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Chrome OS, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud

Chrome OS: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud
Yesterday, Google finally took the cover off Chrome OS and, in so doing, gave a bunch of foamy-mouthed tech journalists an idea of what to expect once consumers are able to get their hands on it late next year. There weren't many surprises in the announcement. Chrome OS is a tweaked Chrome browser running on top of a streamlined version of Linux -- exactly what most were expecting. We can already play games, watch movies, create spreadsheets, and send IMs -- all without leaving the comfort of any number of browsers. Chrome OS just seeks to remove the middle man.

The highly customized version of Linux is designed to run on Google-certified hardware. By specifying what components can comprise a Chrome OS netbook, Google is able to strip away many "unessential" parts of the OS, making it boot and run faster. Even in this early stage (a year away from release), it only takes 10 seconds to go from pressing the power button to browsing the Web. There are some trade-offs to this design, however. Chrome OS will not support traditional hard drives, meaning you can forget about keeping your giant music collection on one of these babies. Instead, it will only feature smaller, faster, solid-state drives (SSD) and rely on the cloud to store documents and photos. It will, however, recognize and open whatever USB drives and cameras are plugged into it.

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'Twilight' Content Leaves Scammers Thirsting for Your (Digital) Blood

Malware Makers Cash-In on 'Twilight' Craze
As per usual, malware purveyors are hopping on the latest fad in order to lure unsuspecting Web surfers into their dens of digital evil. And what are the kids talking about right now? Well, 'Twilight,' of course.

With the new installment of the teen vampire saga set to hit theaters Friday, Web searches for interviews with cast members, for bootleg copies of the film, and for other content related to 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' have sky-rocketed. Using this buzz to their advantage, makers of viruses, trojans, and spyware are embedding malicious code in fake movie files and video streams, and posting the nefarious results.

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Kidrobot Founder Talks Butts, Bunnies, and His Empire of Vinyl Art


Paul Budnitz has amazingly sent young adults scrambling after collectible vinyl figures as if they were children after toys. And toys, in essence, those figures are, but not in the child-friendly sense of the word. (In fact, Budnitz points out that his company's products often come armed with cigarettes and machine guns.) Kidrobot, which Budnitz conceived while collecting figurines during a stay in China, is famous for its small and affordable art pieces designed by underground and mainstream artists, graffiti writers, and musicians.

What started as a pastime has become an international phenomenon; collectors camp out to get limited-edition Kidrobot figures, and people like Karl Lagerfeld and Matt Groening have gotten in on the design action. Kidrobot crosses cultures, claiming a strong following among comic book readers, alternative rock fans, hip-hop stars, and even us gadget nerds (who have the colorful creations brightening up our cubicles). And that's precisely what Budnitz set out to do: to give young (but not too young) individuals a way of "collecting art" without breaking the bank, and to brighten their lives with beautiful, hilarious, or just outright interesting art objects.

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Facebook Sued Over Scam Ads, Oprah Rumors Spark Twitter Frenzy


Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines....
  • It was only a matter of time before all of those irritating and ridiculous games got Facebook in trouble. The social networking site has reportedly been named in a $5 million class-action lawsuit, together with gaming firm Zynga, for allowing scam ads to appear during games like 'Mafia Wars' and 'Farmville.' [From: Business Insider]
  • Oprah's Twitter entrance created an instant and massive surge of activity on the site back in April. Yesterday, Oprah was once again the focus of a tweeting frenzy (over 8,000 in just one hour), but this flurry centered on the anticipated, solemn end of her 23-year-old television show. [From: Mashable]
  • The four-year-old acquisition drama between Skype and eBay has officially come to a close. eBay once claimed that it paid about $1 billion more than it should have with its $2.6 billion purchase of the VoIP service in 2005. Skype, though, has actually now been valued at a whopping $2.75 billion. [From: Mashable]
  • Despite a 19-percent plummet in console and video game sales in October, 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2' earned a staggering $550 million during its first five days on the market. The numbers have topped the record-breaking $500 million that 'Grand Theft Auto IV' generated during its first week last year. So, if manufacturers want to make money during the recession, they apparently just need to let consumers virtually take out their frustrations by annihilating everything in sight. [From: Reuters]
  • While some already exist, Google is hoping to steadily and automatically add captions to the bottom of every YouTube video. The site will utilize speech-recognition software to generate captions in order to aid deaf and hearing-impaired viewers. [From: USA Today]
  • Rupert Murdoch's recent threat to remove News Corp. stories from Google has prompted a response from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. Stone attested that the childish and antiquated return to a "ridiculously closed" approach would "fail fast." Harumph. What would that impudent whippersnapper possibly know about integrating the media and the Internets? [From: Mashable]

Twitter Now Asks, "What's Happening?"


What's in a question? Twitter has long asked its users, "What are you doing?" This, of course, gave rise to the ubiquity of the status update, as people took Twitter's inquiry so literally that they would write about the most banal goings on -- from buying coffee to using the bathroom. But as Twitter's user base has grown exponentially, so have the style and content of tweets. Of late, substantive Twitter missives have become de rigeur, as tweets have chronicled the contested Iranian presidential election and disseminated other breaking news.

As such, Twitter decided yesterday to modify "What are you doing?" to the more appropriate "What's happening?" in order to reflect the open model of communication that tweeting now allows. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, wrote on the company's blog, "People, organizations, and businesses quickly began leveraging the open nature of the network to share anything they wanted, completely ignoring the original question, seemingly on a quest to both ask and answer a different, more immediate question."

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The Daily Engadget: Win 7 Selling Strongly, California Mandates Greener HDTVs

Our friends over at Engadget obsessively cover everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics, which is why we compile this daily roundup of their top stuff (or, at least, what we think is tops). For more details on any of these stories, click on the Engadget links in each story below. California Mandates Energy Efficiency Improvements by 2011 Those heat waves rising from the back of ...

Microsoft Previews Internet Explorer 9, Looks Like a Contender

With Chrome chugging along toward version 4.0 and Firefox 3.6 just around the corner, Microsoft is in danger of falling even further behind in the browser wars. The boys in Redmond released Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) earlier this year, and while it was an improvement over IE7, we were generally disappointed with its stability. Plus, it still was far behind its competitors in raw speed. Turns ...

Chinese Military Web Site Battered With Attempted Cyber-Attacks

When China launched a Web site for its defense ministry in August, the whole world took notice. With both English and Chinese versions, the government hoped the site would prove it was serious about being more transparent when it came to the military. However, this attempt also attracted hackers. According to BBC News, there have been about 2.3 million cyber-attacks on the site in its first ...

Is the Android OS Growing Too Quickly?

After getting off to a slow start, Android phones have gone gangbusters. As of last July, there was only one Android-powered device available in the U.S., but that number has since exploded. Now, there are eight Android phones available stateside, with more expected to debut in the coming months. So things must be looking pretty great for the mobile OS from Google, right? Not necessarily. A ...

Quickly Switch Apps on a Palm Pre

Rather than opening your Palm Pre's Card View function to sort through all of your open apps, you can simply swipe back and forth between running apps. Go to the Launcher and select Screen & Lock. Under the heading 'Advanced Gestures,' slide the Switch Applications option from Off to On. Now, when you have several apps open, you can swipe left across the length of the gesture area to ...

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