Articles by Walaika Haskins

Ask anyone to describe a hardcore gamer and the image that comes to mind is probably that of a geeky, teenaged, socially awkward male who spends countless hours locked in his bedroom. The notion, however, that men alone rule the gaming realm is as outdated as the Atari 2600. Men, women and children alike have answered the call to play. While the ...

A report released Tuesday from ScanSafe, a Software as a Service (SaaS) Web security provider, highlighted the energy industry as facing a high risk of exposure from Web-based malware. Companies within that sector have a 189 percent higher risk than other sectors of the economy, according to the security firm's findings The pharmaceutical and chemi...

Game developers LucasArts and BioWare announced Tuesday they have joined forces to create a new, massively multiplayer online (MMO) PC game. "Star Wars: The Old Republic" ("SWTOR") is a story-driven game based on the popular sci-fi world created by George Lucas The two companies divulged a handful of details at a press event held at LucasArts' head...

Opera launched the second beta of its Mobile 9.5 Web browser Monday. The release includes Opera's new Widget feature, which provides one-click Web content access, according to the company. It's only the second 9.5 beta for Windows Mobile phones and the first to add support for UIQ-based handsets. In addition, the Norway-based company released a So...

Lala.com relaunched its services Tuesday, now billing itself as the first free fully licensed provider of instant, anywhere access to personal music catalogs as well as a full music library with tracks backed from major labels. Cooperating record companies include EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music and more than 170,000 indep...

Intel showed off its latest platform aimed at mobile Internet devices (MIDs) Sunday at the company's Developer Forum in Taipei, Taiwan. Dubbed "Moorestown," Intel said it expects to ship the platform in 2009 or 2010 "Moorestown is the first ultra mobile platform and is much, much better than Atom on current consumption," said Ian Lao, an InStat ana...

U.S. video games sales were down slightly in September, according to data from research firm NPD Group. Sales of hardware, software and accessories dropped 7 percent from the year-ago period to US$1.27 billion "This is the first true monthly decline the industry has experienced since March of 2006," said Anita Frazier, an NPD analyst. "It's impor...

Adobe released the 10th version of its Flash Player Wednesday. Flash Player 10 includes new features and enhancements that give Web developers greater creative control when designing their interactive content and video "This is going to be a particularly fun release for the Flash community, just because it enables such expressive capabilities that ...

Mozilla on Tuesday released the first beta of the next version of its browser, Firefox 3.1. The beta includes an enhanced Smart Location Bar, a new tab interface and what should be a faster JavaScript engine, dubbed "TraceMonkey." Developers also included improved Web standards in the Gecko layout engine; added support for CSS (cascading style she...

Searching the Internet and reading things online are more than just a way to pass the time, according to a new study released by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A research team headed by Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, found that when Web-savvy older adults surf the ...

Verizon and Motorola launched another touchscreen wireless phone into the market Tuesday. However, unlike other touch screen handsets, the Krave ZN4 is a flip phone with a new spin -- a transparent plastic cover. That design feature provides users with one-touch access to photos, the music player, the phone's messaging center, V Cast Mobile TV and...

Researchers at the University of Reading in England awarded the 18th annual Loebner Prize Sunday. The competition tests the conversational capabilities of artificial intelligence using text messages, an examination known as the "Turing Test." The winner of the bronze medal -- the highest award given to date -- was Fred Roberts of Hamburg, Germany, ...

Part 1 of this two-part series looks at Nintendo's transition from market leader to also-ran at the hands of rivals Sony and Microsoft, as well as Nintendo's plan to regain the top spot with a new take on the controller interface Seven years ago, after the release of the Sony PlayStation 2 and the Microsoft Xbox, it seemed as though Nintendo, once ...

Semiconductor industry watcher iSuppli lowered its 2008 revenue forecast Thursday from 4 percent growth to 3.5 percent. The research firm expects revenue in the chip industry to top US$280.1 billion, roughly $10 billion more than the industry earned in 2007 "Four percent had been our forecast for a while now. Revising down our forecast to 3.5 perce...

Both Microsoft and Sony made news at the Tokyo Game Show Wednesday. Microsoft announced its New Xbox Experience offering, which includes game, TV and movie downloads, as well as a new virtual world for Xbox 360 owners. Sony, meanwhile, announced that Home, its much-delayed virtual world for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), will be available before the end...

Software maker Adobe issued a security advisory Tuesday warning users of its Adobe Flash Player about a vulnerability that could expose them to so-called clickjacking attacks. Adobe has rated the issue as "critical." The vulnerability is pervasive, affecting all major browsers including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari and Mozilla's F...

A Storm is coming to Verizon Wireless, and it may have the features and functionality to pose a significant challenge for Apple and the iPhone 3G. The carrier unveiled a new touchscreen smartphone Tuesday from Research In Motion, the BlackBerry Storm....

Microsoft has given its Windows XP operating system another short reprieve. Rather than extending support for the software -- as the software company has done in the past -- this time the extension enables computer makers to continue providing XP discs with systems that are sold pre-loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate and Vista Business. The discs ...

Ask.com rolled out a new version of itself Monday. The revamped search engine includes a new user interface with three new technologies -- DADs (Direct Answers from Databases), DAFS (Direct Answers From Search) and AnswerFarm -- that offer users the ability to search the Web using commonly spoken language The enhancements to Ask.com will help the s...

In the take-no-prisoners environment of the video game console industry, Nintendo was not so long ago considered an also-ran. The video game console pioneer and one-time market leader had been outmaneuvered and outsold by video game juggernaut Sony and even upstart entrant Microsoft, as their respective PlayStation and Xbox platforms made Nintendo's offerings look like children's toys in comparison...