Articles by Walaika Haskins

This story was originally published on Oct. 2, 2008, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. D-day -- the day television broadcast signals switch from analog to digital -- is less than five months away. While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and broadcasters like ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX have spent recent months...

Online retail saw a 3 percent year-over-year drop in sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 23, according to research firm comScore, as economic hardships combined with a calendar that shortened consumers' usual buying period The decline marked the first dip in online sales since comScore began tracking the figures in 2001. One year ago, online retailers br...

An international group of independent security researchers announced Tuesday that they have found a significant weakness in the Internet digital certificate infrastructure used by many Internet businesses. The flaw could conceivably allow cybercriminals to create fake certificates that would then be accepted and trusted by many widely used Internet browsers.

Acer unveiled its latest notebook PC Tuesday -- the Aspire 8930G-7665, featuring Intel's new powerhouse mobile chip. The chip, the Core 2 Quad Mobile Processor Q9000, makes Acer's new laptop one of the first notebooks to offer users four processing cores The Core 2 Quad processor offers 6 MB of shard L2 cache, 4 GB DDR3 1066 MHz Dual Channel Memory...

The first beta version of Windows 7 has made a surprise public appearance. The operating system (OS) appears to be available on the Internet via file-sharing utilities like BitTorrent -- apparently without the approval of Microsoft. Microsoft released pre-beta code of the OS to developers at its recent Professional Developers Conference held at th...

One day, when I go on to the "Great Reward," my hope is that my epitaph will include something about how much I love music. I'm a music fan, but not a stodgy one who will only listen to my tunes on the finest of equipment. Rather, I've always wanted to create my own music. A permissive childhood left me with a smattering of music lessons on variou...

PC gamers will now be able to buy and download titles from Electronic Arts via Steam, an online game distribution platform that delivers games straight to the buyer's computer. EA's putting some of its top-shelf content up for availability on the platform, including titles like "Spore," "Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack," "Warhammer Online: Age of R...

Microsoft released a fix Wednesday that should protect Internet Explorer users from a zero-day exploit that emerged last week and rapidly evolved into a major attack vector for cybercriminals and hackers The vulnerability, rated "critical," affects Internet Explorer 5.01, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 6 SP 1 and Internet Explorer 7. The so...

Yahoo announced Wednesday that it is enacting a new global data retention policy. In most instances, the Internet search engine and portal will now anonymize user log data within 90 days. After a three-month time period has elapsed, Yahoo will scrub out any data -- such as IP addresses, cookies and other information -- that would potentially enable someone to identify a given user...

Palm has joined the mobile application shop bandwagon, launching its own app store for Palm handsets running the Palm OS as well as those running Windows Mobile The launch means owners of Palm devices now have access to more than 5,000 applications, including over 2,000 games and more than 1,000 free apps. Applications include a Facebook app for th...

Yahoo has launched an enhanced version of its Mail service. The changes to Yahoo Mail offer users a "smarter in-box" experience that the company said it will roll out gradually to its users during the coming months The move is part of its ongoing Yahoo Open Strategy initiative....

Researchers at the University of Utah have developed a new device designed to prevent drivers from talking on their cell phones or sending text messages while operating a car The Key2SafeDriving (K2SD) technology, for which provisional patents and licensing have been granted, is a device that's coupled with the car's ignition key. Once the car's en...

Consumers may have turned away from some sectors of the retail industry as the global economic crisis deepened in November; however, the video game market continued its record-breaking year in the U.S., according to the latest sales report from The NPD Group, a retail sales tracking firm Consumers purchased US$1.21 billion worth of gaming consoles,...

Google released the 15th update for its Chrome Web browser and officially ended the beta testing phase for the application Thursday With some 10 million active users and 14 prior updates under its belt, the browser has improved its stability and performance in just 100 days, according to Google....

On Thursday, PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners will find their new "Home" ready, console maker Sony announced. The company has opened the beta of its much-delayed "PlayStation Home" 3-D virtual gaming community to all PS3 users. The move follows the completion of a closed beta Announced in March 2007, "Home "is a real-time, networked 3-D community where g...

Lithium-ion battery maker Boston-Power and partner HP announced Wednesday the upcoming availability of Boston-Power's next-generation Sonata battery cell. The environmentally friendly and longer-lasting battery will be available as an upgrade option beginning in early 2009 The first product released by Boston-Power, the Sonata provides "like-new" p...

Novatel Wireless has introduced a new line of devices that essentially creates a mobile WiFi cloud for users. The technology, dubbed "MiFi" will offer users not only broadband-level connectivity but also a rich applications environment for both businesses and consumers MiFi, unlike traditional router offerings that need an external broadband modem,...

Mozilla released the second beta for its Firefox 3.1 Web browser to testers Monday. The latest release comes just seven weeks after the open source software maker launched the first beta of the version currently in the works "It's not even been six months since we released Firefox 3 but what we've noticed is that the Web continues to move really, r...

I'm a big fan of cooking shows. In particular, The Food Network's "Iron Chef" and "Iron Chef America" are must-view programming for me. As a home cook with chef-esque pretensions, watching Cat Cora, Mario Batali, Masaharu Morimoto and others battle other chefs to make fantastic dishes within 60 minutes is scintillating TV. I have often wondered what it would be like to participate in a head-to-head competition in that pressure cooker known as "Kitchen Stadium."

When Sprint announced that Baltimore would be the location of the first rollout for Xohm, a new long-range wireless broadband technology known more lately as "Clear," I could hardly believe it. Baltimore is not particularly known as a hub of technology. Want crabs, we got 'em. Under Armor, we've got that too. But when it comes to releasing new technology, Baltimore is typically toward the bottom of the list. While most of the surrounding Baltimore County has Verizon's FiOS, residents in the city are still waiting...