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On the last day of November, 2009, after the initial rush of excitement around Google's Chrome OS launch had quieted a bit, Ryan Paul and I sat down with Matthew Papakipos, the engineering director for the Chrome OS project, and Eitan Bencuya, from Google PR. I had done my best to sort out the why's and wherefore's of Google's first consumer OS effort in my initial launch coverage but I still had many questions about the past, present, and future of the project.

What followed that afternoon was an interview that was so candid, in-depth, and informative about not just Chrome OS, but about the present and future of the Web as a distributed application platform, that we chose to sit on the results until the holiday and CES madness had passed. So, in this brief pause between CES and the coming iSlate hysteria, we present our Chrome OS interview.

What's the life of Bioshock 2's Creative Director like now that the game is finished? "I'm mostly doing stuff like this," Jordan Thomas tells me over the phone, referring to the interview. "It's stuff that's not necessarily natural to my character, such as looking at action figure designs, promotional materials... it's not the main thrust of game development." He assures us that there has been a short break, but the game is due out on February 9, just a few short weeks away.

This gives us an excellent chance to look back not only to the first game, but to the entirety of the development of Bioshock 2, and why the team decided to make the decisions that lead to this game. Hold your breath: we're going deep.

As you likely already know, Port-au-Prince Haiti was struck last week by a devastating earthquake. The rescue, relief, and rebuilding process, will continue to be a long, intensive, and very expensive one; thus, most humanitarian agencies are looking for donations to help with their efforts.

On Wednesday, January 20 (that's tomorrow), a group of over 140 Mac and iPhone developers will donate 100 percent of their software sales from the day to a charity of their choice through Indie+Relief. The charities are all helping with the relief efforts in Haiti and include such organizations as Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, and UNICEF. Applications range in price, but they start at $0.99 so there really is something that practically everyone can afford.

Justin Williams of Second Gear Software came up with the idea of donating a day's worth of sales last week when the earthquakes hit. He was a bit shocked at the response other developers had: "I mentioned it on Twitter and asked if anyone else would be interested in doing the same," Williams told Ars. "It picked up steam fairly quickly, with companies coming on board to participate. I honestly thought I'd have about 25 companies at most. We have over 140."

Soon after Justin's inquiry, Garret Murray of pinch/zoom jumped on board, helping Justin get the website up and running in an extremely short amount of time. Manton Reece of Riverfold Software said that he thought Indie+Relief was "the perfect opportunity to be a part of something that would make a bigger difference and reach more charities than we could alone."

The list of software is quite staggering—donations aren't only being made for those listed on the front page, but also those in the "See also" sections. Some of the more popular applications on the list include Acorn from Flying Meat, Billings from Marektcircle Inc., Delicious Library 2 by Delicious Monster, MarsEdit by Red Sweater, and SubEthaEdit by Coding Monkeys. I'm a personal fan of MoneyWell for personal finance, Capo for any musician who likes to learn by ear, Tweetie for Twitter on the iPhone and Mac, and Clipstart if you own a video camera of the Flip variety. Let us know in comments if you see any other gems in the list!