Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

By creating a synergistic relationship between online music downloads and its iPod hardware, Apple Computer has made it very difficult for competitors to pry market share from the Cupertino, Calif.-based company. A growing shift in the music buying habits of consumers could give those coveting a bigger slice of Apple's pie a chance to outflank the king...

The announcement by Seiko Epson on Monday of a new electronic "paper" display with the highest resolution seen in the technology to date appears to be another sign that the newspaper of the future is close at hand The 7.1-inch prototype revealed by Epson and which incorporates technology developed by E Ink, of Cambridge, Mass., has a resolution of ...

While I must confess I've never been a fan of online backup solutions, there was something about Mozy that tempted me to use it Mozy is one of those new breed applications mushrooming under the umbrella Web 2.0, or the New Web....

While I must confess I've never been a fan of online backup solutions, there was something about Mozy that tempted me to use it Mozy is one of those new breed applications mushrooming under the umbrella Web 2.0, or the New Web....

Many commercial Web sites fail to pass even basic tests for usefulness and usability largely because their architects use faulty reasoning to justify defective decisions That's one of the conclusions in a report released by Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass....

An alarming failure rate for new products has corporations looking to consumers to drive innovation in their markets, according to report released by Forrester Research "In the consumer products industry, upwards of 85 percent of new products fail after a couple of years in the market," the report's chief author, analyst Christine Spivey Overby, to...

As Windows computers get long in the tooth, they require special attention to keep running at an optimal level. Hard disks and registries need to be cleaned and defragmented. Settings need to be tweaked All those things can be done manually, or individual programs can be obtained to make the tasks less of a chore, but there's something to be said f...

Microsoft is like the earth. When it moves, people notice Among the Redmond, Wash., softzilla's recent maneuvers are its purchase of Massive Inc., of New York City, and its imminent -- if The Wall Street Journal is to be believed -- acquisition of Third Screen Media, of Boston....

Digital convergence -- the marrying of computer, communications and entertainment technologies -- is driving mergers and acquisitions among technology companies, according to a report released Tuesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) The report, part of a series of surveys being conducted by the accounting and consulting firm with leaders of technol...

Being branded illegal by federal government authorities hasn't stunted the growth of online gambling, which will become a US$20 billion worldwide industry by 2009, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Gaming Association, the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying arm of the commercial casino entertainment industry "Despite the officia...

Small may be snazzy when it comes to gadgets, but for displays, bigger is better, especially when it comes to digital cameras. Those two-inch LCDs that used to be considered spacious now seem like postage stamps compared to the three- and 3.5-inch murals adorning the latest gallery of byte shootersentering the market Just because a camera has a lar...

It used to be called digital radio before the marketers decided to exploit the high definition craze in broadcasting and recast it as HD Radio, but whatever it's called, it could be just the weapon airwave floggers need to fend off a growing threat for their audience from satellite radio Satellite radio has gained more than nine million paying subs...

Consumers may have priceless photo, music and video files on their computers these days, but they continue to ignore safeguarding them by backing them up on scheduled basis According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and sponsored by storage notable Maxtor, of Milpitas Calif., nearly half of all adult computer users in the United States a...

More and more mortgage shoppers are going online to find loans, but when it's time to seal the deal, most prefer to take their business offline, according to a study scheduled to be released Tuesday by Forrester Research and Compete Inc., both based in Boston Over the past two years, consumers researching mortgages online have increased 17 percent,...

If retail marketers are going to capture the loyalty of the next generation of spenders, they're going to have to get hip to the new Web, according to a report from Forrester Research "The 73 million people under the age of 18 in the U.S. represent one thing to marketers and sellers: the next generation of spenders," wrote Forrester analyst Carrie ...

Provisions in a proposed international treaty that civil liberties groups, developing nations and technology organizations claim will threaten the free flow of information on the Internet have been sidetracked by the pact's writers in Geneva The U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Right...

A bill before Congress to revamp how franchises are awarded for delivering television to communities will save consumers US$22 million a day, a panel of telecommunication experts said Wednesday at a press conference in Washington, D.C "Twenty-two million dollars a day," declared panel member Robert Johnson, president of Consumers for Cable Choice....

Apple computer users have long been immune from the Internet nasties that infect users of Microsoft Windows PCs, but that's beginning to change, according to a report released Monday by the SANS Institute The institute said in a statement that in light of recent attacks on Apple's Safari browser, SANS experts agree that Apple's operating system, OS...

Some 97 percent of Web surfers are just a click away from infecting their computers with adware and spyware, according to anti-malware software maker McAfee, of Santa Clara, Calif McAfee came to that conclusion after analyzing 14,464 responses to a spyware quiz taken by consumers at its SiteAdvisor Web site....

For heavy duty imaging work on a PC, there are some very powerful programs on the market. My application of choice is Corel Paint Shop Pro, primarily because I've been using it for years and have become comfortable with its interface That's not to say its competitors -- like Ulead PhotoImpact and Adobe Photoshop Elements -- aren't excellent program...