Google Chrome Roundup

Google Chrome made a huge splash in the past week, but will it really change the way you browse, and convince you to switch from your current browser? For those who want to play with it but don’t want Google to completely take over their lives, Chromium is the open source project behind Google Chrome. Linux and OS X users can also run Chrome using WINE, although success is not guaranteed. To make an educated choice, read Scott McCloud’s comic which explains the underpinnings. Make sure you’re aware of Chrome’s security vulnerabilities, and take advantage of Lifehacker’s guide to make your browsing experience as convenient and useful as possible. There are some great features, including the ability to log into multiple Google accounts using its much-lauded Incognito mode, which prevents Google Chrome from logging information on your browsing and downloading habits (websites you browse can still track your information). For convenience, you can also install Chrome on a USB drive, and take it anywhere with you. Explore the many Google Chrome blogs that have popped up to provide advice on hacking and tweaking the browser. Or you could just get all your information from 4chan.

Using Mologogo With Google Earth

earth

[yug1taht] wrote in to tell us about his lastest addition to Mologogo. You may remember Mologogo from its launch last fall. It lets you track GPS enabled phones using Google maps. It works with most Nextel phones and the inexpensive pay-as-you-go Boost Mobile phones; which is what our friend PT used when he tried it out. This latest addition to Mologogo lets you output the data as .kml file which you can then play with in Google Earth.

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Build A Google Maps Service

google map

[8Ball] was interested in building a Google Maps based service, but didn’t know where to start. Luckily he stumbled across Peter Rukavina’s Charlottetown Transit Map. The project shows the bus routes and has schedule popups linked to each of the stops. Peter was nice enough to include full source code for how this was implemented in PHP and Javascript. He also describes setting up the necessary MySQL tables.

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FUSE: Filesystem In Userspace

flickr

There has been a lot of buzz this week about Flickrfs the virtual filesystem for Flickr. Using Flickrfs you can interact with Flickr tags and photos just like your regular filesystem. A similar service is GmailFS which lets you mount a Gmail account as a large virtual filesystem. Both of these services are built on top of FUSE. FUSE makes it easy to build fully functional filesystems inside of a userspace program. Users can script and manipulate files just like their regular files. FUSE is now part of the main Linux kernel with release 2.6.14. Check out the list of other interesting filesystems built using FUSE. Of particular interest: WikipediaFS, SMB for FUSE is similar to Network Neighborhood, SSHFS, btslave to mount torrent files, and djmount is a UPnP AV client.

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Google Hacks For Fun And Profit

We’ve all played with Google hacks. Here is a short, quite incomplete list of irreverant uses for our engine of worship. Post your favorite Google hackage in the comments. I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

Google cooking, around since 2002 and perhaps even before: simply list the various ingredients in your fridge and your cupboard to google-spit out a recipe

Perl fun with the Google API: $1

PyGoogle for Python fanatics: $2

Being able to Google in your command line: Priceless

A whole book chock full of Google hacks including yummy adwords hacking [pdf]

Craigslist + Google Maps == bliss for apartment hunters

A sobering use of Google Maps: updatable trajectory of hurricane Rita [via BoingBoing and Markie]

When video met Google, DVD Jon wrote a script to use Google’s VLC video player to play non-google-hosted content

Fun for VJ’s and Anit-TV-peeps

A Honeypot for those of you worried about others using malicious Google hacks on your sites

Once again, post your fave Google hacks in the comments.

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