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)

[YouTube clip]