Vladislav Savov / Engadget:
Google Chrome OS available as free VMWare download (update: first impressions)  —  Seriously, how awesome have the past few hours been?  Engadget turns the design stakes up to 11, Google finally dishes the dirt on Chrome OS, and now you can even download the forthcoming software to have a fiddle with […]

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Hot Potato Organizes The Stream Around What’s Really Happening Now  —  Yesterday, Twitter changed its organizing question from “What Are You Doing?” to “What’s Happening?”  But if you want to know what’s really happening now, check out Hot Potato, a startup launching right now at our Realtime CrunchUp.

Richard Lawler / Engadget:
YouTube pulls a Hulu — yanking API access from Popcorn Hour (Update: Google responds)  —  Hope you weren’t enjoying watching YouTube on the television screen via Popcorn Hour and other set-top boxes, as they have been given notice by the newly 1080p and network TV-friendly website that they are no longer […]

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Seesmic Ventures Into Mobile With Powerful New Apps For Android And BlackBerry  —  Seesmic is having a huge week.  The startup that develops Twitter and Facebook clients for the web and desktop just unveiled a native Windows client at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference earlier this week.

Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Gameloft says it, others reining in Android plans  —  BARCELONA (Reuters) - French mobile phone games company Gameloft said it and other software developers were cutting back investment in developing games and other applications for Google’s Android platform.

Brad Stone / Bits:
Barnes & Noble’s Nook Sold Out for the Holidays  —  It’s shaping up to a be very merry holiday season for Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader.  —  Earlier this week, we reported that Sony could not guarantee that its new Daily Edition Reader would reach online buyers in time for Christmas.

CBC News:
Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos  —  A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer’s insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook.  —  Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job …

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Brizzly Opens To All.  And Snatches Someone From Facebook.  —  Brizzly was first unveiled in private beta at our first CrunchUp event in July, so it’s only appropriate that today, the day of our next CrunchUp, it’s being opened to the public.  Now, to be clear, the product is still technically […]

Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:
Live Images of the New 3G BlackBerry Pearl 9100!!  —  First Live Photos of the new BlackBerry Pearl 9100!!  —  OoohHHH BaBy!!  Any BlackBerry Pearl fans out there?  I know there are.  And I know so many of you have been waiting for Research in Motion to release an updated […]

Randall C. Kennedy / InfoWorld:
Why Chrome OS will fail — big time  —  A lack of flexibility will doom Google’s latest ego trip to the dustbin of history  —  The Chrome OS is here — sort of.  This week, Google was kind of enough to give the world a sneak peek at its nascent […]