I've been looking into getting a smartphone, seeing as my trusty iPod touch is now long-in-the-tooth. However the thought of signing a contract locking me into well over $2000 for two years scares me (esp. as a young person in an uncertain job market).

Indeed. Seems rather counter-intuitive to have to hand over your license, with your date-of-birth, address, hair color, eye color, height and organ donor status just to get a corporation to scrub your date-of-birth, address, hair color, eye color, height and God knows what else from their records.

GIF SAVED.

You know, calling everyone here a cheap jerk probably isn't the best way to go about making friends.

Hmmm... Invite my other Google accounts, then set up each account as genre-specific, then set up Multiple Profiles in Chrome to browse them simultaneously?

Page is lifehacker'd (but the Adobe Air link by another poster below does work) but I prefer Newsblur anyway ([www.newsblur.com] It runs as a webapp, so my same account can be accessed from my main laptop and my netbook. The sad thing is there is no smartphone app (that I know of) but there are other Google Reader…

If Apple were to make a web interface for iTunes, where one could stream their entire music library through a web browser I think they would single-handedly kill most other streaming services, but alas, iCloud features no such capability, leaving Apple users still clamoring for other workarounds.

There's no way of telling if Chrome OS will even be successful either at this point. Google and now Mozilla are betting hard on thin clients making a resurgence and taking over in the mobile computing segment, yet many have been questioning since day one what they are thinking with tablets clearly taking the lead,…

Still can't get over the apparent hate machine that the internet has created exclusively for Unity. What's the deal? Change the wallpaper, add some more programs to the launchbar and Unity looks almost exactly like OSX with a 2D dock on the left side. I don't see nearly as many people hating on OSX...

Yes you can. CR-48 owners have been doing it almost since they first got theirs without a peep from Google. You can dual-boot ChromeOS and the latest Ubuntu (11.04) easier than ever using this guide: [chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com]

Me too. Kind of wish they'd just rebrand Gizmo5 and let us install it again.

Does this require a Last.fm subscription, or can it grab the tracks from free users?

Well, we know that for Windows at least, sometimes it's a good idea to reinstall the OS to get that "snappiness" back. Perhaps had you reinstalled Snow Leopard, it would have been the same case.

How does one go about centering the entire set of icons in the taskbar like that? That was the one thing I was hoping to learn how to copy from this.

This is not the first time this has happened with a Google service. About 6 months ago Google's official Group for their Chrome OS Notebook Pilot somehow got set to email every single Group post/update to hundreds of Gmail users who happened to sign up for the CR-48.

In a perfect world, where the economy isn't in complete disarray and unemployment isn't inching its way towards 10%, yes, one would leave. But in reality, the linked article suggests some good points.

I'm liking Google Music right now. A, because I got invited, B because it is free (as of right now), C because it lets me have access to my entire 105GB iTunes library, all my playlists included. Of course what I would like to see added is support for advanced tagging/album art importation, and support for my "Smart…

"...and make a profit for its share holders." Making over twice as much in profit as it costs to actually make the product is not "normal" at all. I have no problem with Apple pricing their products any way they see fit though. I envy Cupertino employees.

I could have sworn a teardown of the iPhone 4 revealed that it only costs $188 to make.

No it wasn't. To imply that it wasn't relevant to the topic at-hand is disingenuous. My comment if anything was only reinforcing that this does not work exactly the same as the Windows 8 start screen. I don't understand why it upset you or anyone else so much.