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by Mike Krumboltz

George Clooney is a respected actor, director, and activist. But he's also a born prankster. The star of "The Descendants" recently visited "Inside the Actors Studio," where he dished about his plans for pulling one over on his good friend and rival Brad Pitt.

In the clip, an audience member asks Clooney about some of his favorite pranks that he's pulled. Clooney says, "I'm a big believer in making (movie) sets fun ... I have done some horrible things to people. Truly, truly horrible. I'm working on one now for Brad Pitt. It might end his career." Clooney then added, "I owe him, so I'm getting him."

What did Pitt do to inspire such a revenge? We're not sure if this is the reason, but according to Matt Damon, while on the set of "Ocean's Twelve," Pitt constructed a fake memo and gave it to the Italian crew. The memo instructed the crew not to look Clooney in the eye and only call him "Danny" or "Mr. Ocean." Clooney was apparently none too pleased.

Clooney's love of pranks goes way back. As the New York Post explains, the Oscar winner placed plants in front of Julia Roberts's trailer door on the set of "Ocean's Eleven" so she couldn't exit. He arranged for a tailor to secretly take in Matt Damon's pants every day while Damon was trying to lose weight for a role. "He couldn't understand how he seemed to be gaining weight while he was trying so hard to lose it," Clooney explained.

He also once told his friend, actor Richard Kind, that he was studying art. Clooney found a horrible-looking painting in the trash and told Kind that he'd painted it. "And then for his 40th birthday I gave him this horrible painting. He had to hang it on his wall, [it was by] his best friend! And for years people would come over -- everyone else knew it was out of the trash -- and go, 'That is a beautiful painting.'"

The episode of "Inside the Actors Studio" will air January 31.

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by Vera H-C Chan

In today's modern world of Internet hoaxes, celebs must spend time reassuring people of their continued existence. There are celebrity death generators online, in which you can choose the place, time, and manner of death --  often abroad and in a car off the cliffs.

This Cher rumor, however, was traced to a Tweet from someone whose handle is @Lorraine_Star: She falsely claimed that CNN reported of the 65-year-old mega-star's untimely demise in her Malibu home. Her motivation stems from the odd path to fame — falsely declaring a celeb dead to get followers.

The news was retweeted by Kim Kardashian to her 12 million followers — and since angrily retracted. @Lorraine_Star, known among her followers for expletive-filled derogatory posts about celebrities, has since proudly claimed credit for the hoax: "I started the Cher Trending topic Because I'm God."

There has been an earlier Twitition to remove @Lorraine_Star from Twitter because of her frequent foul-mouthed, derogatory posts about celebrities, and "she is so mean, so rude!!!" Kim K might just sign that one.

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by Mike Krumboltz

Alert Principal Rooney! Ferris Bueller, that righteous dude we all know and love, is making a return.

A 10-second teaser for an upcoming Super Bowl commercial shows a modern-day Matthew Broderick opening bedroom curtains, turning to the camera, and saying, "How can I handle work on a day like today?" Then the familiar "boom-boom-chick-chicka-chickah" music from the John Hughes movie plays over a black screen that reads, "2.5.12" (the date of the Super Bowl).

Some wondered if the clip might indicate that a sequel to "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is in the works. Not so. Reports indicate that it's actually a sneak peek at a commercial for Honda. According to auto blog Jalopnik, the commercial, which was directed by Todd Phillips of "The Hangover," will feature a Honda CR-V doing the same kind of stunts Ferris and Cameron did in Cameron's dad's 1961 Ferrari 250GT California. Much of the commercial will mimick shots from the 1986 film.

The idea of the inspirational, rebellious, take-no-gruff Ferris driving a mini-SUV is a little sad to us. But, hey, everybody gets old. And judging by the buzz around the teaser, Ferris hasn't lost his popularity. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, bloods, wastoids, dweebies -- they all adore him.

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by Claudine Zap

Timing is everything, and when news broke that Demi Moore had been hospitalized for "health and exhaustion issues," ex Ashton Kutcher was living it up in Brazil.

The two split last November after the "Two and a Half Men" star reportedly cheated on his wife of six years. But even though the two are kaput and Kutcher appears to be partying with supermodels in Sao Paulo, it doesn't mean he doesn't care.

A source told People that the 33-year-old is "deeply concerned for Demi," adding, "He still cares about her and wants the best for her. But their marriage is ending and they are both moving on with their lives." In fact, the source said Kutcher was in the South American country shooting an ad campaign when he heard the news.

The Web was certainly moved by Moore's health crisis. Yahoo! searches for "demi moore news" rose 200% in the last day. The 49-year-old was hospitalized on Monday night after she apparently suffered a seizure. At the same time, Kutcher was tweeting a picture of himself "surfing the streets of Sao Paulo." For now, he's gone Twitter-silent.

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by Mike Krumboltz

Va-va-va-voom! Salma Hayek, 45, showed off her famous figure at two recent events, proving once again that she can't not look good.

The stunning star attended the Paris premiere of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" in a black leather ensemble. Hayek paired the dress with a glamorous updo and suede boots. The belted outfit, with its three-quarter-length sleeves, struck that so-difficult-to-hit balance between provocative and demure.

A few days later, Hayek rocked a daring black lace dress at an event at Paris Couture Week. The wraparound gown, which Hayak paired with a sexy black choker from Yves Saint Laurent, showed off the actress's gorgeous gams and, ahem, imposing cleavage.

Hayek attended the event with husband François-Henri Pinault. The Frenchman is chief executive officer of PPR, a multinational company that specializes in luxury retail brands like Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Hayek and Pinault have one child together, a daughter. Pinault has three other children, including a son with model Linda Evangelista.

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Googlers are the types who never really leave the classroom. Guest speakers come to campus to give talks on subjects ranging from fiction to physics. Diverse groups of people work together to understand and solve big problems while groups of Googlers engage in passionate debate in our cafeterias. Given this environment, it’s no surprise how highly we value our external work in education. We have a growing number of successful education programs from primary school through to university, as well as a suite of free and open tools that reach families and classrooms around the world.

Recently, we decided to gather our resources and lessons learned into one place for educators everywhere. “Google in Education: A New and Open World for Learning” highlights how people are using Google resources to enhance teaching and learning. This booklet isn’t your typical annual report; it’s a living document for educators to use year-round. We’ve also revamped our website, google.com/edu, to be a one-stop shop for teachers, students, parents and organizations to explore all of our offerings. We’ve launched a Google+ page, where everyone can stay updated on our educational tools, products and programs, and join the conversation.


To develop all of these new materials, we went straight to the source, relying on dozens of educators to provide stories and feedback. We hope these resources will inspire and enable teachers, while affirming our commitment to increasing access to an excellent education for all.

Thanks to educators, students and supporters everywhere for helping to extend our spirit of lifelong learning into classrooms around the globe.

For more information about Google in Education, visit www.google.com/edu/about, and to stay updated on the world of education at Google and connect with fellow educators, follow us on Google+.

Posted by Jordan Lloyd Bookey, Head of Global K-12 Education Outreach

Will

Roberto

By Roberto Peon and Will Chan, Software Engineers

Cross-posted with the Chromium Blog

In the two years since we announced SPDY, we’ve been working with the web community on evolving the spec and getting SPDY deployed on the Web.

Chrome, Android Honeycomb devices, and Google's servers have been speaking SPDY for some time, bringing important benefits to users. For example, thanks to SPDY, a significant percentage of Chrome users saw a decrease in search latency when we launched SSL-search. Given that Google search results are some of the most highly optimized pages on the internet, this was a surprising and welcome result.

We’ve also seen widespread community uptake and participation. Recently, Firefox has added SPDY support, which means that soon half of the browsers in use will support SPDY. On the server front, nginx has announced plans to implement SPDY, and we're actively working on a full featured mod-spdy for Apache. In addition, Strangeloop, Amazon, and Cotendo have all announced that they’ve been using SPDY.

Given SPDY's rapid adoption rate, we’re working hard on acceptance tests to help validate new implementations. Our best practices document can also help website operators make their sites as speedy as possible.

With the help of Mozilla and other contributors, we’re pushing hard to finalize and implement SPDY draft-3 in early 2012, as standardization discussions for SPDY will start at the next meeting of the IETF.

We look forward to working even more closely with the community to improve SPDY and make the Web faster!

To learn more about SPDY, see the link to a Tech Talk here, with slides here.


Roberto Peon and Will Chan co-lead the SPDY effort at Google. Roberto leads SPDY server efforts and continues to tell people to be unafraid of trying to change the world for the better. Will works on the Chrome network stack and leads the Chrome SPDY efforts. Outside of work, Will enjoys traveling the world in search of cheap beer and absurd situations.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor