Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Facebook is preparing to plunge into the office collaboration and communication space with something it's calling "Facebook At Work," the Financial Times reported Monday The new offering will be similar to the consumer version of Facebook, but it will allow workers to chat with each other, connect with their professional contacts, and collaborate o...

Apple has formed a dedicated sales team to pitch Apple products to CIOs, and it is working closely with app developers who have a corporate presence to sell into the enterprise, according to a Reuters report published Monday Apple's increased interest in the enterprise could be part of a long-term strategy to offset declining sales in the tablet ma...

GT Advanced Technologies, in a document made public last Friday, alleged that it "incurred losses ... due to Apple's inordinate control over GTAT's liquidity, operations (including control over product specifications), and decision making." The U.S. Bankruptcy Court of New Hampshire unsealed the document, after GTAT initiated bankruptcy proceedings...

As thoughtful as mobile phone makers are when they design their products, there are always punters who want something that isn't there and are willing to hack a device to get it In the Android world such a hack is called "rooting" a phone; in the iOS world, it's called "jailbreaking." Regardless of what it's called, it can turn a phone into a can ...

Palo Alto Networks on Wednesday reported that more than 400 apps infected with a malicious program it calls "WireLurker" have been downloaded 356,104 times by Chinese Mac owners from Maiyadi, an online app store unaffiliated with Apple The malware does no harm to the Macs it infects but when the computer connects via USB to an iOS device -- an iPho...

Russian cyberspies -- unlike their Chinese counterparts -- have a reputation for stealth, so it's unusual when two digital espionage operations linked to the Kremlin come to light in a week FireEye early last week released a report detailing how hackers working for the Russian government have been using sophisticated techniques over a seven-year pe...

Amazon on Tuesday announced the addition of free unlimited cloud photo storage for members of its Prime premium shopping service The new storage feature, Prime Photos, works with Amazon Cloud Drive, the company's free storage offering comparable to iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive....

A group of Russian companies called the "Western European Financial Union," or ZEFS, on Friday dismantled a 6-foot, 6-inch tribute to Steve Jobs after Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly acknowledged he's gay. The Jobs tribute -- an interactive kiosk in the shape of an iPhone -- had graced the courtyard of the National Research University of Information T...

The Pew Research Center last week released a report suggesting that cyberattacks in the next 10 years might cause major destruction of human lives and tens of billions of dollars in property damage However, the situation might not be as overwhelming as the raw numbers indicate, according to one of the report's authors, Janna Quitney Anderson, direc...

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday filed a complaint in a California federal court against AT&T, seeking compensation for customers who were told they had unlimited data plans but in reality did not The legal action stemmed from a practice AT&T began in 2011 of throttling data delivery to customers with unlimited data plans when their data us...

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday filed a complaint in a California federal court against AT&T, seeking compensation for customers who were told they had unlimited data plans but in reality did not The legal action stemmed from a practice AT&T began in 2011 of throttling data delivery to customers with unlimited data plans when their data us...

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday filed a complaint in a California federal court against AT&T, seeking compensation for customers who were told they had unlimited data plans but in reality did not The legal action stemmed from a practice AT&T began in 2011 of throttling data delivery to customers with unlimited data plans when their data us...

Malware writers behind Koler, a bad app that attacks Android devices, have upped their game with a new variant of the pernicious program In its original version, Koler hijacked phones it landed on and wouldn't set them free until a ransom was paid. This latest strain of the malapp also does the ransomware thing, but it takes its malignancy a step f...

Consumers who had been using Apple Pay at CVS and Rite Aid received a rude shock over the weekend when the chains turned off the technology at their stores across the U.S. Apple Pay enables mobile payments using the latest iPhone models or Apple Watch....

Google on Wednesday introduced Inbox, a free mobile app that aims to separate the email wheat from the chaff. It's currently available to Android and iPhone users on an invitation-only basis The software is aimed at managing email on small screens, although once set up and running on a phone, it can be accessed through Google's Chrome browser on a ...

Leeo on Tuesday introduced the Smart Alert Nightlight, a US$99 gadget that can detect when the alarm sounds from a smoke or carbon monoxide detector and send alerts to an iPhone About the size and shape of a coaster, the Smart Alert Nightlight plugs into a wall outlet where it does double duty as illuminator and listener for alarms....

Following Edward Snowden's revelations about indiscriminate government snooping on U.S. citizens, many Net surfers would like to find a way to lower their visibility on the Internet. There are a number of tools in cyberspace that can help a soul do that, but they can take time and savvy to set up. That's why Kerry Cox launched the Sierra Project Th...

Apple on Thursday held a new product event on its campus in Cupertino, California, where the stars of the show were a thinner version of its iPad tablet and a 27-inch iMac desktop with a display that has 67 percent more pixels than a 4K TV The iPad Air 2, pictured above, will have an entry point of US$499 for a 16-GB model. It is only 6.1mm thick -...

Microsoft on Tuesday released Skype Qik, a new mobile chat app that features short, self-destructing video messages that automatically self-destruct in two weeks -- or sooner if set to do so ...

The days of in-boxes flooded with spam messages on an assortment of sordid subjects are a faint memory to most email users, but what spam has lost in volume it's gained in power More than two-thirds (69 percent) of some 200 IT decision makers in companies with five to 1,000 employees said a spam incident in the last year had severely disrupted thei...