All I ask is that you be serious about trying this, not just as some five minute goof. I only get so many invites, and the people who get them are added to my “network”, of which I receive 10% of whatever they earn for my lonesome self.

So, if my loyal two readers wants invites, simply comment on this article. The important part is making sure your email is accurate, or the invite email will obviously not get to you.

If buying something for 1.85 billion clams can be considered “snapping up”.

When Google Video was first launched, I thought that was going to be the de facto way to see clips on the net. But it never really panned out. At least, not with the explosive success of YouTube. For one of the few times, another company did something that Google was trying, and did it better.

Google did not rest on its pride. They recognized this, and sought to buy them out. I don’t know if that can be considered noble, or sharky business tactics, or neither.

I hope that they do what we all hoped would come about with Google Video… combining the fantastic searching power of Google with the great easy interface of YouTube.

Books that are no longer under copyright can now be downloaded in full (in pdf format) from Google Book Search for free.

While this is hardly a new idea (see: the Perseus Digital Library or Project Gutenberg), it is the first time they are in full PDF format. This should preserve the format and style of the pages, not just the text.

GDrive is a rumored forthcoming Google application that is expected to be remote storage. As all things Google, we know little about it until it gets a public release of some type. Well, someone poking around with Writely got a surprise page that looks like a GDrive mockup (named Platypus).

read more | digg story

ebay has put Google Checkout on their list of payment methods not allowed on ebay. Apparently they site their rules that Google Checkout doesn’t have a long enough track record of safe and reliable payments to be included in their payment options.

But it’s pretty apparent ebay’s PayPal is being faced by its biggest threat yet, and they are laying defenses as best they can.

Auctionbytes

Google has been tripping the light fantastic with acquisitions and features on their Web 2.0 kick. After being fairly modest in features and additions to their repertoire the first few years, the last couple years they have produced and bought out a plethora of new web-based apps. It took off with Gmail and Google maps, and hasn’t slowed down since.

One that was bought out earlier this year is a web-based word processor named Writely. After hearing about it, I wanted to try it out. But, unfortunately, soon after Google snatched it up, they stopped accepting new signups without an invitation (ala Gmail). Luckily, after a bit of searching, I was able to get an invite and try out the new app.

It is very simple, but elegant. So far it runs smooth as silk. I can see why Google wanted it, as the interface already reminds me of Gmail’s. It seems to do a great job of simple word processing. It also allows you to write and edit in HTML, which can make it a very nice tool for bloggers/web site updates. In fact, it has a tab with options such as “View as a blog” and “Publish to your blog”. Documents can also save to PDF and other popular word processing formats.

It has a collaboration feature that allows multiple people on Writely to edit or change a document. One can add or remove collaborators at will, and you can see their additions and revisions at any time.

Writely is still in beta with no real release date posted anywhere. There is also no word on when they will allow public sign-ups again (if ever, even Gmail still technically needs invites). I have several invites to dispense, and I doubt I will need them all, so if anyone is interested in one, leave a comment below (with a valid email), or reply to this post on the forum.

http://maps.google.com/

I didn’t know they were going into the “map market”, so I messed around with this today.

It’s actually really nice and alot simpler to use than mapquest/yahoo maps. I like the ease of moving the map around and the quick zooming. Plus the “area search” for anything is really nice, albeit still very sparse.