Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Among a raft of upcoming accessibility tools revealed Tuesday, Apple announced a new protocol for brain-to-computer interfaces (BCIs) within its Switch Control feature. The protocol allows iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS devices to support an emerging technology that enables users to control their digital hardware without physical movement One of the fir...

Although building trust through a carefully crafted brand message is still important, artificial intelligence may be undermining its traditional influence "AI isn't just helping businesses create content or automate tasks; it's empowering individuals to become instant digital detectives," Mike Allton, chief storyteller at Agorapulse, a social media...

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle arm of Google's parent company, Alphabet, revealed Monday that it plans to expand its manufacturing capacity in Arizona to add 2,000 more robotaxis to its fleet The company explained in a blog that it's partnering with Magna International, a Canadian auto parts maker, to build a 239,000-square-foot facility in Mesa to ...

AI chatbots have barely made a dent in traffic to popular search engine sites over the past two years, according to a study by SEO and backlink services firm OneLittleWeb The study analyzed global web traffic from April 2023 to March 2025. In the most recent year, chatbot sites accounted for just 2.96% of the visits received by search engines. Betw...

OpenAI on Monday announced it is adding specialized shopping features to its ChatGPT chatbot. Some tech watchers see the move as an effort to compete with AI rival Google by creating a better, more personalized experience to find products and information online Users come to ChatGPT with all kinds of questions, and one common topic is researching a...

Aside from stories of the grand ransacking of exchanges and dodgy business dealings of shady entrepreneurs, cryptocurrency has been largely off the mainstream radar, but that could be about to change Crypto ownership is gaining popularity, driving consumer desire to use it to pay for goods and services. According to the 2025 State of Crypto Holders...

Two studies released last week indicate that Google's AI Overviews are having a negative impact on click-through rates from online searches, which could ultimately reduce traffic to original sources and affect the quality of content on the internet An analysis of 300,000 keywords by Xibeijia Guan, a data scientist at SEO tool provider Ahrefs, found...

The times couldn't be better for job scammers. Layoffs in the tech and public sectors, coupled with the malicious use of artificial intelligence, are fueling strong growth in fraud aimed at job seekers Scams aimed at job seekers can come in a variety of forms, among them:...

A multinational study on the state of artificial intelligence in secondary and higher education released Tuesday found that students are more concerned about the impact of the technology on their learning than academic administrators and educators The study, based on a survey of 3,500 academic administrators, students, and educators in seven nation...

Mobile applications are quietly attracting more and more malevolent attention -- and for good reason. They contain a trove of private information about their users. In the iOS universe alone, 82.78%, or about 1.55 million apps, track private user data, according to the trends tracker Exploding Topics Mobile apps have also proven to be particularly ...

AI will become the new UI, spending will increase to counter disinformation, and increased use of Earth intelligence gathered from space will be disruptive technologies in the near future, according to a report released Monday by global technology research firm Gartner The three technologies were among 12 that Gartner predicted would define the fut...

Merchants lose billions to fraud every year, but theft estimates are often underestimated. That's because, as a report released Wednesday pointed out, the actual cost of fraud can be much higher According to the 2025 LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud Study, U.S. merchants incur an average cost of US$4.61 for every $1 of fraud, while in Canada, costs ar...

During the dawn of the PC era, a single program was touted as the "killer app" that fired the market for personal computers. That program was a spreadsheet called VisiCalc. Now, another spreadsheet could have a similar impact on the AI market Announced Monday, along with US$4.3 million in venture funding, the new spreadsheet, cloud-based Sourcetabl...

Americans spend an average of six hours and 40 minutes a day staring at the screens of their computers, phones, and other electronic devices If that sounds like a lot, it is, but it's only two minutes above the global average, according to a worldwide screen time study released Wednesday by Comparitech, a reviews, advice, and information website fo...

Although many women take the traditional IT route into cybersecurity, a large portion (37%) have entered cyber from non-IT or military positions, according to a survey released Friday by ISC2, the organization that maintains and administers the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification exam The organization reported ...

For decades, Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) operators were in the communications catbird's seat 22,000 miles above the Earth, but the arrival of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) networks, like Elon Musk's Starlink, is bringing the Old Guard in satellite com down to terra firma "The proprietary and specialized GEO infrastructure of the past is now weighing do...

AI may be ushering in a new breed of malicious threat actors who know even less about hacking than script kiddies but can produce professional-grade hacking tools In a report released Tuesday, Cato CTRL, the threat intelligence arm of cybersecurity company Cato Networks, explained how one of its researchers, who had no malware coding experience, tr...

Agentic AI's potential for improving customer satisfaction and streamlining workflows is bolstering its appeal in customer service circles and fueling what could be a US$47.1 billion market by 2030, according to Markets and Markets. Moreover, Gartner predicts that 80% of all common customer service issues will be solved by AI agents without human intervention by 2029...

A call for organizations to take quantum security seriously has been sounded in a new report by Forrester Research The report titled "Quantum Security Isn’t Hype -- Every Security Leader Needs It" acknowledged that the commercial availability of quantum computers that can crack traditional asymmetric cryptography is still five to 10 years away. H...

One knock against smartphones with built-in parental controls is that while they may give mom and dad a measure of comfort, they're just too uncool for kids. Human Mobile Devices (HMD), a Finland-based phone maker, believes it can address that problem with its new HMD X1 phone announced on Sunday "At HMD, we believe kids shouldn’t have to choose ...