Chrome is definitely one of the most successful product of Google.  It is now a major player in the web browser market, in some areas it is even the biggest one with over 50% market share.

Interestingly, this Time Machine seems to be a fan-only celebration of the 4th anniversary.  I loaded the URL into two other browsers, and got a blank page in Internet Explorer 9 and a “This site was designed with Chrome in mind and is unable to render properly in your browser” message in Firefox 15.

See it here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/timemachine/

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I have never played piano and have no intention to learn, but I have to say piano is one of the best musical instruments.  The sound piano produces is great, the music that could be played with a piano range from simple to complex ones.  Despite that piano is less mobile than many other instruments, it is one of the most learned and favored musical instrument.  The black and white keyboard is a signature inspired many innovative home decoration, product design and graphical design.

Piano Chrome Themes

Black and White Piano

Colorful Piano Keys Theme

Piano 2.2 Theme

Piano Web Apps

Plypp Piano is a nice piano keyboard app with over 100000 users.  It can produce the sound of 5 musical instruments, Ballad Grand Piano, Guitar, Harpsichord, Panflute and Sawtooth.  The beauty of this app is, unlike many other apps, that it uses HTML5 technology so it should run faster.  There is a built-in chord finder to let players easily find the chord he or she wants.

Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hofckkgpnnjabffkjemconojemcibifh

ButtonBeats Piano Player is another great piano web app with 80000+ users.  It has a killer feature that if you type in a song in the text field the piano could automatically play the song without you pressing a key.  This web app has a large collection of songs including pop songs, arcade game background music and classical music.  Simply copy and paste the note and click play to enjoy the song.

Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lkmkonkgohgomnnkaclbiammkcjenfdi

Color Piano! is a great web app for learning piano.  You don’t even need to learn reading sheet music!  It’s like playing tap tap tap game, you simply follow the visualized colorful notes to play.  This web app includes an import function so you can load MIDI files into it to play (the MIDI file must be piano-only).

Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ihmigmmflfcbhdpdgbkkeojchjhhphnh

Info and image source: Chrome Web Store 

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Google also marked the completion of this event with a new doodle.  Let us have a look at all the 2012 Olympics Google Doodles now (for playable ones you can go to the official site to play again):

The featured sports are archery, diving, fencing, rings, field hockey, table tennis, shot put, pole vault, synchronized swimming, javelin, hurdles, basketball, slalom canoe, soccer (European football) and rhythmic gymnastics.  The characters in the previous doodles reappeared in the doodle for closing ceremony to say goodbye to the Olympics.

Of all these 2012 Olympics Google doodles, I like the slalom canoe one (for playable) and synchronized swimming one (for static).  The canoe doodle is the most exciting of them all, I could play it several times in the office without knowing that my boss is watching behind my back.  The synchronized swimming doodle is great because the first “0″ is made with the 8 players in a perfect circle.  Which one is your favorite?

Image Source: Google Doodle Page

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The game ends when you lose 3 points (i.e. 3 goals by the computer-controlled player).  There will be five footballs on the grass, but don’t think that you only need to block 5 shots.  If you successfully blocked the ball, it may bounce back and ready for the other player to kick it again.

What makes this doodle interesting is the way the G o o g l e alphabets are displayed.  Unlike in most other doodles, the letters are divided into two groups, i.e. “Goo” and “gle”, and placed on both sides of the gate.

Soccer (called as “football” in the United Kingdom and many parts of the world) is a hot topic for doodles.  Over the years Google created some soccer doodles.  You can have a look at them by searching for keywords like “football”, “soccer” and “goalie” in http://www.google.com/doodles.

You can play this game at http://www.google.com/doodles/soccer-2012 or wait for 10 August 2012 comes in your local time.

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As a player your task is to press the left and right keys on the keyboard to accelerate.  However, the water course is not straight, there are also other obstructions such as gates, rocks and water animals(!) you need to get around.  Use the left and right keys to make a good course.  I would say this is by far the most addictive Google doodle mini game of this year’s Olympics.  And you risk hurting your wrist and having tired fingers.  The quality of this game is not bad, you can see ripples behind the kayak generated as you paddle.

Interestingly, the slalom canoe events were already completed.  According to the info box that appears if you search for “slalom canoe” or “canoe slalom” in Google, the winners were all born.  The events began on 29 July and ended on 2 August.  I won’t say it is a problem to show a doodle for an event in the past but certainly if a current event’s doodle is displayed it would be better.

Again, to enjoy this game you’ll have to wait until 9 Aug 2012 in local time or go to this web site: http://www.google.com/doodles/slalom-canoe-2012 if you can’t wait to play.  Have fun!

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Same as yesterday’s doodle, click the central play button to start the game.  Simply press the left button of the mouse or the space bar, hold and release to shoot.  The longer you hold the button or key the stronger the power is.  You need a few shots to get the feeling.  As the game proceeds the player will be moved away from the ring, making the game tougher.  You have 24 seconds to fire as many shots as possible, you can see the time countdown and the score you get on the score board at the back.  The own audience in the doodle are the 6 “G” “o” “o” “g” “l” “e” alphabets, but if you feel like sharing the game and your score with your friends, you can click the Google+ button at the end of the game to shout it out.

Again, the game is available on 8 August 2012 at local time.  If you want to play the game before it is made available to your time zone, go to this place: http://www.google.com/doodles/basketball-2012 to enjoy!  Before I end this post, let’s review the previous Olympics basketball doodles.  It is probably easier to pick an “animal” to represent China and Australia (dragon and kangaroo) than to find one to represent the UK, right?

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Simply click the play button to start the game.  You need to press the left and right arrow buttons to run, certainly the faster you press the faster you run.  Jump using the space bar.  I found it easier to play this mini game using a regularly-sized keyboard than using a mini keyboard on a notebook computer.  My result was merely 24.5s on my macbook.  You can try to test your luck (the current man’s 110m hurdle world record is 12.87s).

So far Google released doodle for archery, diving, fencing, rings, field hockey, table tennis, shot put, pole vault, synchronized swimming and javelin.  The javelin google doodle was soon updated after the successful rover landing on Mars.

As always, the new doodle is only seen on Google search page at the corresponding local time.  If you can’t wait to see it, you can go to Google Australia or simply check out this official page: http://www.google.com/doodles/hurdles-2012.

Do you know this is not the first time Google made a doodle for hurdle?  Here is the 2004 Athens Olympics hurdle Google doodle.  Which one do you like?  The 2012 or 2004 doodle?

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Samsung Chromebox Cracked Open

According to Geek.com, breaking into Chromebox is extremely easy.  The cover could be easily removed without any tools, it’s not even held in with clips.  The “motherboard” is mounted by screws, those common ones that could be unscrewed using your eyeglass repair toolkit.  Almost everything on board could be removed and replaced, including the WiFi card and USB port (of course, you need to find ways to load new driver into the system if you want to replace these hardware).

As said, the limited local storage of Chromebox makes it less attractive because you probably need to store most of your files online and download only when needed.  The good news is since Chromebox is easily hackable, you can simply replace the built-in SSD with a larger one!  Geek.com tried to install a Kingston SSDNow mS100 64GB SSD and it only took minutes to complete.

The same applies for memory.  The RAM on board could be replaced easily too, guys at Geek.com replaced the pair of 2GB RAM with two 8GB sticks of DDR3-1333 SODIMM RAM without problem.

In fact, there is an empty mSATA port on board so theoretically adding a new piece of hardware should be OK if there is software to support it.  For geeks and hackers, the “open design” of Chromebox is a good news, so as for system administrators and home users.  It makes system upgrade and checking much simpler.  With the chance to increase storage and memory, Chromebox becomes a very attractive set-top box as well as a media center in the living room.  Imagine loading 60GB of music into the Chromebox and connect it to the TV, you have a music box with a web interface.  The only thing of concern is perhaps how to make use of the redundant memory and SSD… their capacity is just too small to be installed in other computers!

source: Geek.com

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