Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

The proverb "he who hesitates is lost" may be true if you're a member of the Danish aristocracy, but if you've been sitting on the fence about making a move from a point-and-shoot digital camera to a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) model, your hesitation may be rewarded Nikon has introduced a sweet DSLR unit, the Model D40, aimed at consumers wh...

Missing its self-proclaimed deadline to implement its audio anti-piracy software won't immediately hurt YouTube's goodwill with the entertainment industry As New Year's Eve approached last weekend, YouTube, which was purchased in October by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock, acknowledged it would not be able to meet its Jan. 1 deadline for rollin...

When many consumers are asked about receiving advertising on their cell phones, they react as if they've bitten into a sour apple. Nevertheless, the mobile universe has begun ripening nicely for marketers, according to a report released last week The report by Forrester Research noted: "In 2003, Forrester said that U.S. mobile marketing was only fo...

Social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook provide a means for people to share their lives with others, but are these sites turning their subscribers' free content into economic gain -- a new form of sharecropping? It certainly seems that way, according to Nicholas G. Carr, author of Does IT Matter....

Let's face it, most software that's packaged with Windows PCs is junk. It's either too feeble to do much of anything or a try-me version that, should you use it in earnest, will hold your data hostage when its trial period expires One program that I've found to be an exception to that rule, though, is WinDVD. In fact, when I bought a computer for m...

Social networking is going mobile and is poised for spectacular growth over the next five years, according to a research report released Monday The report from ABI Research predicts that mobile social communities will be attracting members in swarms, more than tripling in size worldwide from some 50 million this year to 174 million by 2011....

Tagging a computer with the Ferrari label may seem a tad pretentious to some minds. Whether you're of that mind or not, one thing is for sure -- any product saddled with a prestigious name like that has mighty tall boots to fill. Actually, it's more like filling hip-waders Nevertheless, since the introduction of its first Ferrari notebook three yea...

Most consumers wouldn't think of paying for an item and leaving a store without it, but that is essentially what is happening with about 10 percent of the gift cards sold each year to the public "We estimate the overall raw volume in gift cards this year to be (US)$80 billion," Brian Riley, senior analyst for bank cards with the Tower Group, told t...

IT guru Robin Bloor has thrown down the gauntlet to the antivirus software industry, but the only response he's received has been the equivalent of one hand clapping For months now, Bloor, a partner with Hurwitz & Associates, a consulting and research firm in Waltham, Mass., has been preaching about the demise of antivirus software. He's even cooke...

What do you think causes almost two-thirds of all problems encountered by Windows-based PCs? Hardware difficulties?...

When Hollywood studios found floating on the Internet copies of "screeners" sent to Oscar voters, they turned to Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands for a solution. Philips' answer: digital watermarking Digital watermarking has been around for some time, but with the spread of video distribution through online services, such as YouTube a...

Online merchants may want to rethink their advertising strategies next year for the weekend following Thanksgiving in light of a report released this week by BlueLithium Labs The San Jose, Calif. maker of online advertising solutions reported that "click-through" rates -- the rate at which consumers click on Net advertising -- on the Friday and Mon...

Back in July, Microsoft released a dynamite Webcam, the LifeCam 6000, for desktop users. Now it's following suit with an equally impressive version of the unit for notebook users ...

How safe is stored e-mail from the prying eyes of government authorities? Not very. It would be a whole lot safer if a decision by a federal judge in Ohio were left standing, according to a trio of civil rights groups The decision by District Court Judge Susan J. Dlott declared unconstitutional provisions in a statute that allow law enforcement aut...

There are programs for creating to-do lists. There are programs for managing projects. Rarely, however, do the twain meet as they do in Priorganizer The program, by John Wood atRiaform, is priced at US$29.95 like a simple to-do list application -- which is certainly how it can be used -- but it contains features found in pricier project management ...

Spending on online video advertising will soar throughout this decade with sales predicted to break the billion dollar barrier in 2008, according to a report released this month by research aggregator ...

There are lots of software programs, as well as e-mail add-ons, to fight spam, but none are as clever or will give you the visceral satisfaction of Nyms Nyms, which is sold on an annual subscription basis of US$19.95, is the cerebral spawn of the folks atAnonymizer, an Internet privacy andsecurity outfit out of San Diego, Calif....

Opening up an online high-yield savings account for Jeff Dennis, 57, of Brighton, Mass., was a no brainer. "I deposited (US)$200 into an account and got a $25 bonus at a time when interest rates were in the basement," he told the E-Commerce Times That was three years ago. Interest rates on savings are still in the basement. The popularity of onlin...

Some 80 percent of American Internet users say they'll be buying gifts online this holiday season, according to an AOL Shopping/Zogby poll released Tuesday The same percentage of Web users, the surveyors found, say they will spend the same amount or more than last year on online gifts....

Virtual reality has been a rich vein of computer science for fiction writers and movie makers, but its less heralded cousin, augmented reality (AR), may have a greater influence over how we lead our daily lives in the future AR overlays the virtual world on the real world in real time. While virtual reality attempts to insulate itself from the real...