Google and their new Cube Lab

For those who know me you know that I am a big fan of everything Google. At the heart of this fascination is the fact that Google does everything they can to explore, experiment, learn, challenge, and create things that give people the ability to use technology for what it was meant for - but in a better, more efficient manner. This also allows for unconventional and new methods of doing things with the tech we all have in our lives. This excites me because not only does it give people with advanced knowledge of computers and technology more tools but it also helps to bring along the novice as well. Speaking of the novice computer user, as they come along for the journey with the advanced users and experts, Google provides them with the tools they need to learn and experiment with the technology being used by the experts so they too may one day share in that distinction. It is just marvelous! 

New Experimental Frontiers

Google is well known for its powerful search engine on the internet. They are also known for some of the various other ways the search engine can be used. Things like calculators, translators, and weight conversions are but a small few things that you can use Google for. And unless you have been living under a very large rock, or living at the bottom of the ocean you would also be familiar with Google Glass, Android, and Google Maps and Earth. If I was to make a list of all the various projects that Google is involved in or the companies they own or have a stake in we would be here all day. Let's just say that Google has grown to be a major company in this country (and the world) and they have no plans on slowing down at any point in the near or distant future.

I think that for anybody who likes to keep up with current technology or news about what is just over the horizon, one company to watch would obviously be Google. This is made even easier considering the Google Chrome Blog has been keeping relevant news on the site and informing the public about new experiments. Yes, "Chrome" is the name of their web browser. But think about just how important that is for a moment.

Everything that we do these days, or almost everything anyway, has a start on the internet. Our communications, many of the programs that we run, or the data that we collect or send out. All of it is either coming from or going through the internet. So if you are building something that is supposed to work better than anything else out there the best place to focus your energies is with a browser. That is precisely what Google had done years ago. They developed Chrome.

Chrome has had its ups and downs just like any browser. Personally I have been using Firefox for the last few years. While Firefox is my default browser I still use Chrome occasionally or when I am doing something specific that requires the use of Chrome. As for Internet Explorer... I have not used that piece of junk for a few years now. I have been using Chrome more and more lately and I expect that at some point in the near future I will make a complete switch between Chrome and Firefox. The point is that the browser Google has created in Chrome is a great piece of software and it serves as the starting point for many of their internet based projects/experiments. This is why the Chrome Blog is a great place to get information about upcoming projects.

The Cube Lab

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Rubiks Cube. As an homage, Google has launched what they are calling the Cube Lab. The lab is a website that gives users various styles of Rubiks Cube puzzles to not only play around with but they can also create their own. The amount of work and brainpower that has gone into this website is immense and I sincerely recommend that you check it out when you have the time. It is definitely worth a look.

The Cube Lab is a great piece of work. Google has done a marvelous job putting sites like this together and if you never take a look at any of them you are really doing yourself a disservice. The best way to describe what the Cube Lab is would be to let Rubik's Cube creator Professor Erno Rubik explain it. The following  is a paragraph taken from the website's "about" page:

"The Cube was born in 1974 as a teaching tool to help me and my students better understand space and 3D. The Cube challenged us to find order in chaos. Since then, technology has made fantastic progress in bringing new possibilities to how we learn and how we tackle bewildering complexity. Chrome Cube Lab takes full advantage of that progress by encouraging curiosity and problem-solving skills—the very reason the Cube was created in the first place. I can’t wait to see people learn about three-dimensional objects through their browsers and to test the limits of what is possible when the Cube gets re-jigged using cutting edge web technologies. Cube on!”

...Professor Erno Rubik


Links to the sites mentioned in this posting:

The Chrome Blog 
The Chrome Cube Lab