Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Facebook on Monday launched a free standalone app for creating and watching live video game play on Android devices Some 700 million users already engage in gaming on the platform, but with its dedicated app Facebook is locking horns with the leaders in the market -- Amazon, Google and Microsoft....

Zoom's paying customers will be able to choose the region they want to use for their virtual meetings, the company announced Monday Starting Saturday, paying customers can opt in or out of a specific data center region, although they won't be able to change their default region, which for most customers is the United States....

Google, Apple and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week made headlines with announcements of contact tracing mobile apps in the wings. Their purpose is to identify contacts of people who test positive for COVID-19 so appropriate actions can be taken to stem its spread. However, a Cambridge University professor threw some cold water o...

E-commerce account takeovers increased 347 percent, and shipping fraud jumped 391 percent from 2018 to 2019, a fraud and identity solutions company reported Tuesday Fraudsters are gaining access to accounts using credential stuffing, romance scams, social engineering, phishing, or hacking, noted TransUnion, formerly Iovation, in its "Global E-Comme...

Apple users wondering if they've caught COVID-19 can now ask digital assistant Siri for advice The company on Saturday rolled out a self-screening feature that allows users to ask, "Hey Siri, do I have the coronavirus?" Siri then takes them through a questionnaire prepared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Public Health Service to de...

Researchers into the COVID-19 virus have a new source of distributed computing power: crowdsourcing Usually crowdsourcing involves information or opinion gathering, but in this case it involves computing power....

Project Baseline, a new website to facilitate screening and testing of people potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus, became available on Sunday. Verily, a company owned by Google parent Alphabet, launched the site Access requires a Google login, and assistance currently is limited to residents in two counties in the San Francisco Bay Area....

A number of VPN and ad-blocking apps owned by Sensor Tower, a popular analytics platform, have been collecting data from millions of people using the programs on their Android and iOS devices, BuzzFeed reported Monday The software involved includes Free and Unlimited VPN, Luna VPN, Mobile Data, Adblock Focus for Android devices, and Adblock Focus ...

Twitter on Sunday applied its "manipulative media" label to a deceptively edited video showing presidential hopeful Joe Biden saying, "re-elect Donald Trump." It was the first time the service enforced rules adopted last month to control synthetic and manipulated media....

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday introduced legislation that aims to protect online shoppers from purchasing counterfeit goods Titled "Stopping Harmful Offers on Platforms by Screening Against Fakes in E-Commerce," the proposed Shop Safe Act would do the following:...

YouTube's efforts to reduce the spread of conspiracy theories on the platform appear to be bearing fruit "Our analysis corroborates that YouTube acted upon its policy and significantly reduced the overall volume of recommended conspiratorial content," three researchers wrote in a study the University of California, Berkeley, released Monday....

Firefox users in the United States are getting an extra measure of privacy protection starting this week, the Mozilla Foundation announced Tuesday Firefox Desktop Product Development Vice President Selena Deckelmann heralded the rollout of encrypted DNS over HTTPS (DoH) by default in Mozilla's browser....

Microsoft whetted demand for its Xbox Series X product line on Monday with the revelation of some impressive specs for its next-generation gaming console Xbox Head Phil Spencer spilled the following details:...

A new extortion scheme targets users of Google's AdSense program The scam threatens to flood a website with bogus traffic until Google suspends the site's AdSense account unless the owner pays US$5,000 in bitcoin to avoid or stop the attack, security blogger Brian Krebs reported Monday....

Samsung refreshed its Galaxy smartphone line, introduced a new foldable phone, and upgraded its wireless earbuds offering at an event held Tuesday at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco Its three new flagship phones, pictured above, are all 5G ready. The S20 is priced at US$999, while the S20 Plus will sell for $1,199, and the S20 Ultra for $1...

Motorola's new foldable Razr phone has been garnering mediocre notices from early reviewers "If this phone didn't fold in half, it would be a solid mid-tier Android phone," Patrick Holland wrote for Cnet....

A coding error in an app used to count vote totals in the Democratic caucuses in Iowa has delayed the release of final tallies, the state's Democratic Party announced Tuesday Although the data collected by the app was sound, it was reporting only a portion of that data to party headquarters due a coding issue with its reporting system, the party ex...

A new iPhone app allows you to capture two high-quality video streams simultaneously from any of the mobile device's cameras Called "DoubleTake," the free software is produced by FiLMiC, based in Seattle, which also makes a pro-style video capture and editing app for the iPhone....

Motorola on Monday began taking orders for its US$1,499 Razr foldable smartphone. Units are expected to start shipping on Feb. 6 Motorola made its mark on the mobile handset business with the original Razr, introduced in 2004, which ushered in the era of flip phones....

Apple shelved plans to give iPhone users control over encrypted backups stored on the company's iCloud service over concerns raised by the FBI and internal sources, Reuters reported Tuesday The company made the decision to retain control over iCloud encryption around two years ago, but it came to light just recently, the news service noted, citing ...