Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Thin is all the rage in electronics these days, and nowhere is that more evident than in the notebook computer realm, where Intel has created a deafening buzz with its Ultrabook platform However, Intel's archrival, AMD, isn't sitting on its silicon when it comes to thin computers. It has a version of its upcoming Trinity chip designed for super sli...

Despite the pleas of some regulators and the advertising industry, the overlords of the Internet -- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- plunged forward last week with its plan to drastically expand the number of generic top level domains on the Net Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) are what come after the dot in an In...

Facebook will be among the Internet services that can be accessed in new car models from Mercedes Benz Facebook access is just one of the new features in the second generation telematics system, called "Mbrace2," which will begin appearing in new Mercedes models this spring....

A group of computer enthusiasts have begun working on creating a satellite network that could be used to thwart censorship on the Internet Called the "Hackerspace Global Grid" (HGG), the network could provide a way for activists to access the Net when a repressive regime suppresses access within its borders....

GoDaddy, the Internet's largest registrar of domains, would like the world to forget it ever supported the much-maligned Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) now before Congress. Namecheap, the second largest registrar, wants to make sure the world never forgets it....

Imagine the paint on your house powering the electric devices inside it ...

Massive data sets -- a season's worth of baseball statistics, for example, or health data from around the world -- can contain some very revealing knowledge. The problem confronting researchers, though, is finding it That may be a little easier with some tools developed by scientists at Harvard University and the Broad Institute....

Facebook will be disrupting the online lives of its members in the coming weeks with the redesign of their profile pages....

The agency charged with making U.S. highways safe for drivers has called for a national ban on the use of personal electronic devices while operating a motor vehicle, including many hands-free devices The five-member National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made its call for the ban as it released Tuesday a summary of its report on a multi-vehic...

Online game service OnLive is bringing its cloud magic to smartphones and tablets The pioneer in cloud-based gaming has introduced a free app that allows gamers to play console-style games on their smartphones and tablets....

Cuts in mail service that will add an extra delivery day to most first-class mail aren't expected to have a significant impact on Netflix, at least in the near term The U.S. Postal Service on Monday proposed modifying its current delivery standard for first class mail from one to three days delivery to two to three days....

Verizon and Microsoft announced details Tuesday of a deal between the companies for streaming video content from Verizon's FiOS television service to members of Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold service Verizon explained that Gold members who also subscribe to FiOS TV and Internet services will be able to stream 26 channels, most of them in high definitio...

Facebook's entry into the smartphone handset business is being reported like it's a done deal. It's a deal, however, in which critics say Facebook has more to lose than gain The Facebook phone project already has a code name, "Buffy," a reference to the famed vampire slayer of film and television, according to The Wall Street Journal. Given the rel...

Although computers have been called "thinking machines," their internal operations have very little to do with how the original thinking machine -- the human brain -- actually works. That's changing, however, as some researchers at MIT and the University of Texas Medical School have demonstrated in a new computer chip that mimics how the brain learns as it receives new information...

While the image that the high-tech industry has adopted for the source of services delivered over a remote network -- the cloud -- conjures thoughts of airy skies where quasi-magical things happen, the actual cloud is firmly anchored to the ground in data centers bristling with computer servers. As the cloud continues to expand, so does the demand for servers -- servers that consume more and more resources like electricity, space and capital...

Government authorities in the United States showed an increased interest in Google account holders in the first half of 2011, according to a report released Tuesday by the search giant The report showed that 5,950 requests for information were made by U.S. government authorities during the first six months of this year, compared with 4,601 requests...

Can a new mobile operating system pull Research In Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry devices, out of its current funk? Not only has the company been steadily losing market share to competitors with flashier phones -- namely Apple and makers of Google Android handsets -- but its worldwide network recently experienced technical difficulties that left...

The proliferation of smartphones has created headaches for security-minded IT departments everywhere, but a Motorola subsidiary aims to give system administrators more peace of mind with a solution for managing Android phones in business environments Three Laws Mobility (3LM), purchased by Motorola eight months ago, announced Tuesday that its manag...

Microsoft on Tuesday released the latest version of its smartphone operating system, a version that could make handsets using the OS more competitive with market leaders Android and iOS The new release -- Windows Phone 7.5, aka "Mango" -- has more than 500 new features, according to Microsoft, most of which are aimed at improving the productivity o...

The break-in and theft of security certificates from a Dutch authority brought home, once again, how vulnerable Web browsers can be to hackers pretending to be who they're not The authority, DigiNotar, is one of many that issue security certificates for websites. The digital certificates tell a browser to "trust" content coming from a certain site....