Google Chrome as a Media Player

Ever had the problem of using so many different programs simultaneously on your laptop that it doesn't like to respond? Well, that's a common feature for computer science and bioinformatics people. You may have  a browser with dozens of tabs, a music player, an R console, your favorite IDE (text editor), a word document maybe (if you are writing a manuscript/report), probably an excel sheet too.
A nifty feature of Google Chrome browser is that it can double up as a media player for you. I have not yet tested other browsers which may be able to do this but since I am a heavy chrome user, I will focus exclusively on that.

Chrome as a music player-
it ca easily play mp3 files ( i have tested this). Saves me from opening another application (music player) on an already burdened system. I think it might be able to play other formats too (wma, wav etc). If you test/have tested, please add those in comments section.

Chrome as a video player-
I was just wondering if chrome can also double up as my video player? Lo and behold, yes it can. I tried mp4 files downloaded from coursera, an online educational MOOC. It played the files easily. It could also run mkv files but failed in case of avi files. Not too great since most videos we (rather I) have, might be in avi format but pretty good for smartphone/ipod videos (mp4 format).

Try it and let me know !

Update:
1. I forgot to mention that although a good feature of chrome to play media files, it lacks the additional functionality which some of us may want like playing in loop, playing and making a playlist etc.
2. Chrome can also be used to view common image files (JPG, GIF etc).
3. You can use chrome for viewing your text/XML files.

Tab to Search in Google Chrome

Imagine you are a Google Chrome user (of course you are! What? Still using the browser that should not be named here? Please leave my blog immediately !).

You want to do a you tube search for your favorite music video, let's assume PSY gangnam style¹.
So you open Google chrome and write youtube in the omnibox, press enter. Then you click on youtube site from results and search for PSY gangnam style there. Alternatively, you write Youtube PSY gangnam style or just PSY gangnam style in the omnibox, click on search results to goto the page. Sounds familiar?

Google Chrome has a unique feature to cut down on the number of clicks you make here. It has a feature (of course it's not new, not now at least) called Tab to Search which helps you search a specific site directly from the omnibox. All you need to do is write the site name (youtube), when the name appears in suggestions, press the tab button. If chrome recognizes its search API, you will see a "Search Youtube" sign. Replace the site name (i.e youtube) for linkedin, scholar, pubmed, uniprot, NCBI, yahoo or whatever site you want to search. Type your query and you directly reach youtube search results instead of having to goto google results followed by site and then searching there.

It will not recognize any site at first for Tab to search feature. Once you visit the site a few times, chrome will recognize its API and you can search it easily.

I thought this feature might be well known but have been recently surprised that I was wrong. Though, most computationally inclined people may know it already.

For in-depth details - visit chrome's page explaining this feature.


References-
1. Here is the link in case you still can't search it that way :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQ