Google is finally spilling a few more beans about its forthcoming operating system. The company held a press conference today at its headquarters to give the first in-depth look at Chrome OS and what makes it unique.

First things first: If you’re hoping to replace your current version of Windows with the system, you’ll be out of luck. When Chrome OS does launch – sometime next year – it will only be available on devices specifically made to run with it.

For the most part, that will be netbooks – but likely ones that are notably cheaper than the ones currently on the market. (That could conceivably put them below $200, which would be an efficient way to quickly build an installed base for the OS.)

Chrome OS is very closely tied to the Chrome browser. The OS looks very similar – with tabs for various applications. It won’t run Microsoft office and is entirely Web-based. (Want word processing or spreadsheet applications? You’ll need to use GoogleDocs or some other Web-based app.)

You will be able to set up several ‘virtual desktops’ – allowing you to quickly access applications you use for various functions (i.e. GoogleDocs for a ‘work’ desktop, a music player for fun, etc.)

It’s an incredibly light OS and start-up is reportedly lightning fast – making the system ready to use in seconds, rather than Windows rather laborious start-up time.

It’s not the sort of thing that has Microsoft worried in the short term, but it could lead the charge to an online operating system – which could ultimately put Google in a very powerful position in the OS category.

Curious to see how Google explained it? Check out the videos after the break. 

You’ve gotta give Google and Hasbro credit for their marketing savvy. The Internet giant and toy company are teaming up to launch “Monopoly City Streets,” an expanded online version of the board game, tomorrow.

Billed as the “biggest live game of Monopoly in history,” the promotion will let you ‘buy’ any street in the world and build houses, hotels or skyscrapers on them. The game is basically the same you grew up playing, but you’ll have a wider selection of buildings to choose from. (Want a football stadium on Rodeo Drive? Go for it!)

The Daily Mail notes that chance cards will let you opt to build prisons or landfills on opponents’ streets, making the game a bit more cutthroat.

Players will start with $3 million virtual dollars – with street prices ranging from $231,000 for Downing Street in London to $2 million for Pennsylvania Ave in Washington D.C.

Signups should begin tomorrow at the game’s official Web site.

It’s probably too early in the process for this to be some sort of viral marketing campaign for Ridley Scott’s planned big screen version of the board game. But it’s an intriguing way to raise brand awareness – and to show the product can transcend its board game roots.

For most people in Hollywood, doing business is all about being in touch. Executives, agents, producers, and of course their assistants (along with us journalists) are glued to our blackberries and iPhones and headsets because we need to be in touch all the time. Whether it's rolling calls in the office or responding to quick messages on-the-go, it's not part of the job. It is the job.

Which is why Google Voice could literally revolutionize the lives of thousands of folks in Hollywood. Imagine all your devices tied to one phone number as part of a service that maintains all your contacts and records or transcribes every conversation. It doesn't matter if it's email, text, or talking, Google Voice has it -- and it's searchable.

Don't get too excited -- it's still in closed beta. But lifehacker has a preview that's pretty mind blowing. Here are the key features I can see folks in Hollywood loving:

-Voice mails are transcribed and sit right next to your e-mails and texts. The transcription is far from perfect, but it's probably as good, if not better than an assistant's notes. And most importantly, it's searchable. So you can search for information regardless of whether you got it in an e-mail or voice mail.

-One phone number sends call to whichever device, or devices, you want. So Google Voice can route calls to your work line or home phone or voice over IP (which Google will surely offer itself) or one of several mobile devices. Or all of them at once. Better yet, send certain calls to certain numbers. Want to make sure when your boss calls that it rings on every one of your phones? Or that nobody from your annoying family will bother you on your work line? Click a few buttons and boom, it's done.

-Keep all your contacts in Google. Anybody who has used GMail knows Google has a great way to store and manage contacts. The best part is that it auto-fills. Type in the first few letters of somebody's name and it'll automatically guess the rest.

-Somebody's calling and you want to hear what they have to say, but not talk? Listen into their voice mail as they record it.

-Is there important information in phone call? Stuff you might need to stick back in somebody's face when closing a deal or meeting them in court? Start and stop recording a call with the press of a button at any point.

-Leaving the office while you're talking to someone? Switch the call to another phone without dropping the call.

And like everything Google offers it'll probably be free. Wow. As far as life-changing tech for the entertainment biz, I don't think it gets much better than this.

(Thanks Lifehacker for the screenshots)

When Time Warner tapped Randy Falco, then president of NBC Universal television, to head up AOL, it was a sign that old media and new were increasingly merging. The way to save revive its struggling Web brand, the conglomerate was saying, is to bring in someone who knows how to build a huge media business and sell it to top tier advertisers.

A little over two years later, old media is out and new media is in. By firing Falco and replacing him with Tim Armstrong, the head of ad sales for Google, it's admitting an experienced network hand isn't the solution. The answer, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes hopes, is a less experienced new media hand who knows how to generate revenue.

That, in a word, is AOL's problem. Google and Facebook may have surpassed it in buzz (and even pageviews), but it's still a relevant worldwide brand for millions of people. And traffic is actually up. As PaidContent noted, pageviews were up 14% in the most recent quarter. AOL has executed a strategy of focusing on a diversified group of brands like FanHouse, Asylum, and LemonDrop, following the path of one you might have heard of called TMZ. New people are coming, while the portal's traditional aud of middle-aged women keeps using the home page to discover what's relevant. AOL has even started to integrate content from other mail services and social nets, while at the same time drawing on the successful Bebo (which it acquired in what even Bewkes has said might have been an overvalued deal).

But there's the little matter of revenue. At the same time that pageviews were up, total ad revs fell six percent and the revenue at AOL's own sites (as opposed to the ones it services through its Platform A division) plummeted 15%. That's no help for a media company that wants to raise its stock price, and that is hoping to either spin-off its Internet division or sell it.

In a brief interview with AllThingsD, Armstrong (left) admitted that's most likely his job, stating, "One of the things we discussed was making sure we were able to have the best outcome for AOL. That could take the form of a lot of different paths.”

So Falco and his predescessor Jonathan Miller have managed to transition AOL from a subscription service to a moderately successful, and popular, Web portal. But they couldn't turn it into a business. Falco's decades of experience growing one of the world's biggest television businesses just didn't translate. Time Warner is hoping that by ditching someone who built an old media business for someone who helped build the world's biggest new media business, it can find the way to monetize that transition, at least enough to convince somebody to take AOL off its hands at a decent price.

Just a year ago plenty of people (including me) would have said that the idea of a YouTube competitors that specializes in TV is silly. Why not put everything online video viewers want in one destination?

Hulu has proved us naysayers wrong. It turns out that a streamlined interface focused on television works great. The quality is better and it's easy to find what we want. It also works well for advertisers because they know their messages are going up against content with which they are familiar, unlike the viral video sites.

As is so often its wont, the music industry has a message: Us too! According to CNET News (amongst others), Universal Music is in talks with Google to create a YouTube offshoot, tentatively titled Vevo, focused exclusively on music videos and related content. The other major labels, all of which are currently in talks with Google about renegotiating their deals to distribute content in YouTube, have been approached about joining.

The music biz, of course, is continuing to struggle with declining CD sales and looking for new revenue sources, from downloads to ringtones to video games. Music videos, once produced purely for promotion, are now viewed as a primary option. They're already generating millions for the labels on sites like Yahoo and YouTube where they're streamed.

But a Hulu-like site could do much better, giving music videos a brand of their own, controlled by the labels themselves (in part), and designed to attract the highest paying advertisers.

It could also be a big win for Google, which missed out on the action with Hulu. It's still struggling to rejigger YouTube, and make deals with Hollywood content partners, to make up for the loss.

Do consumers want a site like that, though? The advantage for Hulu is that people often miss an episode of TV, or hear friends talking about it, and want to find it. That's not true of music videos. Since MTV no longer shows them, Vevo would become the primary home for music videos, not a secondary one as Hulu is for TV.

Do consumers care enough about music videos to justify that kind of investment? Given that Universal Music has the number one most viewed video channel of all time on YouTube, it's a decent bet.