Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Fitbit on Monday announced two new fitness trackers with sleeker looks, more durable construction and greater data-gathering capabilities The Fitbit Charge 2, priced at US$149.95, features continuous heart-rate tracking. It uses the data to generate a cardio fitness score and provides guidance for improving it over time....

Instagram last week announced a new Explore video channel that gives users an easier way to find and watch events The channel aggregates videos from concerts, sporting events and more, and its personalization features flag events that might be a good match for users' individual interests....

Apple has purchased medical records startup Gliimpse, Fast Company reported Monday, in order to broaden its presence in the personal healthcare information management market Apple confirmed that the purchase took place earlier this year, according to the magazine....

Responsibility for securing enterprise applications has been moving down the development lifecycle, and for good reason. It not only makes the enterprise more secure, but also saves companies time and money For example, the average time to fix a vulnerability in IBM's application security solution has dropped from 20 hours to 30 minutes, according ...

Intel on Tuesday presented its virtual reality vision -- a vision that mixes virtual and real worlds into a kind of merged reality -- to developers attending a conference in San Francisco Mixing reality and unreality sometimes can be a recipe for disaster, but Intel thinks it will be a formula for success. At the center of Intel's vision is its Pro...

Tim Cook gave a wide-ranging interview to The Washington Post on Saturday, discussing his five years at the helm of Apple. However, Apple fans looking for juicy morsels about new products won't find them in the Q&A Among other things, Cook discounted the bleak claims of analysts who maintain the smartphone market is in decline -- and Apple's fortun...

A Russian regulatory authority earlier this week named Apple, along with more than a dozen Russian retailers, as a target for an investigation into price-fixing activities The Federal Antimonopoly Service, or FAS, has seen signs of price-setting coordination among iPhone resellers in Russia, according to a notice published on the agency's website....

The code warriors of the future literally might be computer code acting as warriors to defend against attackers on computer networks The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, gave us a glimpse into that future last Sunday, when it announced the winners of its Cyber Grand Challenge at DEF CON....

The smart home of the future could be a wee bit smarter with the addition of the Alexa-powered connected intercom system Nucleus announced last week. The Nucleus intercom, which last fall made its debut without Alexa, is a tablet that connects to a home network through WiFi or Ethernet to allow family members to communicate with each other both i...

Everyone has a story to tell, and Instagram on Tuesday announced Stories, a new way for users to tell theirs Stories allows Instagram users to string together images and videos for a dynamic slide show presentation that can be shared with friends or the entire Instagram community....

"Patch your systems in a timely manner" is a mantra of security experts, but what happens when the patch well runs dry because a product's maker no longer supports it? That is a situation many large enterprises find themselves in, and it's one that poses security risks Between 30 percent and 50 percent of the hardware and software assets in the ave...

With an eye on its future, Uber last week announced it was increasing its investment in mapping "The ongoing need for maps tailored to the Uber experience is why we're doubling down on our investment in mapping," said Brian McClendon, Uber's vice president of advanced technologies and former vice president of Google Maps....

Sales of the iPhone for the current quarter may be down, but sales for the decade are up, way up Apple last week announced that it had sold its billionth iPhone, a historic feat for a consumer electronics product from a single vendor....

Ransomware has become a scourge on the Internet -- but two information security companies, along with a pair of law enforcement agencies, this week launched an initiative to do something about it No More Ransom is the centerpiece of a collaborative effort involving Kapersky Lab, Intel Security, the Dutch National Police and Europol. The new porta...

BlackBerry on Tuesday made a play for security-conscious Android users with the announcement of its new DTEK50 Running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and BlackBerry security software, the new unit is the "most secure Android smartphone" in the world, the company claimed....

Polish authorities last week arrested the alleged owner of pirate website KickassTorrents, or KAT, 30-year-old Artem Vauln of Kharkiv, Ukraine Vaulin faces charges in the United States of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit money laundering....

Fleeting memories will be a thing of the past with a new Snapchat feature currently rolling out "Memories," introduced earlier this month, allows users of the app to save photos and photo stories to their phones, as well as share them with friends....

Ransomware infections are on the rise, and healthcare organizations are ripe targets, which may be why the federal government addressed the subject last week Ransomware attacks have risen from about 1,000 a day last year to 4,000 a day this year, Symantec has reported....

Twitter on Tuesday announced it has opened up the application process for verified account status, which previously was reserved for celebrities and other high-profile users. Any user may now file an online application to have an account verified. Twitter account verification, denoted by a blue badge icon, flags individuals and organizations as au...

Pokemon Go, the augmented reality game that has become an overnight sensation, experienced sluggish performance over the weekend, possibly from a hacker attack on its login servers Shortly after Pokemon Go devs tweeted that the game was rolling out to 26 additional countries, this tweet appeared:...