Yesterday might have been a US holiday, but the Twittering and blogging masses were awakened (by quacking claxons, I'm sure) to the inadvertent leak of Google Chrome, the oft-rumored browser from the search giant. Naturally, everyone wants a piece of the action. Here are a few of the stories we're digesting:

TechCrunch has some juicy first pics of the browser. They snagged a few blurry YouTube screenshots before the demo video was pulled as well. Is "blurry" and YouTube in the same sentence redundant?

Not everyone is enamored with Chrome. Lance Ulanoff at PC Magazine provides tonic to those who think this is a real game-changer. He makes some great points.

At the moment, the Google Chrome comic book page on Blogoscoped is down because the "server is a bit stressed right now." I need 90cc's of Google juice, stat!

If you think Quikboy has something to say about Chrome, you haven't read the thread over on Slashdot. Go ahead, we can wait.

Yes, there's already a Wikipedia page!

Don't forget Mashable's take, our old buddy Marshall Kirkpatrick runs down the top features and Ina Fried (Webware) points out what everyone has been repeating: Redmond, volley off the port bow.

Google News has a little over 1,000 stories on Chrome, all within 24 hours. So who's not interested in this thing?

The read link on this post takes you to our Google Chrome page, and we'll be liveblogging around 2pm to cover the press conference via those who are there. Will September 2 be a watershed day online, or is Google's browser destined to be an also-ran? Leave your thoughts in the comments, as always.

UPDATES:
Chris Messina chimes in, explaining why this is important to Mozilla and the open web at large.
Forgot to include Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, who references her awesome interview with Mozilla CEO John Lilly.
VC extraordinaire Fred Wilson pulls up a three-legged stool to explain what this means.
Switched has a post about Chrome as well.
Matt Cutts has a liveblog going of the announcement (thanks Ryan!)
Jack Flack deciphers the Googlespeak.
Ryan at CybernetNews asks if Chrome will eat all other browsers for lunch.
OStatic's Mike Gunderloy has a terrific browser scorecard with his predictions on how other browsers will fare after the Chrome hits the fan.

Read/WriteWeb has a great article up that claims that JavaScript and - more to the point: all of the widgets that JavaScript powers - are ruining the web by slowing down websites to a crawl. The surprising information here is that JavaScript is a single-threaded language, meaning that in most cases nothing can happen on a website while a given piece of JavaScript code is being run. While this isn't a big deal for small or fast code, anything that your site is loading from a 3rd party that isn't optimized could be drastically slowing your site down.

Some tips are included with respect to how to optimize your pages to be minimally impacted by potentially slow JavaScript, however there is no easy solution. Maybe simply using moderation when determining which widgets to add to your site is the best advice.

Over at Read/WriteWeb Ebrahim Ezzy has written an interesting article called Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search, which inspects some of the next-generation search technologies that are showing up. Ezzy calls Search 2.0 the third generation of search engines (go figure)--whereas first-generation search (e.g. AltaVista) ranked by content and second-generation search (e.g. Google) ranked by link analysis, Search 2.0 technologies "are designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive." He compares Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink, and Lexxe to traditional search engines and describes how their models can offer a better experience. This article is just Part 1--in Part 2 Ezzy will look at Jookster, Gravee, PreFound and Ezzy's own company, Qube.

[Via Slashdot]

Just counting all the feed readers out there would be a daunting task, much less actually choosing one. Fortunately we have people like Ryan Stewart and Richard MacManus, who've written a round-up of their picks for best-of-breed RSS readers over at Read/WriteWeb. Stewart and MacManus split the task into three categories: Web-based, desktop, and "rich internet application." The latter category is a bit hard to pin down. Stewart and MacManus' idea of an "RIA" is an app that takes the best from both the desktop and the web, i.e. the power of a desktop app with the locationless (and install-less) and social aspects of a web app. For web-based readers, MacManus chooses Rojo (which I recently praised here) and Bloglines, and for the desktop NewsGator and BlogBridge. For the RIA category they don't have any definitive picks, but MacManus tentatively taps Google Reader, FeedLounge, and Goowy. Head over to Read/WriteWeb to read the full article, or post your own picks in the comments.

WAMPAD's tagline is "Your Internet Speed Dial." Essentially it's a home page for your mobile browser, giving you quick access to a number of different sites and services from one place. Rather than "widgets" WAMPAD's different services, like Flickr, del.icio.us, MySpace, Wikipedia, movies, horoscopes, etc., are displayed with a single search box and a drop-down menu to choose what service you want to query, and you can customize which options are presented. The lack of true customization may turn off some users, but its simplicity may appeal to others. Notably missing is any RSS feed functionality, but if you're after something more complex there's always Google Mobile.

[Via Read/WriteWeb]

Back in February we reported on stirrings related to a brand new design for Yahoo!'s home page, and today Yahoo! is officially showing it off. For me the new design shows up when I go to yahoo.com, but if it doesn't show up for you, try going to yahoo.com/preview. Read/WriteWeb's Richard MacManus has a nice overview of all of the new Yahoo!'s biggest features, but here are the highlights: A bigger search box, a lot more JavaScript and Ajax, more multimedia, an emphasis on news and community, and a new "Personal Assistant" that displays Yahoo! Mail messages, online friends from Y!IM, and local weather, traffic, movies, etc. The new design makes the home page wider, filling a 1024x768 browser window and accomodating a new left-hand navigation bar for accessing Yahoo!'s various services, but there's also a "Page Options" drop-down that lets you switch to a narrower view and even choose a color scheme. Like MacManus, I think the new design isn't just a pretty change of scenery; it really seems to improve on the home page experience and cut down on the "portal bloat" that Yahoo! has fallen victim to over the past decade or so.

AOL's much-talked-about social networking site AIM Pages launched today in beta form at AIMPages.com. Logging in with your AIM screen name takes you to the profile editor, which has a neat drag-and-drop Ajax interface. By default your AIM Pages profile has a few "modules" like the obligatory photo and "About Me" box, and you can add other modules like RSS feeds, photo tickers from Flickr or AOL, and even games, by dragging them to the column and position you would like them to appear. Each module has "Edit" and "Style" buttons for changing their settings and appearances. It also has more than 75 built-in themes which range from clean to cutesy to garish, and after choosing a theme you can further customize it. I've only used AIM Pages for about a half hour so far, but my earliest impressions are that it's a whole lot better than MySpace (though my MySpace experience is similarly limited), the integration with AIM is great but could be better, the Ajax is cool (and occasionally useful) but lacks the "snappiness" I've come to expect from Ajax apps. I'm not sure that AIM Pages is ready for the MySpace crowd yet (think Microsoft-grade beta, not Google beta), but there's one thing that, as a web geek, I'm very excited about: the open API. "Open" is not a word we tend to associate with AOL (and I write for them!), but for awhile now AOL has been running a site called I Am Alpha which is a testbed and resource for people who want to build modules for what turned out to be AIM Pages. I haven't attempted to create a module myself yet (and it's unclear what the protocol is for actually getting a module you made into AIM Pages), but the documentation is free and open, which opens up possibilities for AIM Pages that I'm sure even its developers haven't thought of.

The blogosphere is replete today with chatter about AIM Pages. For more discussion, take a look at Michael Arrington's less-than-glowing first impressions at TechCrunch, some optimistic views from Richard MacManus' Read/Write Web and J. Botter, and more commentary from Stowe Boyd and Vecosys.