Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Some 94 percent of consumers in a recent Harris Interactive survey believe the Internet poses a threat to children Among the biggest threats perceived by the respondents in the poll -- which was commissioned by San Francisco, California, network security firm Zone Labs, a Check Point company -- were predators in chat rooms (61 percent) and pornogra...

The battle over the mobile e-mail market will be heating up over the coming months, and it's a battle that BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) is destined to lose Although RIM's leadership position remains strong in the short-term, analysts say that, in the long run, it will be toppled by the Redmond, Wash. juggernaut Microsoft....

These days, a sure way to get attention to something is to associate it to Apple Computer's hot line of iPod digital music players -- even if that association is a dubious one. That seems to be the case with Pod Slurping A little over a year ago, Gartner Research in Stamford, Conn., cautioned corporate America about the threat that portable storage...

When Google recently released its re-vamped desktop search engine, a central element of the new offering was a sidebar. This clever device gives keyboard jocks quick access to a bundle of useful features. You can read e-mail as soon as it arrives without opening your e-mail program, for instance, or monitor news headlines without opening your browser...

Worldwide spending on research and development will reach US$1 trillion in 2006, according to a survey released yesterday by Battelle and "R&D" magazine The survey, which Battelle, of Columbus, Ohio, has been conducting annually for more than 40 years, showed that much of the growth in R&D is being fired by the Asian region....

Worldwide spending on research and development will reach US$1 trillion in 2006, according to a survey released yesterday by Battelle and "R&D" magazine The survey, which Battelle, of Columbus, Ohio, has been conducting annually for more than 40 years, showed that much of the growth in R&D is being fired by the Asian region....

Worldwide spending on research and development will reach US$1 trillion in 2006, according to a survey released yesterday by Battelle and "R&D" magazine The survey, which Battelle, of Columbus, Ohio, has been conducting annually for more than 40 years, showed that much of the growth in R&D is being fired by the Asian region....

Sales of desktop computers made by Hewlett-Packard have exhibited a recent year-over-year surge, according to a report released this week by ChangeWave Research, of Rockville, Md ChangeWave -- which conducts periodic surveys of an "alliance" of some 5,000 business. technology and medical professionals -- reported that 20 percent of the respondents ...

Competitors lusting for a slice of Apple's iPod market need to rethink their current strategy, according to an analyst at Forrester Research Ted Schadler, who authored a report released last week on youth and online music, told TechNewsWorld that iPod competitors have been ignoring a key attitude uncovered in Forrester's survey....

Sunglasses and cool have always had an intimate relationship so it's not surprising that gadget makers have started grafting the coolest way to listen to music to the fashionable accoutrement Until recently, though, you had to pay a pretty penny for haut hip. Oakley -- the king of shades for tony active types like professional baseball players -- b...

In a deal harking back to the days of dot-com euphoria, online e-commerce powerhouse eBay announced a US$2.6 billion deal to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype, a pioneer in free Voice over IP (VoIP) services on the Internet The mega-sale drew fire from some quarters and praise from others....

Consumer satisfaction with wireless phone service providers has slipped significantly over the last year, according to an annual study released by J.D. Power and Associates yesterday Overall, satisfaction fell 10 percent compared to 2004. That's the largest year-over-year change in satisfaction since the survey's inception in 1995, the company said...

Online merchants selling digital products for small sums of money will find it easier to do so through the Internet's best known online payment service, PayPal That's because the company has announced a new "micropayments" pricing scheme to make selling low-priced goods through PayPal -- especially those sold for less than US$2 -- more attractive....

News syndication and Web logs are two of the hottest technologies on the Internet today Syndication commonly referred to as RSS or Atom, has become a significant vehicle for delivering news and analysis directly to information hounds and for sharing intelligence within corporations....

Some 72 percent of the businesses evaluated by a Boston-based research firm scored poorly on their policies for re-using their customers' personal data for marketing purposes, but the researchers maintain that more companies are sensitive to privacy issues than ever before and are acting on that awareness Other findings in the report prepared by Th...

A pact between chip king Intel and Research in Motion (RIM), Canadian maker of the Blackberry mobile communication device, appears less imminent than originally reported Rumors of a technology exchange deal between the companies spread like an airborne virus on Monday following a CNBC report predicting an agreement would be announced at the Pentium...

Some pundits contend that if Microsoft's Media Center Edition of Windows XP is going to break through the barrier between the living room and the home office, it's going to have to do it on the notebook platform. Toshiba is taking that notion seriously with its new line of Qosmio portables The latest edition of the notebook with the name that looks...

Personal computer shipments this year and next will grow by double digits, but that won't translate into the big revenue gains for PC makers, according to a preliminary forecast released yesterday by Gartner, of Stamford, Conn Compared on a year-to-year basis, Gartner predicted worldwide PC shipments would increase 12.7 percent in 2005, to 206.6 mi...

Renting entertainment could be the wave of the future, and Microsoft isn't about to miss it The company that brought us "Janus," the digital rights management (DRM) scheme that allows subscription music services like Napster On The Go to exist, has announced a deal with Exent, of Bethesda, Md., a provider of "games on demand" technology....

If you've ever owned an SLR camera, you can probably remember the first time you held it in your hands. I do Here, I thought, many years ago when I picked up my Minolta X7, is something of substance. Weighty, certainly, but also beautifully balanced -- an inanimate object capable of animating its beholder....