We all know how Google Maps Streetview works. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could move around without going from one still picture to another? That’s what Microsoft promises in their latest attempt to topple the king of all things search. Once they drop the silverlight, I think Microsoft can expect widespread adoption. Hopefully it’s only for their previews.

Google recently updated the look & feel of their image search. Once you click on an image, instead of framing the source website, you see the image front and center like a Polaroid picture. Meanwhile the source page is displayed behind the image with a grey-ed out tinge to it.

It’s in beta right now, and you’ll need to apply with your gmail account before you can use it, but it looks like a great learning tool that may lure many young minds into the world of software development. As the tools get more powerful in the future, the quality of apps created using Google App Inventor should grow.

You can use emoticons in google chat and they will be replaced with little animations as soon as you hit send. You can also use bold, italics, strike through, or any combination of them.

Since so many websites use flash, and most computers you come across have adobe flash installed, this vulnerability is kind of a big deal due to the sheer volume of potentially affected computers. Install Google’s Chrome browser. It’s faster than your browser, and while you’re at it, head over to youtube with this link, and try youtube through html5.

Today, the logo on Google’s homepage changed to their first interactive doodle - a playable game of Pacman, and you don’t even need flash to play it. Yet another nail in the flash coffin? Hit Insert Coin again and you can play as Mrs. Pacman with the WASD keys while player 1 uses the arrow keys!

The problem is staring you right in the face! If you’re trying to build Chromium OS from behind an Internet proxy, you’re going to struggle with make_chroot.sh. You need to set them up within the chroot, and that means setting them in the user’s profile script that gets sourced.

Is the recent acquisition of Bumptop going to make its way to Android in some shape or form anytime soon? This week is your last chance to pick up a copy of BumpTop, the 3-D Desktop for Mac and Windows.

Google Picasa is available as an rpm and deb for Linux. You can get it from google package repository if you already have that installed, but the latest version doesn’t appear to be available from there just yet. This app is run under a self contained wine installation.

Google Grants is free Google AdWords advertising available to various charitable organizations. The program is designed to help organizations extend their public service messages to a global audience, in an effort to make a greater impact on the world.