The public debut of Google Chrome OS today has the press abuzz over the potential of the new web-based operating system. And now that it’s open sourced, you have the chance to try it out for yourself. Unfortunately, most people aren’t ready to undertake the daunting task of actually taking Google’s recently open-sourced code and turning that into a bootable computer. So we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to doing this, for free, in around 15 minutes (depending on how long it takes to download the OS itself). No, this won’t get your computer booting Chrome OS natively (and frankly, you probably wouldn’t want to yet anyway). But it will get it up and running in a virtual machine using the free software VirtualBox, which is available for Macs, PCs, and Linux.

First, a few caveats: we didn’t create the Chrome OS build ourselves — it was downloaded from BitTorrent. In theory it could possibly have been tweaked by some malicious hacker to steal your Google account information (this is unlikely, but who knows). There’s an easy fix if you’re worried though: just go make a throwaway Gmail account, and use that to play around with the OS. Also note that because this is running in a virtual machine, you’re probably not going to be seeing great performance (like that 7 second boot time). But it’s more than good enough to get a feel for the OS for yourself.

First, you need to get an image of Chrome OS. You can do that using this torrent. You can also try out the build that GDGT has uploaded, which worked fine in our test as well. If you get the torrent version, you’ll see it’s in a .BZ2 format. You’ll need to extract it. Macs should be able to do this automatically, but for Windows you may need a tool like Win Rar.

Once that’s done, download a version of VirtualBox for whatever OS you’re running on here and install it. After registering (or declining to) you’ll be met with a screen like this. Click the button that says “New” in the upper left hand corner. We’re going to be making a new virtual machine.:

You’ll enter a wizard like this. Hit next.

Go ahead and title the OS whatever you’d like. For the operating system, choose Linux, with Ubuntu as the version (other setups could potentially work, but this is the only one we’ve gotten working).

Choose how much memory to allocate to this virtual machine. This will be dependent on how much memory you have in your computer. The more, the better, but if you choose too much your real computer will become unstable/very slow.

Here’s the tricky part (fortunately it isn’t very tricky). You don’t want to create a new hard disk, instead, you want to use an existing hard disk. Don’t choose one from the drop down menu either — you’re going to want to hit the folder icon just to the right of that to enter the ‘virtual media manager’.

Hit the ‘Add’ button.

Now you have to find the Chrome OS image you downloaded earlier. This is probably on your desktop or in your downloads folder. Once you’ve found it, hit ‘Open’.

Hit ‘Select’ once you reach this window.

Almost there. Make sure ‘use existing hard disk’ is checked. Hit next.

Hit ‘Finish’

You’re done! Hit Start. Hopefully the screen will go black, but only for a little while (this could be anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute or so, depending on how fast your computer is).

Once you’re in, you’ll see a splash screen for ‘Chromium’ (which is what Google calls dev builds of Chrome). To login, you’ll need to enter a valid Google Account ID. Your standard Gmail account should work, but as we said before, this build of ChromeOS came from bittorrent, so you may want to use a throw away account like we did in the screenshots below (you can make one here).

You’re in. Now time to explore. To be honest, everything looks quite similar to Google’s Chrome browser, but there are a few key differences. Note the battery life indicator and options menu in the far upper right. Also try playing around with the ‘New Window’ functions — you’ll find that it’s difficult (if not impossible) to navigate between multiple windows. And be wary of the Bookmarks manager. As far as I can tell, there’s no easy way to get out of it — you’ll have to manually create a new bookmark, which will kick you back into the browser mode once you click it. Oh, and good luck finding the ’shut down’ button, because we sure can’t.

You probably won’t need it, but the shared user password for this install (which you’d need for functions like sudo) is ‘chromeos’ according to the torrent’s listing on ThePirateBay.

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Amazon shares hit an all-time record -- Today’s $118.49 price is higher than the $400-plus days of 1999, because of splits in the years since. Today’s share price would be about $700 without the splits, says the Wall Street Journal. The Journal hauled out Mary Meeker, a big booster of Amazon and other dot-com stocks in the late 1990s who still follows the sector:

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker attributed Amazon’s recent surge to “continued success in adding new customers.”

She added that the rally “indicates that Amazon.com’s value proposition (lowest prices + best selection + great customer service) is succeeding in attracting consumers as they transition from offline to online in search of value.”

Another factor driving Amazon is sales of third-party products sold in its marketplace, a business once dominated by eBay Inc. Third-party units rose 32% from a year ago and 14% from the second quarter.

About 31% of Amazon’s sales now come from third-party merchants who sell goods on the site and give Amazon a percentage of revenue.

Wall Street, which refused to reward Yahoo for beating the street’s estimates a few days ago, went ga-ga for AMZN today, sending prices up 27% and boosting Amazon’s market value to $51.2 billion. VentureBeat will not make fun of the Kindle today.

Microsoft’s results add to continuing hopes for a tech-sector recovery – Microsoft is the General Motors of the tech sector, so today’s report of an 18% drop in quarterly results from last year could likely have triggered a selloff. Instead, investors bid Microsoft shares up 5.4% to $28.03 today. The Journal attributes it to consumer demand that offsets weak business spending.

Fifteen percent of adult Americans don’t have cellphones — Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times tracked down and interviewed people across America who have chosen to live — for now — without a mobile phone.

“It’s a luxury not to be reached when I’m out and about,” said Gregory Han, a 34-year-old writer and editor living in Los Angeles. Life for him is a lot more planned than most, the consequence of not having a cellphone — or even a landline — at home.

[Photo: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times]

Netflix to roll out streaming-only service outside the U.S. — CEO Reed Hastings wouldn’t tell ReadWriteWeb in which countries Netflix will test streaming-only subscriptions that don’t require the customer to sign up for Netflix’ DVD-by-mail service. But those countries will not be the USA. Hastings said he wants to prove the business model before trying to serve it to the entire United States of America.

Windows 7 reader questions answered by our man Pogue — The guy is kind of touchy about his hatemail from Mac fans, but he takes one for the team today by answering the most broad, what-do-I-do questions about Windows 7 from his inbox. Send this to your parents.

As for PC pundits who trash-talk Windows Vista, former PC World editor Harry McCracken looked up all of the major reviewers’ write-ups of Vista from its debut days. All but one liked it. None forecast the sprawling, deep disinterest with which the general public responded. I’ll repeat my quickie review from yesterday: Windows 7 is a complicated operating system that I use to run a browser, in which I do all my work. Google’s Chrome OS is starting to appeal to me: A simpler, more stable browser with a Unix filesystem beneath it. For free. I’m not saying Windows is going to be gone from most desktops anytime soon, but it may be gone from mine.

Microsoft reported its revenues for its first fiscal quarter today were down 14 percent at $12.92 billion, but the company beat Wall Street estimates.

Net income was $3.57 billion, or 40 cents a share. Analysts had expected 32 cents a share, and the  stock is up today. Revenues from yesterday’s launch of the Windows 7 operating system will be recorded in the second fiscal quarter which closes on Dec.31. While business demand was weak in the quarter, consumer demand was good. The overall PC business grew zero to 2 percent compared to a year ago, the company estimated.

Going forward, Microsoft predicted that its Windows sales would be in line with PC industry growth, which should be higher because of Windows 7. Emerging markets will grow at double digits, while Microsoft’s business division is expected to lag behind the PC market. The big variable is how soon businesses start buying computers again.

This quarter might have been hurt by both the recession and delays in purchases in anticipation of the Windows 7 launch. Windows revenues fell 37 percent to $2.6 billion, while Microsoft’s business division revenue was also down significantly from a year ago. The company predicts consumer spending will be strong as a result of the Windows 7 launch, while businesses are likely to start spending money next year as they upgrade to Windows 7.

“Into next year, we expect to see businesses start spending again,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer, on a conference call this morning. “We are reasonably cautious about the business cycle. We think it will begin next year and stretch over a couple of years. How quickly that will happen, we won’t speculate yet.”

One worry for Microsoft is that consumers have been opting for netbooks, the low-end web-surfing computers that are cheaper and smaller than laptops. Some are using cheaper versions of Windows, but many are using versions of the Linux operating system.

Servers and Tools division revenues was flat at $3.4 billion. Entertainment and Devices group was also flat compared to last year, with revenue of $1.9 billion. Microsoft sold 2.1 million Xbox 360 game consoles in the quarter, bringing the total to 34 million consoles sold. Revenues for the full fiscal year are expected to be flat for the Entertainment and Devices division, which also includes Zune portable sales.

Xbox 360 hardware revenue was hurt in part because of a $100 price cut, but the company had a $100 million increase in game revenue, thanks to sales of Halo 3: ODST, which was the No. 1 game in September. Profits in the division were nearly double year over year at $312 million, helped by a 50 percent growth in Xbox Live revenues. Microsoft said it has sold 8.7 games for every console, the highest in the industry.

Microsoft’s online division lost money, with a loss of $480 million on revenue of just $490 million. The company is investing heavily in its Bing search engine, which launched in June and has gained market share steadily. Search ads from Bing were up slightly, but online ad revenues were down 3 percent.

For the full year, Microsoft said it expects to spend about $26.2 billion in the full fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, down from its earlier estimate of $26.5 billion a year earlier. Liddell said the company is cautious about spending because of the uncertain nature of the economic rebound.

Microsoft ended the September quarter with $36.7 billion in cash and short term investments.

FY10 Q1 Slides Flattened –

Microsoft announced another down quarter this morning. Revenues in the September quarter were down 14 percent to $12.92 billion, and net profits declined even further to $3.57 billion, or $0.40 a share. The consensus estimate was $0.32, so Wall Street is happy and the shares are rallying (up 10 percent in early-morning trading).

Investors will forgive the poor performance coming out of the recession (are we out of that yet?), because they hope that yesterday’s launch of Windows 7 will bring back the shine to the stock. If you look at revenues for the Windows business, it certainly looks like both businesses and consumers have been delaying purchases and upgrades in anticipation of the new operating system. The Windows business saw revenues decline by 37 percent, or $1.7 billion, from last year, to $2.6 billion. The closely-related Business division, which includes Office, was down $500 million in revenues, to $4.4 billion.

Microsoft needs to revive these franchises with Windows 7 at a time when it is increasingly under attack by cloud-based productivity apps from Google and others. But Windows 7 should give Microsoft some cover as corporations go through their robotic upgrade exercises. The company recorded $1.5 billion in deferral revenue associated with Windows 7, which pretty much covers the gap from last year.

The two businesses which held steady in terms of revenue were Servers and Tools ($3.4 billion) and Entertainment ($1.9 billion). Microsoft sold 2.1 million Xboxes in the quarter, and is no selling an average of 8.7 games per console, more than any other videogame console. Profits nearly doubled to $312 million, and Xbox Live revenues grew more than 50 percent, although Microsoft does not specify the absolute number.

Looking at Microsoft’s online business, once again the loss in that business ($480 million) almost matched its revenues ($490 million). We saw the same trend last quarter, as Microsoft continues to invest heavily in this business via Bing and other products. Online advertising revenues were down 3 percent (at least that was better than Yahoo’s 12 percent decline), and search ads from Bing saw a “mid single digit” increase.

Below is a table breaking down Microsoft’s revenues by operating division (click to enlarge):

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Now that Windows 7 is being met with mostly positive reviews and green-lighting by software professionals, no doubt many will be making the switch to Microsoft’s new operating system in the next couple of weeks. Which is a bit of a pain if you stuck with Windows XP and skipped Vista altogether, because then the best thing for you to do is perform a complete clean install after backing up your data and programs.

Wiping out your data is one thing, but you’ll also need to install all your applications from scratch again once you get Windows 7 up and running on your computer. The same goes, of course, for people who buy a new PC and start with only a few pre-installed programs – or none at all.

Installing multiple software applications can be quite a painstaking, time-consuming chore, but a Y Combinator-funded startup has just pushed a tool that aims to make the process very, very easy. And free of charge on top of that.

Meet Ninite, a multi-app installer tool that’s as useful as it is simple.

Ninite has aggregated a bunch of popular PC applications in a range of categories on its website, and allows you to check multiple software programs and run the setup process for each of them in one go. No installation of additional software required, and Ninite will even automatically refrain from including toolbars and whatnot with the software you’ve opted to install. The only disadvantage I can see is actually a feature: default settings for software programs you’ve chosen to install will automatically be selected, so there’s little customization you can perform during the set-up process.

Once you’ve selected all the apps you want, you’ll get a single executable file which will run all installations in one go while you go have an espresso.

Ninite, which was called Volery while in private beta, is a product from Secure by Design, a YC-funded startup which discovered people were yearning for this type of tool when marketing the BaseShield App Store, essentially an app store for Windows apps.

The company aims to make money off Ninite by offering premium features like local download caching, network share download caching and a silent mode to paying users.

(Via Hacker News)

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I upgraded three computers to Snow Leopard a couple of months ago, and one of them, a newish iMac, is still a brick. So even though I’m a loyal Mac user (just not the iPhone any more), it still pisses me off to see them trashing Windows 7 in a new Mac v. PC commercial. Windows 7 looks like a very solid operating system. It might even work just fine on that iMac. So give it a rest already, Apple. (via Erictric)

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We’ve all learned to distrust the computers in our own homes when it comes to backing up data. It pays to save your precious photos and documents to backup drives as well as to servers in data centers at faraway locations.

But in the age of cloud computing, where data is stored on Internet-connected servers, who backs up the cloud? In the past day, we’ve seen a trio of data losses that could be catastrophic for some users. T-Mobile said that some Sidekick smart phone users may have lost their data forever as a result of a catastrophic hardware failure at Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary.

Facebook acknowledged that about 0.5 percent of its users, or more than 150,000 people, have had outages on their Facebook accounts for the past week and a half. And Apple acknowledged that some users could see their data lost based on a flaw in the newest version of the Mac operating system.

We all know that there is redundancy built into servers in data centers. We should be able to trust sites that have our data stored on them. They should have backup systems that can restore data if one set of hardware or software fails. The problem is that we don’t know that those sites are really doing a great job with the backups. There is no way keep your own backup of all of the data you have on your Facebook account. The big question is why?

Given this week’s events, I’m thinking that the backing up now has to go in the other direction. If I’ve got a lot of important data stored on my Facebook, Google Docs, and other cloud-based sites, then maybe I should keep some of that data backed up on my own computer. Or maybe I should make sure that everything I have on my Facebook account is also mirrored on my MySpace account. After all, two different cloud-based storage systems couldn’t possibly fail at the same time, could they?

Server-based sites should really do something about this problem. If there’s one lesson we’ve all learned, it’s that technology fails, and sometimes the consequences are catastrophic. [photo credit: Flickr, Adactio]

Hopefully you just read Michael’s post about Why Desktop Touch Screens Don’t Really Work Well For Humans. The answer is so simple that a lot of people overlook it: No one wants to hold their hands at monitor-level all the time, you’d get tired very quickly. If you’re looking for a quick answer as to why many touch screens like the TouchSmart line haven’t seen success in the past, that’d be it. But that’s not good enough. We need a solution, because as much as some people would like to hold on to the past, we’re not going to be using a keyboard and mouse forever to interact with computers.

Certainly, having a touch screen computer that sits at an angle like an architect’s desk is one solution. The issue there is that you need the screen to be big enough so that your hands don’t completely obstruct what you’re doing. Hopefully Microsoft will unveil some version of the Surface that works like that. But another potential solution comes by way of a brilliant concept video for something called 10/GUI.

If you haven’t seen this demo before, you should watch it (below). It brings up some key issues surrounding the future of touch input from both a hardware and software perspective. 10/GUI’s solution is to create a multi-touch pad that lays on your desk in the area that a keyboard or mouse would. You then use this pad to interact with the monitor in front of you, just as you would with the more traditional methods of input.

The key difference is that rather than have one cursor on the screen, you potentially have ten (one for each finger). While all your fingers could be resting on the screen, a “click” would not occur until you applied pressure from one or many of your fingers. The result is pretty cool — manipulating the user interface in a way not completely unlike the computer interaction in Minority Report (which is still my ultimate dream), though not three dimensional, of course.

But 10/GUI realizes that using this touch technology still may not be ideal for manipulating current computer operating systems. Specifically, the idea of the window-based interface becomes less ideal as you add more and more windows. 10/GUI’s solution is something called Con10uum, which is basically a linear way to organize windows. When matched with some of the multi-touch gestures, the system seems to make some sense.

Of course, then you get into a whole different game. Companies are already scooping up patents on different multi-touch gestures left and right. For example, here are some of the ones that BumpTop has for its system. Apple has others. Microsoft undoubtedly has some of its own too. It’s beyond ridiculous that you can patent a gesture, and this could lead to real issues in the future if multi-touch computing does take off. Nevertheless, that’s where we are.

Again, 10/GUI is just a concept created by R. Clayton Miller. You can read more about it here.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

[thanks Basti and Daniel]

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