Google has just announced their new open source browser Chrome. The announcement came in the form of a web comic by Scott McCloud.

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

Google Blogoscoped has posted some screenshots of Google Chrome browser.

UPDATE 1: The beta release of the Chrome browser now available for download. Currently Chrome is only available for Windows Vista/XP.

UPDATE 2: Google has posted some Chrome tutorial videos on YouTube.

See Previously: Understanding Comics – The Books Of Scott McCloud

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Reddit has just announced that they are going open source and releasing their code to the public. Here’s a video by their alien mascot explaining this decision.

Today we’re excited to announce that we’re open sourcing reddit. We’ve always strived to be as open and transparent with our users as possible, and this is the next logical step. When we say ‘open-source’ we mean specifically that the code behind reddit is available to the public for download, and we’re inviting the public to submit code to help improve the site.

MG Siegler has a great write-up on Reddit’s announcement over on Venture Beat.

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My friend William Hurley (aka whurley) is asking the important question “Who is the best candidate for the open source community?”. To help answer that question he’s running an online poll.

Assume for a moment that a knowledge of open source is prerequisite (or integral) in solving issues like patent reform. Who would you vote for? In other words, who would be the best candidate for the open source community? Here’s a little poll to tally your votes. I took the top three performing candidates from the two major parties.

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Kevin Burton has just informed me that open source software developer Greg Stein, Director of the Apache Software Foundation, was mugged and seriously injured last Friday in Mountain View. Kevin Burton has setup a donation fund for Greg to help with his recovery. What really sucks about this is that Greg was on crutches from a previous injury when he was viciously attacked, making it difficult for him to defend himself. Ben Metcalfe has written about Greg’s fund as well.

In addition to Apache, Greg has worked on many open source projects including WebDAV, Python and Subversion.

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I made a quick stop by the expo at LinuxWorld 2007 today over at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I was sad to see the continuing shrinkage of the .org Pavilion. I remember when LinuxWorld first started, the entire convention was represented by .org’s, now it’s just two small rows in the back corner. The tie-dyes, gray beards and sandals are a rare sight, Tux is wearing a business suit now.

Here are some photos I shot of the expo at LinuxWorld 2007.

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Our friends over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories recently launched The CandyFab Project, an online resource for their open source 3D sugar fabrication process, which they were showing off at Maker Faire 2007. Check out the photos of some of the “sweet” stuff they have made so far.

The printing process begins with a bed of a granular printing media that has a fairly low melting point. Using a narrow, directed, low-velocity beam of hot air, we selectively fuse together the print media, forming a two-dimensional image out of the fused grains. We then lower the bed by a small amount, add a thin flat layer of media to the top of the bed, and selectively fuse the media in the new layer, forming a two dimensional image that is also fused to any overlapping fused areas in the layer below. By repeating this process, a three-dimensional object is slowly built up. At the end of the build, the bed is raised to its original position, disinterring the fabricated model, while unused media is reclaimed for use in building the next object.

They are looking for volunteers to help out with the project, if you know of anyone.

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Linux and open source geeks will be converging in San Francisco next week for LinuxWorld 2007, which takes place August 6th through 9th, at Moscone Center. As with previous years, I’ll be spending a lot of time over in the .org Pavilion with our friends from organizations like EFF and Creative Commons.

Here are my photos from last year’s LinuxWorld 2006.

UPDATE: Here are my photos from LinuxWorld 2007.

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Last Thursday at the Digg Million User Celebration, Ladyada of Adafruit Industries and Phillip Torrone (Make Magazine) debuted their new, open source Digg Button Kits (v1.0). The kits contain multiple components that when soldered together create are really cool manual LED Digg Button that you can digg up to 999 and then reset back to 0. Who knows, maybe someone will be able to configure these to work with the new Digg API.

The kits help teach people beginner electronics, including soldering and programing microcontrollers. Adafruit Industries have even setup some new hacks, mods and projects for the Digg Buttons and they are selling the kits for $15 each, with $1 of each purchase being donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The Digg kit was created when Phillip Torrone (Makezine.com), Kevin Rose (Digg.com) and (Ladyada) met up for a drink. We thought it might be interesting to inspire the next generation of technologists and hobbyists who frequent Digg with a fun and easy project that not only teaches but is a lot of fun.

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Graffiti Research Lab has developed a LASER tagging system that allows people to project images on entire building facades using a green laser and a DLP projector. Check out the amazing video and photos from their tests in Rotterdam. They’ve even released the source code and a “how to” for their LASER tag.

via » Boing Boing

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Dr. Evangelos Michelakis at University of Alberta reports that the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) may have a big impact in the fight against cancer by stopping the growth of cancer cells, without harming normal cells. It doesn’t have a patent, which makes it inexpensive and research shows it would not have the same negative side-affects of traditional chemotherapy. The drug can be made in power form which could be dissolved in a glass of water for the patient drink.

The main challenge for University of Alberta is finding the funding to conduct clinical trials on humans. The question is, does a cancer fighting drug that would not be profitable to pharmaceutical companies have any chance of success? Could this be a good candidate for open source medical research?

Investigators at the University of Alberta have recently reported that a drug previously used in humans for the treatment of rare disorders of metabolism is also able to cause tumor regression in a number of human cancers growing in animals. This drug, dichloroacetate (DCA) appears to suppress the growth of cancer cells without affecting normal cells, suggesting that it might not have the dramatic side effects of standard chemotherapies.

DCA research donations can be made to Dr. Michelakis’ Cancer Research Fund through The University of Alberta.

For updates on funding, research and testing, keep an eye on University of Alberta DCA Research Information page.

Here’s more coverage of the DCA cancer research news:

“Alberta scientists test chemotherapy alternative” (CBC News)

“Cancer finding hailed” (Melissa Leong, National Post)

“Lots of interest in funding new cancer drug trials” (Edmonton Sun)

“Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers” (Andy Coghlan, New Scientist)

“Small Molecule Offers Big Hope Against Cancer” (Science Daily)

“Small molecule could be big cancer fighter” (The Why Files)

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My friend Phillip Torrone, senior editor of Make Magazine, just posted a really awesome Open Source Gift Guide. This is a great place to start your search if you hunting around for that perfect gift for fellow open source geeks.

There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy – but a lot of time you actually don’t own it, you can’t improve upon it, you can’t share it or make it better, you certainly can’t post the plans, schematics and source code either. We want to change that, we’ve put together our picks of interesting open source hardware projects, open source software, services and things that have the Maker-spirit of open source. Some are kits, some are open software projects that you’ll need to build hardware for before gifting, and some are just support for the projects/groups that do open source.

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The wait is over, Firefox 2 was released yesterday. Holy crap, this little open source project has really come a long way. I’m back to having it as my full time browser after using Camino for the last few months. Aside from the fact that it is faster, more secure, less prone to crashing (and if does, Session Restore will bring you back to where you were), has better tabbing and a bunch of new features, it finally has built-in spell checking. In fact, it’s finding all my spelling errors directly in the Wordpress editor as I type this. That’s something that I’ve wanted to do forever without having a special plug-in or extension. I finally feel like I have a real browser.

More coverage of the Firefox 2 launch can be found over at Tailrank here and here.

How do you make Firefox 2 even better? Try out some of the over 1000 add-ons that are available.

If you are as excited about the new Firefox as I am, you can celebrate its release at the nearest Firefox Party as well as letting others know about it through Spread Firefox.

UPDATE: Gina Trapani just posted some awesome Firefox 2 config tweaks on Lifehacker.

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Chris Messina has outed me on my secret plot to rid the world of the traditional “Happy Birthday” song. Aside from the fact that it has the least inspired lyrics of almost any song ever written, it is also not even in the public domain, but instead protected by a copyright until 2030. We need to open source the Happy Birthday song and release it under Creative Commons. Of course this is not a new idea. Kuro5hin has a great write-up on the legal issues surrounding “Happy Birthday”.

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Violet Blue’s first article for “Violet Blue: Open Source Sex”, her new sex column in the San Francisco Chronicle, was published in today’s paper: “Club Kiss for that thoroughly modern vibe”

Here’s Violet’s write-up on today’s launch of her column. Ryan Is Hungry shot a great video interview with Violet an hour before the article came out. Yay Violet!

Now here’s the bad news. At the very last minute, senior management at the Chronicle removed all of the outside links from her column, in fact they won’t even link to Violet’s blog. One step forward, two steps back. Will mainstream media ever get it?

Of course, because it’s me (and it’s sex), it didn’t happen without issue. At the last minute, the publisher got freaked out about my links and so (for now, I think) my column will be running without links to any of the sites or topics I’m talking about. Yeah, it’s *weird* for an online column… And dude — they don’t even link to Tiny Nibbles from my column’s page. But the Chron and I are continuing to talk about it and the topic is by no means closed.

Violet will be posting the links for each column on her blog (as she has for today’s column) until the Chronicle resolves this issue.

Regardless of this minor setback, we are extremely proud of Violet and the launch of her groundbreaking column.

UPDATE: A group of pranksers have been modifying bus shelters with unauthorized promotional posters for Violet’s new column. Here’s the first one and the second one. If you see any others, please leave let us know in the comments.

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Rob Levin (”lilo”), the founder of the popular IRC network Freenode, passed away today at the age of 50 in Houston, TX.

Here’s the global notice that was posted to Freenode:

On the 12th September Rob Levin, known to many as Freenode’s lilo, was hit by a car while riding his bike. He suffered head injuries and passed away in hospital on the 16th. For more information please visit #freenode-announce

Freenode has over 30,000 daily users chatting on 10,000 IRC channels, including those for WordPress, BarCamp and SuperHappyDevHouse.

Laughing Squid sends our condolences to Rob’s family and friends.

UPDATE: A quiet channel as been setup at #lilo-memorial for reverent idling and #lilo-mourning for discussion.

Thanks to Barry Abrahamson for letting us know about this sad news.

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Wow, this is amazing. My good friend and co-conspirator Violet Blue has just informed me that she is now the new sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her column, “Violet Blue: Open Source Sex” will run in the paper every Thursday and debuts on September 21st. See her blog post for the full story on how this all happened.

It’s official. I’m now the sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not just ‘plucked’ from the blogosphere to freelance for a 141-year-old mainstream media institution; Phil Bronstein hand-selected me to be their frontline sex writer, with a column and everything that comes with it. I just got home from the Chronicle building — today was the final meeting with the PR department, and to set the launch date (I wore my Laughing Squid shirt to the meeting). At one point David Wiegand said, “We’re just making sure it’s okay before we plaster your face on buses.” I don’t remember my reaction to this, though my memory tells me I shrieked like a little girl and ran in tight little circles with clenched fists tight against my sides in the middle of the circled chairs of Chron/SFGate staff. I think I actually said “yikes” in an extremely composed way. I’m pretty sure he was teasing. Ulp.

So in addition to her new role as the San Francisco Chronicle’s sex columnist, Violet is also a published sex author, a ten year veteran of Survival Research Labs, a podcaster and a blogger for both Fleshbot and Metroblogging San Francisco.

Congratulations Violet, for “crashing the party”. Also kudos to the Chronicle for making such a bold and riskly move. You’ll be glad you did.

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LinuxWorld 2006 is in now full swing at the Moscone Center in San Francisco (tomorrow is the last day). I stopped by for a few hours today, ran into some friends and shot a few photos.

I usually end up spending most of my time in the .org Pavilion. This year Slashdot had a big lounge there, complete with Slashdot beanbag chairs. While there I ran into Eddie and Irina from Geek Entertainment TV, with their recently acquired fancy Sony HD camera via their new gig at PodTech. They were shooting an interview with Rob Malda aka CmdrTaco, the founder of Slashdot. Look for that episode soon.

Of course this year there was quite a few people talking about Ubuntu, “linux for human beings”. Many are considering switching to it as their main OS, even leaving Mac OS X. This has been a popular topic lately. I’m going to check it out once I setup a virtual desktop using Parallels.

Photos from LinuxWorld 2006

One thing that was really disappointing this year (maybe it was the case in previous years) , was the obnoxious sign that greeted you when you enter the conference. It reads:

LinuxWorld is open to business professionals only.

No one under 18 years of age will be admitted.

Jonas Luster mentioned this sign to me when I ran into him at the Socialtext booth and he made a great point about the fact that many lead linux and open source developers are under the age of 18. Also, what about Linux geeks with children? So if Linus Torvalds stopped by with his kids to show them the world that their father helped create, I guess they would be turned away. As far as I’m concerned this all goes against the nature of Linux and open source itself. As for “business professionals only”, well that’s just a load of crap. Someone needs to cut off of Tux’s tie and put him back in a t-shirt and sandals.

UPDATE 1: PT has been following-up on the LinuxWorld 2006 sign over on the Make blog. He’s been calling and emailing conference organizers. So far, nobody has come forward with an explanation.

UPDATE 2: One enterprising 17 year-old hacked LinuxWorld by wearing a suit and tie.

UPDATE 3: LinuxWorld has responsed to PT’s inquiries. Here’s the email that PT received from IDG’s Melinda M. Kendall:

Dolomite has it exactly right: LinuxWorld is a free business-to-business trade show, completely subsidized by exhibitors, who invest in those booths to talk with business buyers. The new policy is a direct response to their complaints that we had too many students at the event. We were lenient on the policy in Boston, as we had not made it clear enough on marketing materials, however in San Francisco we did card most registrants. Our exhibitors tell us they have other venues to talk with and reach out to students, but that at LinuxWorld they want to focus on qualified leads. Sorry!

Melinda M. Kendall
Brand Vice President
IDG World Expo

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Today at OSCON 2006 in Portland, Google announced free hosting for open source projects as part of their Google Code site. This looks like one more great way to encourage and advance open source development. Andy Baio makes a good point about it being “some badly needed competition for Sourceforge” and he mentions Upcoming Python API, an example project created by Simon Willison.

Here’s more info on this new service from Niall Kennedy, who is currently at OSCON.

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This week the highly anticipated public beta (Beta 1 v0.7) of Flock, the social browser based on Firefox, was finally released. The very first public demo of Flock took place at the orginal BarCamp in Palo Alto last August, so it’s been a long time coming. Download Flock and see what you think.

Flock is a free, easy-to-use web browser built on fast and secure Mozilla technologies. Share photos, get your news, blog freely, and search your world with Flock. Flock makes it easier than ever for you to connect with your friends.

Here are more details on the Flock beta launch from TechCrunch.

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Mozilla based Mac browser Camino 1.0 is out and it rocks! In fact, I like it so much, I’ve switched over from Firefox to Camino as my main browser (I used to use it years ago before Firefox was released). It’s lean and clean and works really well. I know, I know, no extensions, no Google toolbar, but who cares when you have a browser that is this fast and doesn’t crash. Now if they would just add a spellcheck feature, it would be perfect. Viva open source!

Camino combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine. Built and tested by thousands of volunteers, Mozilla’s Gecko brings cutting-edge innovations and capabilities to users in a standards-friendly and socially responsible form.

Here’s a great write-up on Camino from Om Malik, which includes a short interview with the core Camino developers.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention CamiTools, a cool preference pane that adds additional functionality to Camino.

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