By now you've all probably been playing with Google Chrome, the search engine giant's new browser (well, unless you're on a Mac or Linux, that is). Well, Philipp Lenssen's Google Blogoscoped blog who broke the news on the whole thing has a really neat list of tips and pointers on Chrome.
One thing that many people are wondering about is what's up with Google Chrome's logo? Philipp thinks that it's a combination of Pokémon's Poké Ball, and the Simon toy (see also this post on Digital Inspiration)
Well, I say there's something else. See that glowing blue eye? It's absolutely, positively from SAL 9000, the Earthbound twin of the HAL 9000 computer in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Huh? There are two of 'em? Yep: HAL has a red eye, SAL has a blue eye.)
And here's a YouTube clip of SAL 9000 (voiced by Candice Bergen, actually) from 2010: The Year We Make Contact (based on Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two)
But with all that rainbow color going on, why the name "Chrome"? That's just puzzling.
Halo.
http://nerdad.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-browser.html
Chrome is developer talk for the space where the browser interfaces with the content. Since the object of Google Chrome is to optimize that area, it seemed like a good name.
Chrome's a dumb name.
Maybe we should have a naming contest.
The end. :)