http://slyoyster.com

You can download the free virtual appliance of Chrome OS here. The tarball is containing vmdk and vmx files, so you’ll need a free VMware Player or VirtualBox in order to run this appliance. 

Not sure if this is on the up and up but Google did hold a press conference today with details of their much bally-whooed OS and it sounds impressive. 

It won’t be officially launched until first or second quarter 2010 and it really will be a browser-based interface.

Pac-Man recreated in real life using hacked Roombas linked wirelessly to homebrewed guidance software. And the story makes it seem waaay more complicated than that. [via]

A single page overview of everything that Google has on you.  Interesting and having seen this for the first time, I’m surprised Google hasn’t offered this before.  I mean there was always iGoogle or whatever they hell that was called, but this is different, easier to read.

Firefox turns five-years-old tomorrow.  It’s no longer a trendy upstart, but every bit as popular as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (based solely on my browser metrics).  You would think a profile on a web browser wouldn’t be fascinating, but then you’d be wrong. Wired goes in depth to see how Firefox got where it is and where it plans on going in the next five years.

If we’re being honest, the only thing Internet Explorer is good for is downloading another browser.

We took notice when Google first announced they were going to add a music search function.  If you haven’t seen the music search feature yet in your searches, you will; they are rolling it out slowly.  However, you can test it out here.

I’m not terribly sold on this, but it’s a step in the right direction.  What I’d want is something that searches for Mp3s like the Hype Machine, as well as torrents.  But I understand the legality involved with both of those practices and how that functionality isn’t in Google’s best interests.

I’ve long resisted to switching to Google Voice because I can port my cell number to Google.  I’d have to get a new number and give that out to the five people in my life who still care enough to call me.  So annoying.  But now, they’ve opened a “light” version of the app, which will provide any cellphone user with the robust feature set.  FYI.

Well this is certainly a clever use for Microsoft’s Surface table computer.  I’ve only played D&D a few times in my life, but I’ve got to say that the game paired up with the Surface looks pretty fun.  [via]

This is exciting news.  Redlasso, which was a site that allowed people to search and clip and embed live television and radio clips, went dark in July of 2008 due to a lawsuit from NBC/FOX.  Obviously there were copyright issues, but I found the site to always be the first place I would look, when say, searching for highlights from an awards show either while it was still on the air or immediately afterwords.  I was a bit sad when it went dark and completely put it out of my mind.

Well, the site has relaunched and though I haven’t given the new version a go, it looks like they’ve managed to license content and keep things on the up and up with the content providers.  The layout is a bit different than I remember it being, but nothing radically so.

According to a press release:

The sources within the platform are a bit different than you may remember, but we are very excited to announce that we are launching the platform with licensed content from over 100 TV and Radio sources from around the country.  There will be at least one television news source in each one of the top 50 US cities, where the majority of the sources allow you to search, clip and share their broadcast news content.We’re also excited to unveil an entirely new site design.  Picking up where we left off, we’ve brought to life many of your suggestions from the beta.  The new site will have:

• Daily featured clips
• The ability to cross search each of our sources simultaneously
• The ability to conduct local market or regional searches
• The ability to generate instant local or category based RSS feeds
• The interactive display of all clip closed caption content for easy quoting for your blog
• A new section called “As Seen On” where we will feature your Redlasso blog posts
• A brand new Redlasso blog where we will feature great content, our members sites and Redlasso updates
• New Facebook and Twitter pages, and much more coming soon!

It’s always difficult to gain traction after losing it, but hopefully Redlasso can do so once again.

Google Wave gets rolled out to a 100,000+ test audience today in the hopes that the bugs and wrinkles will get fully worked out.  Those people will also get invites to hand out to people, with what I assume, is a rollout plan similar to Gmail.

I’m of two thoughts: Is this really going to be the next generation of communication programs and when will it roll out to the public at large?  “While the team declined to give a specific time-table, they did say that it will definitely be 2010, and alluded to the fact that it should be the first half of 2010. They also noted that one key next step will be to provide support for other languages. Right now, Wave is English-only, even though it has tools built in that translate its content to any other language,” writes Tech Crunch.

It seems like a natural thing that the Twitter folks (follow us @slyoyster) would have created, similar to the iPhone App store, especially given Twitter’s explosion in user-base, mobile apps, web-based clients, and desktop applications all based on it’s open API.  But alas, they were beat to the punch by Oneforty.

The site is currently in private beta, but Tech Crunch as a rundown of all their apps — about 1,300 and counting.

Trendsmap is a real-time Twitter tag map, so you can see what any given community is buzzing about at any given time of the day. 

It’s probably a bit cooler than it is useful at this moment.  But, if I were  a major news organization I would have this up splashed across a monitor in the newsroom. 

For people who still scoff at Twitter, I tell them, think of it as a digital telegraph or news wire (that also allows you to chat with friends).

Now there’s no reason to leave the house, well I guess there won’t be until you can order strippers and beer.

As if you needed yet another way to consume more information, Google has rolled out what they are calling Fast Flip: “The way we would describe Fast Flip would be that it’s not quite a feed reader, and not quite an online magazine. The front page of Fast Flip presents you with several rows of content that can be sorted by topic—the top row lets you choose between recent, most viewed, and recommended headlines, while the second row lets you choose between various hot topics (unsurprisingly, Taylor Swift resides in this row as of this writing), and the third row lets you choose between specific news sources.”

Whereas an RSS reader is something you can specifically taylor to your individual tastes, Fast Flip acts as a method for scanning newspapers and magazines (no blogs I suppose).

Google has partnered with 36 magazine and newspaper publishers, who will receive revenue generated from ads on the site. Currently, the publishers include The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and ProPublica, according to The Official Google blog.

The BBC reports that other publications such as Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, Popular Mechanics, and Slate, have signed on with Google. (Full disclosure: The Christian Science Monitor is one of the newspapers featured on Google Fast Flip.)