Articles by Walaika Haskins

Microsoft entered the final stage before the countdown begins for the planned release of its first Windows Vista Service Pack in January. The software giant announced the availability of the Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) release candidate (RC) for public download With the release came more specific details on the contents of Vista's first major update...

With sales of Sony's struggling PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game console picking up in Europe, Japan and the United States, the company's CEO, Howard Stringer, revealed details of its plans going forward for the console at a press conference Tuesday held in Tokyo The PlayStation 3 outsold Nintendo's Wii in Japan for the first time during the first we...

Toshiba will join the likes of SanDisk and Samsung by offering flash-based solid-state drives (SSD) for notebook PCs during the first quarter of 2008, the company announced Monday. Incorporating flash-based SSD drives instead of traditional hard disk drives into laptop computers results in lower power consumption and faster boot times "Flash memory...

Coca-Cola has opened CC Metro, the soft drink maker's island located in the There.com virtual online universe. Coke announced the launch of the new community created by Makena Technologies, founder of There.com, Thursday Whether Web surfers will line up to play around in what amounts to a Coke-themed virtual amusement park -- or whether the venture...

Researchers at IBM announced Thursday the development of a technological breakthrough known as a "silicon Mach-Zehnder elctro-optic modulator." The device would replace the copper wires normally used to transmit information between the multiple cores in a microprocessor. IBM's optical modulator would convert the electrical signals and send that information using pulses of light through silicon instead of electrical signals on wire...

Red Hat announced Tuesday the release of the beta version of Red Hat Enterprise MRG (Messaging Real-time Grid). The open source developer's latest offering is an add-on for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other third-party operating platforms used by financial organizations and government agencies. As the name implies, the software combines messaging, real-time and grid functionality...

Fox Entertainment Group (FEG), a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., announced Tuesday it has acquired Beliefnet, a leading religious Web site. The purchase expands the media mogul's marketing and advertising reach into a demographic that provides the company with a balance to its other online properties such as MySpace Beliefnet, founded in...

Users of Windows Vista caught running afoul of Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software verification program will retain use of the operating system (OS) following the release of Vista's first service pack (SP1) early in 2008, Microsoft announced Tuesday Rather than disabling Vista's features, Microsoft will set the OS on nag mode when ...

Users of AOL's fledgling video download service may be in for a surprise the next time they visit the site. The one-time Internet leader has shuttered its 1-year-old video service and is now funneling users to Amazon.com's Unbox video download site The shutdown follows AOL's decision to reinvent itself as an ad-supported business, Jaymelina Esmele,...

Zonbu, maker of the Zonbu Mini desktop, unveiled a new addition to its line of PCs -- the Zonbu Notebook computer. The inexpensive, Linux-based laptops include a service contract, billed monthly, that takes over the tasks of backing up data and monitoring the system's security The new notebook PC will be manufactured by Everex and will be available...

Verizon, the No. 2 mobile phone carrier in the U.S., announced Thursday that it and joint owner Vodafone plan to develop and deploy technology based upon Long Term Evolution (LTE) as its fourth generation (4G) mobile broadband network The shift away from its current standard, CDMA (code division multiple access), would essentially open the mobile c...

Despite improvements in system and network security, wily cybercriminals remain a significant threat, adjusting their methods to take advantage of unwary Internet users, the SANS Institute says in its report on the top 20 Internet security risks of 2007, released Tuesday Hackers and cyberspies have shifted their focus and moved away from the widesp...

Google may be able to add storage to the list of services it provides for businesses and consumers, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday. The service would further the current push toward cloud computing or network-hosted applications The service would allow users to store files normally kept on their PCs on Google's servers and...

The debut last week of "Rock Band" from MTV and EA has turned the holiday shopping season into the staging ground for an historic battle of the music video game bands, with "Rock Band" going up against the current industry heavyweight, Activision's "Guitar Hero III." The competition will be steep, with "Rock Band" the underdog entering a market in...

With the one-year anniversary of the launch of its Windows Vista operating system on the horizon, Microsoft for the past 10 months or so has been able to turn its attention to other projects. In particular, the software maker has been working to put out Vista's first service pack and a third service pack for its Windows XP operating system. The two software updates are designed to improve the performance and stability of their respective OS...

PlayStation Portable (PSP) users will soon be saying good-bye to their old download service. Sony, maker of the PSP, announced Tuesday it has launched a new service, the PlayStation Store, for the PC from which PSP owners can purchase content directly The current PSP download service will reportedly go dark at the end of January to make way for wha...

November marks the one-year anniversary of the release of both Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 as well as the second anniversary of the debut of Microsoft's Xbox 360. It has been a long year for the three console makers, one in which the former leaders, Microsoft and Sony, were blindsided by the phenomenal success of the Wii and nonplussed by the lackluster performance of the PS3...

IBM announced a new addition to its BladeCenter portfolio Monday designed to make its blade servers more open and easy to use. IBM's BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager provides I/O (input/output) virtualization that can help reduce the cost and complexity to enterprise users through its open architecture, the company said "Customers who want to cut co...

Trying to bring more independent and small developers into the PlayStation 3 (PS3) fold, Sony announced Monday that it has lowered the price of the PS3 Software Developers Kit (SDK) by some 50 percent The console maker has also given the SDK a boost and integrated programming tools developed by SN Systems to help make designing games for the PS3 ea...

Online super retailer Amazon.com plans to launch an electronic book reader in New York on Monday, according to reports from Cnet. The Kindle, the first hardware device created by the online seller, will include WiFi functionality to allow users to connect directly with Amazon's e-book store, from which they can purchase new books The device, which ...