The galaxy is teeming with organic matter

Recent research is coming to the conclusion that, during specific parts of their life-cycle, stars generate large amounts of organic matter and send them careening through the interstellar medium. This is a huge new piece of information to finding the beginnings of life on Earth. For a time now, it has been believed that life on Earth was seeded by meteorites containing the necessary building blocks for life. How those compounds showed up on space rocks has been a big open question in the theory.

Now this is camera magic...WOW

There are not too many products that come out these days that truly make me catch my breath. Finding new technology is more of a hum-drum hobby than an adventurous search into the unknown. Today, however, I really had a "WOW" kind of moment.

The Lytro camera debuted today and this little stick of a camera, called a light-field camera, produces some astounding results. Try out the demo below by clicking on the person in the background and then clicking on the bike tire in the foreground. Amazing!

How does it work? Well, that can be a little complicated as this involves some physics that are foreign to your own experience with light. First off, the camera is not just collecting light like a normal camera. Instead, a light-field camera is capable of recording, in addition to color and intensity, the vector direction of the rays of light. Knowing how all of the light made its way to your camera allows for a computer to manage focus using software. A normal camera uses hardware to focus in on one direction of light. The light-field camera captures all the possible focusing configurations. With this ability you can focus on any part of an image long after it was taken. In addition, you can then refocus the image as many times as you like.

Also, as you can see above, these images can be embedded on any website, even your Facebook wall.

More photo fun: https://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/

How does a self-driving car make decisions?

A self-driving Golf Cart too! Just first two minutes.

Flavors.me is a beautiful and highly usable way to set up your personal page

I was just checking out this website, flavors.me, and it is one of the coolest, sexiest places to host and design your personal information page. The design here is truly phenomenal. Simple, one-step sign-up and a clean interface provide an experience that is clear and straightforward while allowing for a lot of customization. Speaking of customization, if you want to add an even more unique look beyond what is available in the free version, you can upgrade to their premium service for just $20/year. It includes more fonts, SEO metadata, the ability to re-route from a custom domain, analytics and more.

Get the whole scoop in the following video.

WebGL provides a seamless Google Maps experience

WebGL allows web developers to build interactive 3D graphics within a modern browser (Chrome/Firefox). It basically allows websites to use your graphics card just like a desktop app or video game would. If you have a compatible browser and video card, you can head over to Google Maps and enable a WebGL experience. Using vector graphics, Google Maps with WebGL seamlessly zooms in and out without waiting for image tiles to load, transitions from maps to satellite images is snappy and swooping around the map in three dimensions feels natural.

This is how the future of web applications is going to look. Fast, reliable and nearly indistinguishable, in experience and performance, from their desktop counterparts.

See the video below for a demo.

Chrome Remote Desktop BETA now available

New Chrome App allows you to gain remote access or share access with any computer running the Chrome browser and this new app. It is fantastically simple in that you generate an access code and then use that code to access your computer (or someone else's, think of providing support to family/friends). Do note that Google has splashed BETA in big red letters all over this app so use with caution.

Chrome Remote Desktop BETA

Get notified, or don't, on Google+

Google just rolled out the ability to customize your notifications settings even further than before. Limit notifications to specific circles, individuals or let the spam train ride. With a precipitous drop in activity since Plus went to open beta, Google needs to entice users back in with every little feature they can eek out.

More: Google+ Now Let’s Users Customize Who They Receive Notifications From [News]