Articles by Walaika Haskins

Dell unveiled an array of virtualization solutions Wednesday. The hardware maker's new lineup includes more than a dozen servers, tools and services designed to make the deployment and management of virtual environments as simple as possible for enterprises regardless of size, the company said The array of offerings available in Dell's new virtuali...

HP announced on Tuesday a new, highly scalable storage system meant to address the needs of online and digital media businesses. The HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System (ExDS9100) is designed to simplify the management of multiple petabytes of data with an eye to affordability New Web 2.0-centric businesses and digital media companies ...

The winners of the 12th Annual Webby Awards were announced Tuesday. Taking home top honors is comedian Stephen Colbert as the Internet's "Person of the Year." Other big name honorees include Will.i.am for "Artist of the Year" and Michael Gondry, who won "Film & Video Person of the Year." Colbert received the award for his innovative use of the Inte...

Microsoft's challenger in the digital media player market, the Zune, received a major update Tuesday New features will bring a host of TV shows and other changes to the Zune online store and its music-sharing community, Zune Social, according to Microsoft. The update will give depth to the Zune's video offerings and also deepen the social componen...

For all those Outlook users who have ever thought there has to be a better way to organize and search e-mail content, Xobni (pronounced zob-nee), a startup out of San Francisco, has launched its attempt at a solution. A free add-on, Xobni -- "in-box" spelled backwards -- is designed to help users of Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program get a better ...

AT&T announced the launch of its new AT&T Mobile TV service Thursday. Beginning May 4, subscribers to the service with a handset designed for mobile viewing will have access to as many as 150 simulcast or time-shifted programs, including live sporting events The service will finally roll out in 58 markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and othe...

A new study by McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy, has found that data centers are one of the fastest growing and largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Sponsored by the Uptime Institute and released Wednesday at the Institute Symposium: Green Enterprise Computing, the study attributes the increase to the growing deman...

Microsoft has given law enforcement officials a new tool known as "Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor," or COFEE, to aid in the pursuit of crimes involving computers. COFEE is a framework of customizable and common forensic tools for law enforcement Microsoft made the announcement at this year's Law Enforcement Technology conference. The t...

Instead of releasing the third service pack to its Windows XP operating system on Tuesday, Microsoft said it will delay the launch due to the discovery of certain compatibility problems Microsoft attributed the delay to a compatibility issue between Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (MD RMS) and XP's Service Pack 3 (SP3) as well as Vista ...

"Grand Theft Auto IV," ("GTA IV") the latest version of the controversial and outrageously popular series from game developer Rockstar, hit the street at midnight Tuesday. For an industry that has already set sales records in 2008, the release of the long-delayed but highly anticipated game will likely give Microsoft, Sony and Rockstar parent Take-Two even more sales fuel through the Spring...

AMD on Monday launched a new line of PCs targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) Through its business class initiative, the chipmaker aims to provide desktops to customers stuck between consumer PCs and enterprise-class systems....

A large number of teens feel that language more appropriately used in e-mails, text messaging and online postings has made its way into their school work, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project About 50 percent of teenagers said they write something for school nearly every day. More than one-third reported h...

The hottest gadgets of today will look old and tired a year from now. Sellers of mobile handsets, smartphones, MP3 players, gaming consoles, camcorders, digital cameras and laptops constantly push the latest and greatest technology, leaving yesterday's choice items in the dust Then there's the fact that this stuff is pretty easily broken....

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe confirmed Wednesday it will release an official "Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV)" bundle exclusively for the PlayStation 3 (PS3). Available the same day the game launches, April 29, the "GTA IV" package will include the 40 GB model PS3, a Sixaxis wireless controller and, of course, a copy of the highly anticipated installment in the "Grand Theft Auto" series...

Microsoft unveiled a new service Tuesday that will take the software maker into the realm of cloud computing. Currently available as an invite-only beta, Live Mesh will initially enable users to share files and synchronize folders across multiple PCs. Support for Windows Mobile and Mac OS X is coming later in the year, the company said "Live Mesh e...

PlayStation 3 owners may soon be able to watch movies without ever leaving their living rooms In an official PlayStation blog entry dated April 15, the game maker hinted at plans for the PlayStation Network in 2008 and a recent revamp of the PlayStation Store. A senior marketing executive also mentioned that a video service was in the works for the...

Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service provider Skype announced new and expanded calling plans Monday. The new offerings will enable subscribers to make calls to more than one-third of the world's population for a single monthly flat rate, the company said The three new subscription plans come with no long-term contracts and provide users with...

The video games industry racked up hardware and software sales of roughly US$1.7 billion in March, according to NPD Group, a consumer sales tracking firm. Total sales in March 2008 were some 57 percent higher than the $1.1 billion the industry made just one year earlier "You'd never know that the U.S. economy was under distress by looking at the vi...

Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos in February, according to a comScore report released Wednesday at the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas. The comScore data shows that the number of videos viewed online has risen by two-thirds since February 2007. Roughly 73 percent of Internet users in the U.S. viewed video online in February...

Another company is making a play at online video. Launched Wednesday, PluggedIn is the new kid on the block in a market of heavy hitters that includes MySpace Music, Yahoo Music, AOL Music, MTV.com and of course YouTube PluggedIn, however, offers at least one thing those other sites do not have -- initial access to 10,000 free streaming high-defini...