Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Personal Data Assistants have become dinosaurs, and after taking the Motorola Q for a test drive, it's easy to understand why. Just about anything you'd want to do with a PDA (personal digital assistant) you can do with a smartphone like the Q -- and a lot more The Q is about the size of a PDA -- 2.5 by 0.5 by 4.6 inches -- and beefy like one, too,...

Spam and alternative communication technologies have begun to lower the value of e-mail as a mission-critical application for business, according to a study released Monday by IDC, a technology research firm The firm said its study showed that "a resurgence of spam and the increased frequency of being replaced by text messaging and voice over IP (V...

Some 204 million mobile phones, or 14 percent of the world market, will be running on Linux by 2012, according to a report released this week from the London office of ABI Research "Linux in the cellular phone is not a question of if, but when," declared ABI Research Director Stuart Carlaw....

Although digital still camera manufacturers are making great strides in improving the video capabilities of their products, they still have some distance to go before they catch up with conventional camcorders Sure, we'd all like to haul around less tech when documenting our lives, but for now, two cameras are still better than one. The good news, ...

Their mode of Cyberspace travel may be called a browser, but what they're doing at news sites on the Web is more than just browsing, according to findings released last week by the Poynter Institute Readers of news on the Web spend more time with stories they choose to eyeball than their counterparts reading printed newspapers, according to the res...

There are some 31 million households in the United States without Internet access, and almost half them don't care a jot about it Twenty-nine percent of U.S. households don't have Internet access and don't plan to get it in the next 12 months, according to a study released this week by Parks Associates....

Silicon is the lifeblood of electronics today, but in the photonics world -- the world of lasers and fiber optic transport -- it has had to play second fiddle to more exotic substances like indium phosphide and gallium arsenide. Researchers, though, are working to change that orchestration and reap the enormous benefits silicon photonics would create for computers and computer networks...

The popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and user-generated content sites like YouTube are inducing traditional news organizations to rethink their approach to the Web Outfits like Fox News, CNN, USA Today and MSNBC have begun to incorporate social networking tools into their sites, as well as actively soliciting content from their us...

There are two utilities that I've found essential in my day-to-day operations with Windows. One is a clipboard extender -- a program that archives anything cut or copied to the Windows clipboard. The other is a screen capture application Screen capture programs allow you to create images from whatever is displayed on your screen. Their function are...

Delivery of television programming over computer networks using Internet protocols showed signs of a maturing market this week when nine major players supporting the technology announced the formation of a consortium to develop important standards for it AT&T, Ericsson, France Telecom, Panasonic, Philips, Siemens, Samsung, Sony and Telecom Italia o...

Cybersquatters, typosquatters and domain tasters were targeted by Microsoft Wednesday in a series of lawsuits filed in California, Washington and the United Kingdom "Domain name abuse is a growing global challenge, and so Microsoft is expanding its efforts in this area for two reasons," explained Microsoft Senior Attorney Aaron Kornblum in a video ...

I've never been a big fan of Post-it notes. On occasion, though, they have proven to be a convenient vehicle for procrastination When someone with priorities diverging from mine pins one to my computer screen, I can toss it on the rug....

If you want to avoid being a victim of information highwaymen on the Web, you may want to pay attention to the domain names of the sites you surf to According to a study released Monday by security software maker McAfee, the Web is no different from the physical world when it comes to safety: there are safe neighborhoods and safe Web domains, and t...

Consumer reaction to downloading movies and TV programming from the Internet has been less than enthusiastic. For some, it's a hassle to move entertainment content from their PCs to their living rooms In recent months, the gadget industry has focused a lot of its resources on cooking up solutions to bridge the PC-TV gap. Yet another such solution w...

Of the three pillars of digital lifestyle applications -- video, photos and music -- music remains a bit of a mystery to many users. That's ironic because sharing digital music files was one of the first applications byte-stylers flocked to However, while many users have graduated from merely sharing videos and photos to creating polished projects ...

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Universal Pictures and Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP) announced Tuesday a joint venture to launch a new system for distributing digital movies to theaters DCIP is a joint venture by AMC Entertainment, Cinemark USA, and Regal Entertainment Group....

It's not often that in this gee-whiz age any technology can be accused of being under-hyped, but that's the case with mobile marketing, according to a report released this week by IDC, a research firm based in Framingham, Mass "IDC believes that mobile marketing is one of the instances in which the current hype actually underestimates the full pote...

Like many home keyboard jockeys, I view my wireless network as a black box. I set it up to share my broadband Internet connection. It does that. So I leave well enough alone That doesn't mean, though, that my curiosity isn'taroused from time to time, and I feel an urge to poke around with the network. Usuallyit's an urge that I resist, but a slick ...

Online predators will again be the target of legislation filed in Congress this year Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) filed a measure last month aimed at protecting children from pornographers, predators and list brokers....

For the first time ever, Wikipedia last month cracked into comScore's top 10 hottest properties on the Web, largely due to the exposure the online encyclopedia receives from search engines such as Google During January, comScore reported that Wikipedia and its affiliated sites garnered 42.9 million unique visitors, which earned it a ninth place ran...