Insomnic Dreams

Rube Goldberg devices are mechanisms that are extremely complex but do simple things. OK Go uses a giant Rube Goldberg device to accentuate their new music video for  their song This Too Shall Pass.

I love Rube Goldberg devices, and you have to admit they are fascinating to watch. The music helps of course…

UPDATE: Here’s their other version which is also a single take video. Very fun version.

Google just released it’s newest service called Buzz. It integrates directly into your Gmail account and is Google’s entry into social networking. Watch the video below for an overview:

There’s also a lot of mobile integration so here’s Google’s short feature video about the mobile specific functions:

If you’d like some more details, check out Lifehacker’s run down on this new service as well. It actually isn’t a way to beat Twitter or Facebook but help you reign it in and access the data you want to access in one place. In the meantime … it’s time to play with a new Google toy.

UPDATE: If you don’t want Buzz to bother you in Gmail just follow this easy Lifehacker guide.

This is a cool animation featuring silhouette art based on Touhou designs. The song is Bad Apple.

Here is another animation that translates the above into stop motion:

By now the song should have infected your brain. There’s nothing to be done about it. Enjoy.

Google Chrome is the new browser on the block and it’s garnering a lot of attention. The main reason – it’s fast. The second reason – it’s secure. Today, the latest stable release came out and you can grab it here for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The latest version includes the long awaited extension support and bookmark sync (as well as lots of fixes and security updates).

Here’s my favorite creative video about the features:

So why switch to Chrome from Firefox or Internet Explorer?

Well the IE question is easy to answer – Internet Explorer just doesn’t work as well as either Chrome or Firefox. It has worse security, lack of standards compliancy, short on features and in general just isn’t very snappy. It is best for use in a business environment because of it’s compatibility with Sharepoint and other MS specific services but otherwise it just doesn’t compare – though to be honest, Internet Explorer 8 is probably the best version of IE ever created. So if you are scared about switching please at least update.

So the bigger question is why choose Chrome over Firefox. Well… there it gets tricky. I am choosing Chrome because it’s faster than Firefox on my Mac and has more standard extensions than Safari. On my PC it’s faster than Firefox and the extensions are lighter than Firefox add-ons so it doesn’t hit my resources as hard. The built in bookmark sync with storage in Google Docs is also nice to have. Plus, if you are already using Google services it works very well with them and the official Google extensions only make it better.

A reason to keep Firefox is the extensive add-on support and tried and tested website support. Firefox is a more mature browser; similar to IE in that it’s become better supported over the years. Firefox keeps on trucking and the latest release does provide some increased speed and security.

A last reason to switch to Chrome is because of the HTML5 compliant video function. Sounds really boring right? Well, what it means is better control and playback of video on the web. YouTube and Vimeo now offer it and the playback is much smoother and much friendlier (especially for accessibility users).

So which extensions do I prefer? Here’s a quick list:
AdBlock: Good adblocking (and Google is okay with it).
Chrome Reader: Google Reader RSS subscription extension
Google Similar Pages: Good for finding, well, similar pages…
Google Mail Checker: Basic checker and link
Google Voice Checker: Check Google Voice account and also activates numbers found on pages.
Send from Gmail (No Button): Sets Gmail as default for composing when you click on email links

If you want a few to try out just head over to the extensions page and check out some of the “Featured” and “Most Popular” ones.

So there you have it – a whole new browser to play with and see if you like. Oh – I forgot to mention – it will automatically bring over your bookmarks/favorites and settings from either IE or Firefox so you can be up and running in no time. So give it a try and see what you think – worse that could happen is you don’t like it and go back to what you were using.

I’ll be surprised if you do though…

Hit up the full page to get 1080 super duper hirez Muppets.

So I’ve had the weekend to play with the new Google Chrome OS (thanks to the virtual disk provided by GDGT). My opinion – it will be an excellent OS for a secondary computer or someone in a well connected city. Watch the following video for a quick overview of the idea behind Chrome OS.

So what you see is that this OS will be good for people who are pretty much based on the internet. It’s only been out for a week and it won’t be officially released for a year – and as you’ve noticed, more and more is becoming internet (or “Cloud”) based so this makes pretty good sense.

Maybe next year all you’ll need is a browser … in which case all you’ll need is Chrome OS. Google has posted a few other case uses for Chrome OS and Lifehacker has some interesting commentary about other people’s experience.

Even if it isn’t for you – it certainly does seem like an interesting take on where computers are heading these days.

This video is completely trippy and fun to watch. It’s an ad for Toshiba’s new LCD TVs, but who cares. There’s just something cool about it…

So there’s a project brewing in a galaxy not too far away… it’s a fan made version of Star Wars – but you only get to add 15 seconds!

Check out the official Star Wars: Uncut website for more details and clips from the fans.

This movie looks incredibly cool… I know the story because I read the synopsis but just going by the visuals alone I want to see this movie. I mean c’mon — a sci-fi samurai movie with visuals like this?!

Every once in awhile people ask me how I find fun videos or pictures or already saw popular email chain jokes. It’s really quite simple. I use Google Reader and site RSS feeds to keep track of multiple sites easily and many of those sites have that “fun” kind of content.

For help using RSS and Google reader check out the following videos from Common Craft.

RSS in Plain English:

Google Reader in Plain English:

You can use other RSS readers, there are plenty around, but Google Reader is one I highly recommend.

Now that you have an idea how to use RSS, you need some of those fun RSS feeds. Well, once you have your Google Reader account setup just add these RSS feeds:

CelebLOL: http://feeds.roflrazzi.com/ROFLrazzi
DVICE: http://dvice.com/rss.xml
FAIL Blog: http://failblog.wordpress.com/feed/
Geekology: http://www.geekologie.com/index.xml
Insomnic Dreams: http://www.insomnicdreams.com/feed/ (of course)
Lamebook: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lamebook
Not Always Right: http://notalwaysright.com/feed
Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/rss.xml
That Will Buff Out: http://thatwillbuffout.com/feed/
There I Fixed It: http://thereifixedit.com/feed/
XKCD: http://xkcd.com/atom.xml

That should cover you for quite some time as far as fun feeds go. There are lots more out there so just look around for that RSS icon and subscribe to a few… it’s fun.