Dell has just released a customized version of Chromium OS, the open source code behind Google's new operating system called Chrome, in a build designed specifically for Dell Mini computers. According to a blog post on the Dell Community site , several company employees were inspired create this custom version after seeing Engadget's video showing Chrome OS running on a Vostro A860 netbook. After tinkering around with the code, they were able to create their own version of Chromium OS, complete with functional Wi-Fi drivers, and have made the build available for download as a USB key image file from the Direct2Dell blog . Sponsor About Google Chrome After last week's sneak peek at Google's upcoming operating system dubbed Google Chrome OS, tech enthusiasts everywhere have been playing with the open source code which Google released to the community on the day of the press conference. This code, called Chromium OS, lets anyone take the basic building blocks of Google's operating system and customize it for their own purposes. Going the open source route isn't just an example of Google's desire to "not be evil," but protects the company from anti-trust, anti-competitive claims surrounding the new project - a project which is basically an OS that runs only one web browser: Google Chrome . In fact, Google's browser is the operating system in its entirety. No desktop applications will be supported on this web-based, Wi-Fi only machine. As Google's VP of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, said during the press event, if any other browser maker wants to build their own version of the OS using their own browser, they can. Since the launch of the Chromium OS source code, there have been a number of articles explaining how to run the operating system in a virtual machine on your own computer as well as how to boot the operating system from a USB flash drive . But up until now, these efforts have been steered by enthusiastic technology users and not those associated with any large computer manufacturer such as Dell. And while the Dell Chromium build isn't exactly an "official" company product, it's noteworthy for the fact that it was designed by company employees, posted publicly on a Dell website, and is customized to run specifically on Dell Mini computers. Dell's Chromium OS Build According to the Dell blog post , the USB key image file (available here: http://linux.dell.com/files/cto ) only works on Dell Mini 10v computers . Most importantly, the build makes the built-in Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter on these machines functional, a feature needed when running a web-based OS. After all, what good is a cloud operating system if you have to be tethered to an ethernet cable? The blog post includes instructions on how to copy the USB image file to a USB flash drive, but unfortunately the directions are aimed only at those who have access to another Linux machine. We're not sure why Windows and Mac users couldn't just modify the instructions found on this website to make their own Dell Chromium OS USB keys by substituting the Dell build for the one hosted on that site. In addition, if you're interested in trying out the Dell version of Chromium OS, there are a couple of things you should know: You'll need a hefty USB key drive - 8 GB minimum. It may take 5-10 minutes for the Chromium OS network connection manager to "see" the Wi-Fi access points. Some issues with the connection manager are still present. If it gets hung, reboot and try again. And by the way, there's no "reboot" - you have to press the power button on the Mini laptop. The Dell build is unsupported and minimally tested - use at your own risk. If you're still feeling brave, the download is available here . Discuss

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Dell Releases Customized Version of Chrome OS

Here is this week's ReadWriteWeb events guide. As always, you can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans. Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 19 November 2009: Mountain View, California Under the Radar Featuring the most cutting-edge mobile startups from around the globe, Under the Radar will get you dialed in to what the 2010 mobile innovation marketplace will look like. It's a must-attend event for dealmakers from global carriers, brands, media companies, and handset manufacturers responsible for helping their companies leverage new mobile technology and innovation in the fast-evolving digital landscape. Save $200: book by 2 October 2009, and get the early-bird rate. 30 November 2009 New Way to Work Do you have a great story about your work environment? Job marketplace Elance and Vator.tv have partnered to host the "New Way to Work" competition, with a grand prize of $10,000 in cash or health insurance for the most compelling story. You can tell your story on Vator.tv, the premier platform for entrepreneurs to broadcast their voice, by uploading a video, posting an update, linking to a blog entry, or sharing a photo. Hurry, the competition ends on 30 November 2009. 1 – 3 December 2009: London, England Online Information & IMS 2009 Online Information and IMS together create the largest event dedicated to the information industry. Consisting of an exhibition delivering over 9,000 visitors from 70 countries, a conference and a show-floor seminar program, the event provides an annual meeting place for the global information industry. Online Information is once again set to play host to thousands of information professionals, information end-users and publishers from around the globe, meeting suppliers of online content, e-publishing, and library management solutions. IMS provides a forum for IT, business, and information management professionals to find unlimited, relevant advice, educational content and compare solutions under one roof. Attend IMS and meet suppliers of content management, search solutions, and Web 2.0 technologies. 1 – 3 December 2009: Boston, Massachusetts Gilbane Conference Boston Join us at the sixth annual "Gilbane Conference Boston: Content, Collaboration and Customers." Your content is your business, and you need to make your Web content part of an integrated platform for customers. You need to know solutions and technologies that are ready to be implemented today. Gilbane Conference Boston is built around the four major areas of how enterprises use Web and content technologies: Web business and engagement; Managing collaboration and social media: internal and external; Enterprise content: searching, integrating and publishing; Content infrastructure. Visit www.gilbaneboston.com for conference details. ReadWriteWeb readers, use the discount code "GILBANE" to save an additional $200. Register today! 1 – 3 December 2009: San Francisco Supernova The Supernova Conference is the thought-leadership forum for the network age. It brings together over 500 business, government and technology influencers to understand how decentralization and pervasive connectivity are changing our world. It's the only conference to focus on how networks have become the main instruments of change from both business and social perspectives. An ever-evolving network itself, the conference has become the place for highly interactive and spirited debates, making significant business connections and revelations on new innovation. ReadWriteWeb readers get a discount of $700 off the regular price when registering by 16 October 2009. Use code "RRW09". After October 16th, the discount changes to $200 off the regular price. Register here . 7 December 2009: San Francisco SF MusicTech Summit The SF MusicTech Summit brings together 600+ visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology eco-system in a proactive environment, highly conducive to deal making. Register with a great ReadWriteWeb 15% discount . 7 – 11 December 2009: Chicago, Illinois Search Engine Strategies 2009 From social media to local search to video SEO, Search Engine Strategies Chicago puts you in front of the experts who will help you sort which technologies and channel will take you to the next level and which are just hype. Search Engine Strategies is the pioneer of educational conference series in search engine marketing. It's the venue where the industry visionaries and thought leaders gather each year to discuss the newest trends, share insights and present the strategic action plans you need to grow your business. Sessions include: SEO Through Blogs and Feeds Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues What's the Link Between Search and Social? Online PR: Where to Next? Search Analytics See more at www.SearchEngineStrategies.com/chicago . ReadWriteWeb readers receive a 15% discount when registering here using RWW15 code. 11 December 2009: Mountain View, California Add-on-Con Add-on-Con is a single-day conference focused on the future of the browser and its emergence as a platform. Developer sessions will cover best practices, cross-browser development and mash-ups. Marketing sessions will focus on monetization opportunities, distribution strategies and stats. Join 200+ individuals involved in add-on development to help define an emerging new market in the Web's eco-system. ReadWriteWeb readers save $50 by using the discount code "addoncon09RRW." 11 January 2010: Nashville, Tennessee Social Fresh Nashville This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Nashville will have 30+ speakers, including Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Gavin Baker of Ruby Tuesday and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart). ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15". 27 – 28 January 2010: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI? This senior executive event will bring together decision makers from the Top Fortune companies to discuss innovative strategies on how to maximise business performance through social media engagement. The event will include keynote speeches, best-practice presentations as well as interactive discussion sessions. The summit will provide excellent opportunities for you to hear international experts discuss best practices on how to drive business performance using Web 2.0 and social media. Key issues to be discussed include: How to integrate social media programs successfully into business strategies? Building business momentum, visibility and market growth through social media Measuring success and influence using metrics and analytics: what are the tools and techniques Integrating viral marketing and social media into traditional marketing mix Developing and activating audiences using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs 8 February 2010: Tampa, Florida Social Fresh Tampa This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Tampa will have 30+ speakers, including Chris Barger of GM, Maggie Fox of Social Media Group and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart). ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15". 18 February 2010: Silicon Valley, California Future of Funding Active limited partners, top rated venture capitalists, and successful entrepreneurs are invited to Silicon Valley on February 18, 2010 to discuss the Future of Funding. The venture capital bubble has burst, and change is coming. Now is the time to have a constructive dialog about the future with all of the stakeholders at the table. Don't miss the opportunity to partake in this exclusive event hosted by TheFunded . Please visit www.futureoffunding.com to see speaker and event details. ReadWriteWeb readers use the code "RWW" and get 10% off. 15 – 16 March 2010: London, England 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams: Social Networking World Forum Enterprise social media Social TV World Forum Mobile Social Networking Forum The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more. Full workshop program within exhibition area Evening networking reception Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates Free pass for exhibition only Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 21 November 2009

It's the morning after the big Chrome OS event where Google executives and engineers revealed a myriad of details about the company's first attempt at creating their own operating system. The highly anticipated news conference was tracked all over the web, liveblogged by technology sites, and Twittered so much that it's still listed as a "trending topic" as of this morning. But now that the news is out, has Chrome OS lost its shine? People had high expectations for Google's new operating system but the end result doesn't look like the revolutionary, "change the world" product many had hoped for. Sponsor Yes, Chrome OS is Different Don't get us wrong - Google's OS is different than whatever Windows, Mac, or Linux build you have running on your computer today. The new OS does away with desktop applications entirely - everything you use on Google Chrome OS runs on the web. Of course, the company hopes you'll use a lot of Google products like Gmail and YouTube , but it doesn't limit you to just Google-branded services. In the built-in applications area, there are also links to other web apps like the online TV streaming service Hulu.com and music sites Lala and Pandora . To be fair, Chrome OS even links to Yahoo and Microsoft's webmail offerings right out of the box. Google's major goal with Chrome OS is to moving computing off our personal hard drives and into the cloud...the Google cloud. To accomplish such a feat, they've made the web browser the OS. Everything you need (in theory) is accessible through the included Google Chrome browser , the same browser the company currently offers to Windows users with Mac and Linux versions expected by the end of this year. As exciting as that vision is, we have to wonder if people - especially the mainstream netbook users the OS is aimed at - are ready for this big of a switch. And more importantly, is the technology itself ready to make the change a comfortable and seamless experience? ...but is it Better? After digesting yesterday's news, some lingering questions remain. Was this the OS everyone was hoping for or has Google let us down? You Can't Just Install Chrome OS - You Have to Buy a New Netbook To begin with, one of the more surprising reveals that came out of yesterday's news is that the OS cannot be installed on your own computer. Oh sure, there are downloads available that use Google's open-sourced code to create bootable builds tech-savvy users and developers can play with, but the official word from the search giant is that anyone wanting to use the "real" Google Chrome OS will have to purchase a new netbook to do so. You cannot simply download it from the web and install it on any machine. Part of the reason for this restriction is driver support. Google is working with carefully selected manufacturers to offer a handful of netbooks running the OS in the coming year. By going this route, they don't have to provide an entire ecosystem of drivers for every piece of hardware out there - they can pick and choose which ones to support. They'll likely limit the number of peripherals supported, too. According to what was said yesterday, the company will support "mass storage devices" (think USB flash drives and digital cameras) but were cagey on how they plan on offering printing support. All they would say is that they're planning on an "innovative approach" when it comes to printing, whatever that means. Hopefully, they're planning to do something more than just integrating with Kinko's and FedEx's online document services, for example. Printing, (sorry Google) is not a web app just yet. No Other Web Browsers Supported Another big disappointment is the company's decision to limit all web surfing to the one included browser, Google Chrome. Firefox and Safari users are out of luck - no other browsers will be supported. But before you cry out "antitrust!," be warned - Google has this covered. The code base used to build the OS is open-source - that means anyone take the code and create their own version of Chrome OS. As was carefully - and haltingly - explained by Google's VP of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, other browser makers can take the code and build their own OS if they want to. But let's get real - Firefox Chrome OS? We don't think so. The reality is that fans of other browsers are simply out of luck if they want to use this operating system. Offline Access is Limited. Your New Netbook is Now a Brick. One of the questions that got glossed over during the Q&A session at the end of the event is how Google's OS plans to deal with offline access. The world is not blanketed in Wi-Fi yet, so what can this web-based OS do without the web? Surprisingly, the answer given didn't refer to any subsidized deals with cellular providers regarding deals to offer built-in 3G connectivity for the new netbooks. Instead, Pichai explained that the OS was built for use with Wi-Fi. Of course, a handful of Google products use Google Gears, a technology that makes websites available offline. For example, Gmail uses Gears to create an offline version of your webmail inbox which you can use to read and respond to email until internet connectivity becomes available again. At that point, all the changes are synced back to Google's servers. Although Google didn't specifically refer to Gears when answering the question, there's no reason to doubt that it will work in Chrome OS's web browser the same as it does now in the standard Chrome browser. However, Pichai did make note of Chrome OS's support for HTML5, an upcoming revision to the core markup language used to build the web. In the new specification, a key feature is offline support for web apps. However, web application developers will have to rebuild their apps in order to use HTML5, so users will be dependent on each individual company to make this change. While it's believed that one day this spec could make the whole web an offline app, the reality is that most developers have yet to implement this technology in their services yet. Even by Chrome OS's launch next year, there's no reason to believe the landscape will have changed significantly by then. Do You Really Need an OS or Just the Chrome Web Browser? Finally, the big question regarding Chrome OS is why ? What can the OS do that any operating system running the Chrome browser cannot? Based on what was shown yesterday, the answer is very little. Chrome OS's brand-new features consist of two things: application tabs and panels. The panels are persistent windows that pop-up in front of your web browser's main window. For example, Google Chat, the company's IM service, can live in a panel that stays on top no matter what window you're viewing. Application tabs, meanwhile, are special tabs that give you easy access to your most frequently used web apps from the browser. Any page tab can be made into an application tab with one click and the resulting "tab" is represented with the colorful icon for that site or service. While that's certainly a cool feature, it alone isn't a major selling point for the OS. That would be like saying you have to buy Mac OS X because of the dock or Windows because of the taskbar. You need a million of these little features combined to add up to a compelling reason to buy an OS. That's not to say that Chrome OS itself doesn't have worthwhile features of its own - like its built-in security mechanisms or its auto-update system, it's just that these aren't the kinds of things that sell it to an end user. The questions consumers want answers to are what does it do that's special? What does it look like? And for now, the answer is "it's basically just a web browser." Revolution? Maybe Not Just Yet. At the end of the day, Chrome OS is an exciting, but not fully realized, vision. Although it has potential, the world may not be ready for a web-based netbook right now. Also, the technology needed to make the Wi-Fi only netbook useful without an internet connection isn't up to full speed either. At the end of the day, the netbook will be marginally more useful than an iPod Touch - when connected, it's amazing. Offline, not so much. While you might not rush right out to buy a Chrome OS netbook when they first launch, there could come a time - sooner than you think - when it becomes a reasonable choice. When the majority of apps work offline and you've fully transitioned away from desktop apps, a web-connected netbook, especially one that's affordable, could easily become your everyday computer. That day hasn't arrived yet. For now, Chrome OS is an exciting glimpse at the future of computing, but not a practical device for the majority of users. Disclosure: Sarah Perez freelances for Microsoft's Channel 10 blog, but is not a Microsoft employee. Her primary web browser is, in fact, Google Chrome which she uses exclusively. Discuss

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Was Chrome OS a Disappointment?

Skype's litigation woes with eBay had businesses a bit worried. Funding Skype in the enterprise looked risky with the potential that a judge could at some point pull the code base out from under Skype and leave businesses stranded. But that's not an issue anymore. According to Network World , Skype now has rights to the code that is essential for the service to run. That means Skype for business is a green light for the companies seeking to use the VOIP service. Sponsor Last month, eBay agreed to sell Skype to a consortium that included the founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. As part of the deal, Skype retains the technology that would be required to service business users. Using the Skype network can save companies and organizations millions of dollars per year in telecommunications costs. Call centers, international calls and a host of other services can be transferred to the Skype VOIP network. Skype is making a big play in the corporate market. Earlier this year, the company announced Skype for SIP , which gives businesses the capability to hook a company's SIP infrastructure into the Skype network. The beta program is underway with several PBX providers, including Cisco and Shoretel. Still, the biggest issue is better integration. As one analyst said to Network World: "It's a game changer," said Irwin Lazar, an analyst with Nemertes Research. "The level of frustration trying to get SIP to work can be enormous." Discuss

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Skype For Business Is a Go Now That Litigation Settled With eBay