Google took the wraps off of its Chrome OS project on Thursday when it released the unfinished code to the public with the announcement of the Chromium open source project.

When it's finished in about a year (timeline according to Google), the project will result in a computer operating system that marries the Linux kernel to Google's Chrome Web browser. The new open-source OS will only run Web applications. Data will be stored in the "cloud." Local memory will be used for caching data, not storing it permanently.

It's a focused vision from Google:

First, it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

Google says this approach -- making the browser the only real application running on the computer -- will make start-up times blazingly fast, simplify the user experience by focusing on the one app people use all the time and up the level of security for your device and data.

The device everyone is talking about is the "netbook." Chrome OS is being seen right now, a year before it is finished, as an OS that slots between small mobile devices like Google's own Android mobile platform and a full Linux implementation like Ubuntu.

Of course, this project is meant to compete with more than just other open-source projects. It's aimed at Microsoft and Apple. It is a general-use computing system that takes us back to a time when dumb terminals connected to mainframes.

Only, now, we're calling the dumb terminal a netbook and the mainframe the cloud. Of course, a lot of other things have changed. High-speed Internet access is widely available. Open-source code like Linux and HTML 5 are there for anyone to tinker with and build interoperable systems on. It's not quite like 1979 all over again. But the similarities between Google's vision and the first networked computing models is striking.

This is really, however, a return to Google's roots and principles. When the search service first hit the scene, it was a radical departure from the search services of the day, such as AltaVista, Yahoo! and Northern Lights.

Google replaced their fussy, imperfect services with an ultra-minimalist home page and the belief that one click could get you what you wanted.

Now they're offering up a vision of the future where one local app can get you what you want by sweeping away the clutter of the modern computer's desktop and delivering you quickly to the unlimited promise of the Web.

By Katia Dunn

I was talking with my brother, Colin, the other day about what kind of news he reads. He's 20 and in his second year of design school at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He's also a real smarty-pants and, in my opinion, the arbiter of all things cool and of the future.

He pointed me to one of his favorite Web sites, Daring Fireball. It's devoted almost exclusively to Apple industry news. The site is run by John Gruber, who is, according to Colin, one of the most accomplished bloggers on the topic of Apple. I was surprised that one company could sustain a daily blog. As it happens, Daringfireball.net isn't alone. There are several Apple-devoted sites. Some of them employ whole teams of people who spend their days reporting on the company. And, when I say reporting, I mean impressive investigative journalism. More on that in my story I'm working on for All Things Considered.

At the moment, these Apple-devoted bloggers are focused largely on one product: the Apple Tablet, a device supposedly meant to compete with the Kindle. Over at the Boy Genius Report (aka BGR), a site devoted to mobile devices, the much-rumored tablet has been compared to a religious icon.

The tablet is the holy grail right now. We know everything and we know nothing. It could be anything from a six-inch device to a 10-inch device. It could be an actual computer, it could be a large iPod. The whole thing is just misunderstood at this point. And that's what Apple wants

Apple is known for being secretive, and they've no doubt been irritated by past industry leaks to blogs. On the other hand, the speculation and anticipation that these blogs generate is ultimately good press for the company.

The other thing I've been thinking about while reporting this story is how these blogs reflect the changing craft of journalism. There's been a lot of talk about journalism becoming "hyper-local," meaning mainstream media organizations will die and small, local organizations will thrive. But, as my editor Marilyn Geewax said today, "niche is the new local." News consumers of the future might spend equal amounts of time checking NYTimes.com for the latest on President Obama's trip to China and Mac Rumors to see if iTunes media synchronization is still missing its latest updates. In fact, I'm pretty sure Colin's already doing that.

We'd been speculating for a while what Microsoft retail stores might be like before they finally opened last month.

It turns out the truth was more horrifying than any fiction we could have made up (which I did). Employees in the video below are shown line dancing at a Mission Viejo, Calif., store. You can tell from the excessive visual data of their body language that some are happier to be participating than others. And you have to wonder how many copies of "Windows 7" the dancing sold.

I've said before that Microsoft's marketing often seems tone-deaf. Add dancing to the mix and you've got a lethal cocktail:

(Hat tip to Engadget for this remarkable find.)

Our friend Kevin Whitelaw, over at The Two-Way, just filed a piece about how the National Security Agency -- you know, the ones who caused all the controversy around warrantless surveillance -- helped Microsoft with their Windows 7 security.

Whitelaw writes:

"Working in partnership with Microsoft and (the Department of Defense), NSA leveraged our unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide without constraining the user's ability to perform their everyday tasks," Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's Information Assurance Director, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a statement prepared for a hearing held this morning in Washington. "All this was done in coordination with the product release, not months or years later in the product cycle."

This isn't new, Whitelaw explains, because the NSA has been collaborating with Microsoft since 2005.

Remember how amazing it was, way back in 1999, to type the name of a song or artist into Napster and have instant access to a song? Remember how un-amazing it was to wait for it to download over a poky dial-up connection?

It makes sense that music was the first chunk of traditional media to really tumble down in the face of online digital distribution. Songs, already broken down into 1s and 0s for CDs, were easy to digitize (unlike books), small enough in file size to distribute widely and quickly (unlike movies) and just expensive enough to make it worth the trouble. (Remember $18.99 CDs? Dark days.)

In 10 short years, though, we've gone from illegal, fleeting online files to robust, well-populated music services like iTunes, Amazon MP3 and Rhapsody. Even Napster, defanged, fell in line and still survives with a monthly subscription service. Along the way, hundreds of start-ups have tried to tame the online music world, either by corralling it into a social-media site, making music search easier or appealing directly to fans and artists. Most have had little success; there's a long trail of interesting ideas shut down over licensing issues, or that couldn't translate musical notes into dollar bills.

Think you've heard of them all? As part of NPR Music's retrospective on the decade, we challenge you to test your online music-business knowledge with our quiz. It features a mix of past and present digital music services and some fakes we concocted (although they may be already in development -- who knows?).

By Omar L. Gallaga

On this week's All Tech Considered, we return to a subject we first discussed in January: the state of TV on the Web and watching Internet content on your HDTV.

Over the last week, there's been a string of announcements, including the launch of search engine Clicker.com, a piece of hardware due out from Boxee, YouTube's introduction of 1080p-quality Web video and Dell's new Zino HD PC, which seems squarely aimed at living room Web viewing.

A few more bits related to our piece:

• TV Guide also has a service, My DVR for keeping track of online episodes of your favorite shows. TV critic Dale Roe tipped me off to the site.
• Will sites like Hulu keep the free ride going forever? It's not likely. Also: get ready for dual revenue streams and internal turf wars over Hulu ad rates.
• Internet-enabled TVs were the talk of January's Consumer Electronics Show, but we're just starting to see them roll into showrooms.
• One of many tutorials on how to hook up your computer to a television set.
• Rumors of an iTunes all-you-can-eat TV subscription service.

Are you watching Web content on your TV? Tell us where you're surfing and how you're connected in the comments.

YouTube is rolling out a video upgrade to its users -- over the next few days, the company said on its official blog, 1080p video will be available for viewing. The site currently tops out at 720p, which is 1,280 x 720 pixels. 1080p video has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080.

Increasingly gone are the days when we could all complain that Web video looks crummy and lives in a tiny box when viewed on a big-screen TV. Most large HDTVs sold these days have a 1080p native resolution. As we'll discuss next week on All Tech Considered, our options for viewing Web content on our TVs seem to increase by the day and this is certainly one way YouTube plans to stay in that loop.

Of course, videos shot on camera phones are still going to look like garbage, so don't expect the 1080p magic wand to improve the quality of content that already looks terrible at lower resolutions. For videos uploaded at 1080p, however, you'll be able to fill up that big screen as soon as you can figure out how to get that computer to interface with that HDTV. Good luck to you.

(My favorite response about it so far is the Christian Science Monitor's headline which reads, in part, "Um, sure.")

Below is a sample 1080p video from YouTube (much smaller than 1080p, of course, but you can click on it to get to the larger version). My computer monitor won't even display it at 1080p because mine tops out at 1,680 x 1,050.

By Eyder Peralta

This screenshot comes to us from our Flickr pool. Specialkrb writes that she uses her Mac's remote desktop feature to "observe the screens of 6th graders working on their writing assignment."

Talk about classroom surveillance. But specialkrb points out that not only can you use it to make sure students are on task and not surfing TMZ, but you can use it to show off examples of good work.

I saw this video on the Wheels blog over at the NYT. I was thrilled and saddened by turns.

First, it's a slick sports car that can drive itself. It's like the future, now. It's a Hollywood fantasy come to life. It's just amazing technology in a lovely wrapper.

It also looks like the beginning of the end of cars as objects of fun and desire. Machine-chauffeured cars may be efficient. They may have an initial "WOW" factor. But the idea of a future filled with automated cars is also a buzz kill.

The man-machine connection is broken in a world like that. Using a car that drives itself would not require skill, daring or judgment. We could no longer claim mastery over our four-wheeled beasts. The passion and excitement that cars generate today would dissipate and, then, disappear.

Suddenly a car would be more like a bus. And I don't know anyone who gets excited about buses.

By Andy Carvin

Now I know it's not every day you see a blog post on NPR.org about celebrity sex tapes. But today's an exception because of a story we saw on the PBS(!) Web site. Being PBS, of course, they weren't exactly channeling TMZ or Perez Hilton; rather, their MediaShift blog has taken a thoughtful look at whether Gawker.com's publishing of a particular sex tape constitutes "fair use" of unlicensed media.

Given how easy it's become for anyone with Internet access to publish just about anything online, understanding fair use is now more important than ever. Codified within U.S. law in the 1976 Copyright Act, fair use attempts to define the situations in which someone can publish portions of someone else's copyrighted material without licensing it, for the sake of news reporting, criticism and the like.

In the MediaShift post, blogger and law student Rob Arcamona dissects a copyright infringement lawsuit against Gawker by Grey's Anatomy co-star Eric Dane and his wife Rebecca Gayheart, who recorded a video of themselves frolicking in their birthday suits with former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche. Gawker got their hands on the 12-minute video and published an edited, four-minute version of it.

One might think that this is a slam-dunk case for Dane and Gayheart, but MediaShift's Arcamona isn't so sure; he gives Gawker a "three-point spread" in the case. Arcamona then goes through the various factors used to identify legitimate examples of fair use and applies them to the lawsuit.

In a 1985 decision, the Supreme Court stated that a copyright holder has the 'right to control the first public appearance' of copyrighted material. Gawker's post was the first time the public had ever seen the video, meaning that Gawker does not have much of an argument here.

It also probably doesn't help Gawker's case that they used one-third of the entire video in their post, rather than a screenshot or a brief clip.

Having said that, another factor in judging whether fair use applies in a given circumstance is whether or not a person's publishing of a copyright-protected work undermines the copyright holder's ability to make money off of it.

If you watch the video as edited by Gawker - not safe for work, unless you work at Gawker or PBS, anyway - there's no shortage of nudity, but nothing much more salacious than that. That could be relevant to the case, according to Arcamona:

In fact, if the video didn't show Gayheart and Peniche without their shirts, and bleeped out the swear words, it might be suitable for daytime TV.

If the whole video consists only of the threesome hanging around a house naked, then perhaps, after viewing the Gawker excerpt, no one would be interested in purchasing the full version. Thus, 'fair use' would be off the table. ... However, if Gawker edited out some really juicy material - sex scenes, for example - then people could still be interested in a bona fide copy of the recording.

And if that, indeed, turned out to be the case, the relatively tamer Gawker version wouldn't necessarily undermine Dane and Gayheart's ability to make money from it. Hence, a potentially strong fair-use argument by Gawker.

Anyway, the PBS story makes for an entertaining read. The video serves as an unexpected teachable moment about the complex issue of fair use in the Internet age.

For those of you who wish to delve into it further - fair use, not the video - you should check out the Center for Social Media, which has a great collection of best practices regarding fair use. And if you want to delve into the human side of the video, well, there's always Gawker for that.

With Austin's proximity to Fort Hood, you can imagine how significant Veteran's Day feels in this city on this day. I come from a military family (my father is retired U.S. Air Force) and it struck me how much technology has changed the way military families communicate. Months ago, we did an All Tech Considered segment about how webcams help keep families connected.

Expanding on that, I posted a guest entry today on my Digital Savant blog from Alison Buckholtz, a Navy wife who wrote a book about her experiences. In an excerpt from her book, Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War she describes an emotional teleconferencing session when her husband was posted overseas.

Writing as I do about smartphones, funny Internet felines and video games, it's rare that I get emotional about the things I post, but this one really got me. Hope you'll take the time to read it.

Robotic hamsters. I wish I could leave it at that. The imagination runs wild with the possibilites presented by those two words.

Alas, the robotic hamsters in question are "just" one of the Christmas season's hottest toys, according to The Financial Times. You can have your very own "Zhu Zhu Pet" for $10, if you can find a store that has them in stock.

They have names, too:

The interactive hamsters, Mr Squiggles, Patches, Chunk, Pipsqueak and Num Nums, respond to touch with squeaks and noises, and can be set to run about randomly in "explore" mode, or to "coo and chirp" calmly when held.

It's not exactly "the coming robot apocalypse." Or is it?

"Nothing in life is free," my mom says often. And she grew up during the era of "free love."

But Google would disagree. The search technology company announced today the roll out of yet another "free" service: WiFi access at 45 47 airports. Courtesy of the search giant and their partner, wireless internet provider Boingo, travelers can enjoy their "holiday gift" now through January 15, 2010.

Is anything really free? (iStockphoto.com)

Dave Hagan, CEO for Boingo, said he gives this year's "WiFi Santa award" to Google, for its generosity in sponsoring this service. The press release goes on to acknowledge that Google recognizes "difficult economic times." To boot, Google's even offering a philanthropic opportunity. When users log on, they can make a donation to suggested non-profits. Google will match that donation up to $250,000 (see editor's note below). Donors can give online using Google Checkout, the online payment service.

That's one generous Santa.

Yet Google has an unprecedented history of providing free services, including e-mail (Gmail), an office suite (Google Docs) and even their latest Android operating system. Andrew Pederson, a Google PR flak, said Google doesn't "have an overall number on the cost of the [free wireless] project."

The Frequently Asked Questions page explains -- in more ways than one -- that there are no hidden fees for Internet users traveling over the holidays. But is this service really free?

We ask, because for years, Google has slapped targeted ads above the emails we receive using their "free" service. They draw out key words from messages, which the company says are not shared with third-party advertisers, and present products that reach specific demographics or individuals more effectively.

For now, there doesn't appear to be any strings attached on the holiday WiFi -- at least not for the Internet surfers, as Google will take a percentage of some donations as a processing fee (see editor's note). According to Pederson, under the Google Grants program, Google has waived fees for two out of the three non-profits, until the end of the year.

After that, Google hasn't decided how it'll proceed, said Pederson.

"We certainly don't want to take money from non-profits, so we're considering several courses of action," he wrote in an e-mail.

So, even if Google pockets a bit of cash, I think Mom might be wrong on this one, because I guarantee she'll appreciate when I email her my updated flight info right from the airport using "free" wireless -- courtesy of Google.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesperson, pointed out a few things about this post in the comments section, so we'd like to address them. First, to clarify, Google will match individual donations up to a campaign total of $250,000. Google will stop matching donations if the campaign collects more than $250,000. Second, while Google's online FAQ put the number of participating airports at 45, the number, per Pederson, is really 47. Third, Pederson says that Google will not take "any" money from the non-profits. This is not what he said in two e-mails to NPR before this post was first published. In a follow up e-mail after the post was published, Pederson said they will not charge Google Checkout processing fees for donations to any of the three participating organizations through the end of year. "I honestly don't know what will happen after January 1 when the policy changes," he wrote in the e-mail, "but we're not interested in taking any money from nonprofits."

Is the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com a violation of Glenn Beck's intellectual property? The conservative commenter certainly thought so, but an arbitration panel at the World Intellectual Property Organization has ruled otherwise.

Last month we reported that Beck had filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization over a satire Web site with the provocative domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. The name is inspired by a Gilbert Gottfried comedy routine in which he praises fellow comedian Bob Saget, but then begs people to stop accusing Saget of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990. The Web site, developed by Isaac Eiland-Hall, applied the joke to Glenn Beck as a way to critique his rhetorical methods.

Talk show host Glenn Beck. (Shaun Heasley / Getty Images)

Beck's lawyers argued that because "Glenn Beck" is a registered trademark, Eiland-Hall's use of his name in the Web site's domain violated that trademark, and the URL was "confusingly similar" to it. They also argued that Eiland-Hall's Web site didn't constitute fair use because he "had not made sufficiently clear that it is intended to convey criticism through a form of comedy (i.e., that it is a 'joke')."

The WIPO ruling, released late last week, ruled against Glenn Beck. It dismissed Beck's argument that Internet users could be confused by the domain name and its accompanying Web site. "Even a 'moron in a hurry,'" read the decision, quoting Eiland-Hall's attorney, "would not likely conclude that Complainant sponsored, endorsed or was affiliated with the website addressed by the disputed domain name."

Beck's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request from us for comment on the ruling.

Normally, this might have been the end of the matter. After winning the dispute, though, Eiland-Hall published a scathing open letter to Beck:

It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme. Then, in pressing forward (by not withdrawing the complaint and instead filing additional briefs), you turned the super-meme into an object lesson in First Amendment principles.

It also bears noting, in this matter and for the future, that you are entirely in control of whether or not you are the subject of this kind of criticism. I chose to criticize you using the well-tested method of satire because of its effectiveness. But, humor aside, your rhetorical style is no laughing matter. In this context of the WIPO case, you denigrated the letter of First Amendment law. In the context of your television show and your notoriety, you routinely and shamelessly denigrate the spirit of the First Amendment. The purpose of the expressive freedoms embodied in the First Amendment is not to simply permit the greatest possible scope of expression, but also, in doing so, to also strive for excellence in the conveyance of ideas. Rather than choosing to strive for excellence and civic contribution, you simply pander to the fears and insecurities of your audience. And in the process, you do them, and all of us, a great deal of harm.

Shame on you Mr. Beck.

Perhaps most surprisingly, though, Eiland-Hall stated that he no longer needed the domain name in question, now that he's successfully argued the right to own it. "I have no more use for the actual scrap of digital real estate you sought," he wrote. With that, he offers to turn over the domain to Beck, even supplying the user name and password to access it.

Does that mean the Web site that started this whole kerfuffle is gone forever? Hardly. Eiland-Hall has moved it to a new domain, gb1990.net. At the time of writing, the original domain is still up and running was up and running, but has apparently just been shut down as of 3:15pm today. Another version of the domain, didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com, is still working, but that may be temporary as well. Anyone taking bets on what Glenn Beck will put in its place?

By Omar L. Gallaga

On this week's All Tech Considered, self-powered gadgets were the topic. We also talked about a few other tech items including:

• My impressions of the Motorola Droid supplement a full review by Eyder Peralta on this blog and a video demo we posted last week.
• I posted a similar video of Dell's new 9.99mm-thick Adamo XPS laptop on Digital Savant. It's due out this holiday season and starts at $1,799. Nicely designed? Yes. Affordable? Not so much. You can also see the video below.
• I've been following Warren Spector/Disney Interactive's Epic Mickey since it was a rumor. Game Informer has some of the bigger scoops on this Mickey Mouse re-imagining, due out Fall of 2010 for the Nintendo Wii.