229. Congressman Pushes for Opt-In Rule for Web Tracking

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) fights back against deep-packet technologies, which have been used on the web to track what sites users visit so that companies can deliver targeted ads. The practice raises privacy concerns, for which Markey says an opt-in rule should be mandatory. On the flip-side, Robert Kykes, CEO of NebuAd, countered that a web-wide opt-in program would harm the internet, which receives half of its funding through advertising.

 Image Credit: Boston Globe, Dina Rudick

228. WirelessHD Standard Ratified, Living Room Still Cluttered with Cables

Maybe the next generation of game consoles and other living room equipment will allow us to beam high definition content to our HDTVs without all the cable clutter. That type of future became very possible when the WirelessHD 1.0 specification was ratified. WirelessHD 1.0 taps into the unlicensed 60GHz frequencies to transmit HD signals, while also providing a standard for manufacturers to follow.

  Image Credit: TomsHardware

 227. States Push to Tax Digital Downloads, Time for a Boston.com Tea Party?

In 2008 alone, nine states put laws in the books taxing digital downloads, bringing the running total to 17 states in all, plus the District of Columbia. At stake is a $130 billion untaxed digital market pushed by popular services like Steam and iTunes. Several other states begin examining their own laws, signaling that the free ride may soon be over.

 226. Jerry Yang Steps Down as Yahoo CEO, Leaves Mess Behind

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang stayed busy during his year and a half tenure as the search company’s CEO, and during that time he staved off a $44.6 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft and watched as Yahoo’s stock price tumbled down. Despite the financial failures, the decision to step down was said to be mutual.

 Image Credit: Flickr jdlasica

 225. GoDaddy Sells Domains All About .Me

Those in need of a clever sounding URL got a whole new selection of top-level domains to choose from when GoDaddy started selling .Me domains. GoDaddy wasn’t fully prepared to deal with the demand during the initial open registration, and as a result, several people who registered for Aweso.me at the same time had their orders go through, but only one got to keep it. The rest got an Aweso.me refund.

 224. Intel’s Dunnington-based Xeon Chips Dance with Six Cores

 The best part about Intel’s Dunnington-based server CPUs isn’t that they contain six cores, but that the chips are monolithic so that all cores are on a single die. No previous Xeon chip can make that same claim, nor can they touch the Dunnington in performance, which Intel claims is improved by 50 percent.

 223. Thomson and Leadtek Flirt with Cell Processor Add-In Card for the PC

The promise of Cell processing on the PC takes a step forward when both Thomson and Leadtek announce plans to release a SpursEngine add-in card. Toshiba’s SpursEngine technology, which is based on the Cell processor technology found in the PS3, allows users to encode or decode HD video using hardware-based MPEG2 and H.264 codecs, as well as upscale standard-definition video HD on the fly.

 222. Nvidia Launches GeForce 9-Series, Not Much Better than 8-Series

The best thing about Nvidia releasing its 9xxx GeForce videocards is that it drove the price down on the company’s 8-series parts.  The update might have been more dramatic if Nvidia didn’t already refresh part of its 8-series lineup with the G92 core, which ultimately resulted in the 9800GTX being little more than a glorified G92-based 8800GTS.

 221. Linksys WRT600N WiFi Router

 The Linksys WRT600N is the first 802.11n draft 2.0 router we’ve tested that can operate on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands simultaneously. It's also the most expensive router we've tested, but it's impressive performance and feature set justifies its cost. 

 220. Broadcom Billionaire Pleads Innocence in Two Federal Cases

Reading like a tabloid rag, the federal indictment brought against Broadcom co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III contained accusations of sex, drugs, but no rock and roll. Nicholas III pled not guilty to all charges, which in total have the potential to carry a 370-year prison sentence. The 18-page indictment accuses Nicholas III of everything from stock-option backdating to slipping ecstasy into drinks he served to business associates.

 219. Max Payne Sucks on Big Screen

No, not like that, not in a literal sense anyway. Whereas 3DRealms weaved together an intriguing storyline, awesome action sequences complete with Bullet Time, and a deeply disturbed character, the Max Payne movie failed to capture any of the elements that made the game such a hit. Despite the negative reviews, Max Payne topped the box office chart and pulled in $18 million during its opening weekend.

 218. Radeon 4850

 Why do we like the Radeon 4850? It’s easy. This family of boards uses the same GPU that powers the Radeon 4870 HD and 4870 X2 boards. By pairing lower-clocked versions of that speed demon with slower (and less expensive) GDDR3 memory, ATI built a $150 performance champ that is perfectly paired with a 22-inch panel. The icing on the cake is the chips impressive overclockabilty.  We like what we see!

 217. Micron Shows off Supercharged SSD

Despite the hype surrounding solid-state drives, with few exceptions the technology remains overpriced, undersized, and surprisingly slow. Intel’s X-25M thrashes the competition, but it’s Micron’s demo of a supercharged SSD that gets everyone excited about flash-based drives again. The company posts a low-quality YouTube video showing a prototype model hitting 800 MB/s, which wipes the floor with any consumer storage device yet available.

 216. Pirate Bay Pitches Plan to Encrypt Internet

Everybody knows what goes on at Pirate Bay, and that can pose a problem for the P2P site when certain prying eyes start poking around. So in response to the European Union heading toward a DMCA-like copyright enforcement, the Pirate Bay responds by outlining a plan to encrypt the entire internet. The “Transparent end-to-end encryption for the internets” (IPETEE) would, in theory, prevent ISPs from identifying and throttling P2P traffic.

215. Google Gives Birth to Lively

It seems that everything Google touches turns to gold, so maybe the search giant has a shot at stealing the virtual show from Second Life when it entices users to use its Lively service instead. Google’s grand plan was for users to create a massive distributed virtual world, which all starts with creating an avatar.

 214. Google Puts Lively on Death Row

Not everything Google touches turns to gold, especially when those things are bug ridden clients trying to compete with the online social world known as Second Life. Such is the case with Google’s Lively experiment, a project Google ultimately gave up on just 6 months after it was introduced. When we asked readers what they thought of Lively’s impending demise, poster AndyYankee17 summed it up best by responding “never heard of it.”

 213. Microsoft Makes XP Available to OLPC

The OLPC missed its mark at offering a laptop for $100 or less, but it also didn’t come with XP, preventing some would-be buyers from making a purchase order. That changes when OLPC partners with Microsoft to include a modified version of XP, and it only adds $10 to the cost.

 212. Cyberathlete Professional Leagues Hangs its Hat

Mother always said you can’t grow up to be a professional gamer, and it gets harder to prove her wrong when the Cyberathlete Professional League closes down. The Dallas, Texas-based organization stayed busy during its 10.5-year tenure, hosting over 60 international tournaments and handing out over $3 million in prizes.

 211. Whoops! Charter Accidentally Nukes 14,000 Email Accounts

What was supposed to be just routine maintenance to purge unused email accounts turned into anything but routine for thousands of Charter subscribers who found that their active email addy had been decimated. To make matters worse, Charter said it couldn’t retrieve any messages or attachments that may have been sitting in the in-box when the glitch occurred. Affected customers were offered a $50 credit for the mistake.

 210. Best Buy Nabs Napster, No One Notices

The book on Napster adds yet another chapter as Best Buy acquires the subscription music service for $121 million. The move is meant to compete with Apple’s iTunes service, something Napster was never able to do on its own. Best Buy’s ambitious plans to expand the service have yet to materialize.