X = G / (C*H*R*O*M - 3)

Yesterday, we posted a demo video with a secret challenge where the first clever person to crack the code would receive a Cr-48. Just 20 hours later, the puzzle was solved correctly by the team at Jamendo. Congratulations!

Here’s how you can find the puzzle and the solution.

First, around 2:24 in the video, you see the following equations on the board:

The constants solve out as follows:

G = 900.91

C = 8335727

H = 269462689

R = 222647

O = 694079

M = 552

The final equation is written as:

X = G / (C*H*R*O*M - 3)

Plugging in the previous answers gets you to:

900.91 / 191605050401140404051920181525

At that point, the puzzle changes from math to code where the numbers represent letters. It hints to that by the final equation spelling CHROM3, but we expected people to get stuck here and have to play around for a bit. The first mental leap is that you have to visually identify 900.91 as goo.gl (just like spelling words on a calculator: 9=g,0=o,0=o,9=g,1=l). The division sign is a slash ( / ), so this pretty clearly points to the Google URL shortener. From there, you need to figure out the shortened URL.

The number 191605050401140404051920181525 may confuse people for a bit, but the large number of zeros and the repeated "04" and "05" sequences in it visually allude to pairs within the string. Once you see that, it can be broken up into:

19 16 05 05 04 01 14 04 04 05 19 20 18 15 25

If you've gotten this far, you've probably noticed that all of those numbers are between 1 and 26. From here, it's just a straight mapping to letters of the alphabet (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc). Decoding the full string gives you:

s p e e d a n d d e s t r o y

Putting everything together, the end result is:

goo.gl/speedanddestroy

That URL points to a page where you can fill out a form to request a shiny new Chrome notebook (the form is closed now, of course).

Posted by Chris Lyon, Hardware Engineer, Chrome OS Team

Keep calm and carry on: Chrome notebook

At our Chrome event on Tuesday, we showed how Chrome notebooks can make computing simpler.

Thanks to the cloud, your Chrome notebook might be how you do everything, but losing it means you lose nothing. No matter what crazy things happen to your laptop, your work stays safe online. Check out our demonstration video below.



Posted by Glen Murphy, UX Designer

An update on Chrome, the Web Store and Chrome OS

On the Chrome team, we’re constantly amazed by the speed of innovation on the web. We designed Chrome to make the web shine, and we hope our upcoming efforts will help support this vibrant ecosystem even more. By making the web faster, helping people discover great apps, and making computers more fun to use, the next year of computing should be even more exciting than the last one.

Chrome

This year, the number of people using Chrome has tripled from 40 to 120 million. Speed is what people love most about Chrome, and we’re always working to make the browser even faster. Therefore we’re bringing Google Instant to the Omnibox, showing search results and loading web pages as you type. We’ve also overhauled V8, Chrome’s JavaScript engine. It now runs complex JavaScript programs up to twice as fast as before. These two features are available in our early access channels and will be rolling out to all users soon.

Chrome Web Store

Today the Chrome Web Store is open for business. Developers have already started uploading apps, and we expect the number to grow over time. Right now the store is only available in the U.S., but will expand to many countries and currencies early next year. The store will be featured prominently in Chrome, helping people discover great apps and developers reach millions of users around the world.

Chrome OS

Last year, we announced our effort to design an operating system that is built and optimized for the web. Many people already spend all their time in a web browser, and by building an operating system that is essentially a browser, we can make computers faster, much simpler and fundamentally more secure.

We’re not done yet, but Chrome OS is at the stage where we need feedback from real users. Some of the features of Chrome OS require new hardware, but we didn’t want to sell pre-beta computers. Instead we’re launching a pilot program where we will give test notebooks to qualified users, developers, schools and businesses. We're starting with the U.S. and will expand to other countries once we get the necessary certifications. To participate in the pilot program, visit the Chrome notebook website.

The test notebooks exist only to test the software—they are black, have no branding, no logos, no stickers, nothing. They do have 12.1 inch screens, full-sized keyboards and touch pads, integrated 3G from Verizon, eight hours of battery life and eight days of standby time. Chrome notebooks are designed to reach the web instantly, are easy to share among friends and family, and simply by logging in, all of your apps, bookmarks and other browser settings are there. Setting up a new machine takes less than a minute. And even at this early stage, we feel there is no consumer or business operating system that is more secure.

In the first half of next year Chrome notebooks will be available for sale from Acer and Samsung. More manufacturers will follow. Also, Chrome OS is designed to work across a wide range of screen sizes and form factors, enabling our partners to deliver computing devices beyond notebooks.

We’re excited to get Chrome notebooks into the hands of users. The data from our test pilots is key to building something wonderful. We look forward to working together to make computers better.

Posted by Linus Upson, VP Engineering and Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management

A curious guide to browsers and the web

On the Chrome team, we’re always looking for new ways to communicate complex concepts about technology. More than two years ago, we launched Chrome with a comic book by Scott McCloud. Since then, a few of our colleagues at Google created a simple explanatory website called WhatBrowser.org when they realized that many of our friends and family weren’t sure what web browsers are.

Today, we’re very excited to release a special project called “20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web.” In the spirit of Chrome’s tradition with books and HTML5 experiences, we teamed up with illustrator Christoph Niemann to publish an online guidebook to browsers and the web, written by the Chrome team. If you have questions like “What are plug-ins?,” “What is HTML5?,” or even “Why is it ok for a truck to crush my laptop?,” “20 Things” is a handy guide for anyone who’s curious about the basics of browsers and the web.



So grab a cup of hot chocolate and enjoy this illustrated guidebook in Chrome or any up-to-date HTML5-compliant browser. Once you’ve loaded it in the browser, you can even disconnect your laptop and read comfortably in your favorite armchair since this guidebook works offline, thanks to HTML5. You can also jump directly back to the page at which you’d previously left off, search for topics that you’d like to read up on, or even view it in “lights off” mode (remember reading under the covers with a flashlight?). If you’re on Chrome’s beta channel, you can give the Chrome PDF viewer a test drive in the “Print book” section of the guidebook.

To read this online guide, go to www.20thingsilearned.com, (or you can use this shortened URL: goo.gl/20things.) And to learn more about how we made it, you can read about the technical details on the Google Code Blog.







Posted by Min Li Chan, Product Marketing Manager

New Chrome Extensions by Google

We've been thrilled to see many useful Chrome extensions created by developers around the world. Similarly, Googlers have been very enthusiastic about creating extensions that allow users to add features to their favorite Google products. We have a handful of new extensions in the gallery that we're keen to share with you, including new official extensions for Google Calendar, Google Docs and YouTube.

For those of you with busy schedules, the new Google Calendar extension lets you easily check your Google Calendar for upcoming events and add new events from the websites you visit. For example, if you see an icon with a green plus sign on sites like Facebook or Evite, you can add the event to your Google Calendar. It will also show a map if it detects a location associated with the event.



The Web Clipboard extension allows you to copy and paste text and images easily with the Google Docs clipboard. This means that all the web content that you copy and paste is stored in the online clipboard so you can access it quickly and easily across multiple browser windows.



To stay on top of your favorite videos, YouTube Feed notifies you whenever new videos are available in your YouTube homepage feed. You can directly access videos that your friends uploaded, rated and liked right in your browser.



And there’s more! Other Google extensions like Blog This, Google Calendar Checker and News Reader have been updated with new features like enabling special characters in blog posts, support for multiple calendars and custom news feeds.

These are just a few extensions that enhance your experience with Google products. With more than 8,000 extensions to choose from in the gallery, you can find the right extensions to complement your favorite Google products.

Posted by Koh Kim, Associate Product Marketing Manager

PDF goodness in Chrome

With every Google Chrome release, we hope to bring new features and improvements that will make your life on the web speedier, simpler, and more secure. Today, we’re excited to introduce the integrated PDF viewer to the beta channel.

PDF is a popular file format that’s used for delivering documents on the web (such as the IRS W-4 tax form). To open a PDF document, you’d typically need to install additional software or a browser plug-in in order to view it in a web browser. With the integrated Chrome PDF viewer now available in Chrome’s beta, you can open a PDF document in Chrome without installing additional software. The PDF document will load as quickly and seamlessly as a normal web page in the browser.

Just like we do with web pages viewed in Chrome, we’ve built in an additional layer of security called the “sandbox” around the Chrome PDF viewer to help protect you from malware and security attacks that are targeted at PDF files. For now, the Chrome PDF viewer is available only in the beta channel, but we look forward to adding more polish and features, as well as making it widely available in the stable channel soon.

Posted by John Abd-El-Malek, Software Engineer

Understanding the omnibox for better security

National Cyber Security Awareness Month is a good time to learn more about how you can use your browser’s security indicators to stay safe online. One of the most important security indicators in Google Chrome is the “omnibox,” the spot where you enter web addresses:



The first thing to notice about the omnibox is that Google Chrome highlights the domain name of the website that you’re viewing with a slightly darker color. The domain name indicates which website is being displayed by the browser in the current tab. For example, the domain name in the image above is “www.google.com”.

Before interacting with a website, check that the omnibox has highlighted the domain name you expect. If the domain name doesn’t match what you expect, the website might be spoofing the “look and feel” of another site as part of a phishing attack. Google Chrome has built-in protection against phishing, but checking the domain name yourself is a good security habit — especially when entering sensitive information, such as your password or credit card number.

When entering sensitive information, the second thing to notice about the omnibox is the lock icon, which is displayed to the left of the web site address and, in the case above, is colored green. The lock icon indicates that Google Chrome has established an encrypted connection that works like a tunnel between your computer and the domain name displayed in the omnibox. An encrypted connection helps prevent malicious parties from eavesdropping or tampering with the data sent between your computer and the website. Most websites will use an encrypted tunnel when asking for your password or credit card number to help prevent people using the same wireless network as you, for example at a coffee shop, from being able to eavesdrop on your sensitive information.

Some websites have an “extended validation” certificate that lets the browser determine the name of the organization that runs the web site. Notice the green box between the lock icon and the web address in the omnibox:



The extended validation indicator makes it easier for you to determine which organization is responsible for the displayed web page. For example, the extended validation indicator for https://www.benefitaccess.com/ says “Citigroup Inc [US],” indicating that Citigroup is responsible for that web page – a fact which might have been difficult to determine without the indicator. You should be careful to share sensitive information with a website only if you trust the organization responsible for the site.

If you would like to learn more about the browser’s security indicators, you might enjoy reading our Help Center article on Chrome’s indicators. Until next time, safe surfing!


Posted by Adam Barth, Software Engineer