July 24 News from Around the Web

Find reviews from around the web by visiting our forums! The following exerpt is from TweakTown's ZOTAC 9600 GSO 384MB Graphics Card Review:

“The 9600 GSO has been out for a while now, but we havent really seen many of them around. The first one we saw was from Palit and carried with it a large 768MB of memory with quite a hefty overclock to boot. At the same time, it did have some issues in our test bed. While we loved the card, we probably didnt really get to have as close a look as we normally would.

We all know that the 9600 GSO is nothing more than an 8800 GS with a new name, but how does the card sit in the current market? Is it something worth considering or should we just opt for the slightly more expensive 9600GT?”

A “Taxing” Proposition for Music Downloaders?

All right, readers, we’re sure some among you participate in the downloading of somewhat dicey material (read: copyrighted). If you could have a license to illegally download as much as you wanted – and yes, we suppose, if you had a license, it would no longer be illegal – how would you feel about it?On the other hand, if you had to pay such a fee (tax?) even if you didn’t download illegally, how would you feel about it?Those are the questions on the table as rumors fly about such a possible fee in the U.K.

Google’s Knol to Challenge Wikipedia

Much to the chagrin of teachers and librarians, Wikipedia has become a primary source of research and information for many seeking answers to questions with just a few quick key presses and mouse clicks. Since its debut in 2001, Wikipedia has outgrown other objective informational sites, such as About.com and Encyclopedia Britannica Online Encyclopedia.Now Internet bellwether, Google, is looking to compete with Wikipedia for the hearts and minds of online information seekers with its new product, Knol. Google

Trees Get a Win Over Solar Panels

Earlier in February a strange case arose over an obscure California law, the Solar Shade Control Act (.PDF), passed in 1979 after the Oil Crisis. The law essentially made criminals out of a pair of Sunnyvale residents, whose eight redwood trees cast shade on a neighbor’s solar panels.The dispute between the neighbors, Mark Vargas (solar panel owner) and Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett (tree owners) was “settled” when a judge ruled Treanor and Bissett had to cut two of the trees down, despite the fact that

Hardware Round-Up

Video:Palit HD 4870 512MB Video Card Reviewed @ TheTechLoungeSamsung SyncMaster 245B LCD Monitor @ CPU3DProcessors:Conroe vs. Wolfdale: To the Limit @ Digit-LifeMemory and Storage:Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB Solid State Drive @ PC PerspectiveKingwin EL-35EU-SBL Elite USB 2.0 and eSATA Drive Enclosure @ BigBruinVizo Shuttle SHE-260ST External HDD Enclosure Review @ HardwarelogicCases, Cooling & Misc.:Cooler Master Hyper Z600 @ InsideHWPlaystation 3 Media Server Setup @ Digital TrendsCoolermaster GeminII

VoodooDNA Spliced Completely Into HP

When it comes to high-end gaming rigs, few companies have been able to achieve the stellar reputation that VoodooPC had with its enthusiast desktops and laptops. VoodooPC had a penchant for building speedy systems with the latest high-quality components, and packaging it all together in sexy looking designs. It’s no wonder that HP acquired VoodooPC in 2006 and began integrating VoodooPC’s innovations and approach to system design with its own HP-branded enthusiast systems–culminating in the popular HP Blackbird

AT&T Enables Voice-Controlled Apps for iPhone 3G

One of the biggest laments iPhone users have about the iPhone is that it lacks voice dialing. How and when that key missing feature gets added is still open to speculation, but the engineers at AT&T Labs Research have at least been cooking up a way for developers to easily implement voice controlled applications for “multimedia devices with broadband access,” such as the iPhone 3G. AT&T has developed a software framework that it calls the AT&T Watson Speech Mashup. Essentially, the Watson ASR (automatic

AT&T Enables Voice-Controlled Apps for iPhone 3G

One of the biggest laments iPhone users have about the iPhone is that it lacks voice dialing. How and when that key missing feature gets added is still open to speculation, but the engineers at AT&T Labs Research have at least been cooking up a way for developers to easily implement voice controlled applications for “multimedia devices with broadband access,” such as the iPhone 3G. AT&T has developed a software framework that it calls the AT&T Watson Speech Mashup. Essentially, the Watson ASR (automatic

Asus Trinity Tri-GPU Graphics Prototype Benched

Asus recently contacted us with an interesting 3D graphics product that was intended to be nothing more than a proof of concept.  The product was affectionately named Trinity and though it didn’t necessarily conjure up visions of leather-clad vigilante-dominatrix-hotties for us, it certainly did have an intriguing design.  The Asus Trinity prototype is built on a trio of AMD ATI Radeon HD 3850 GPUs in CrossFireX mode for tri-GPU performance on a single card.  Though perhaps