Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Although Apple is expected to launch a mixed reality product sometime this year, don't expect it to lead its users into the metaverse, according to a prominent watcher of the company The watcher, Mark Gurman, who writes the Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, wrote in the latest edition of the publication that the metaverse will be "off-limits" for ...

Shopping on social media platforms is growing at a torrid pace -- three times faster than traditional e-commerce platforms -- and is on a pace to reach US$1.2 trillion globally by 2025, according to a study released Tuesday by an international professional services firm Most of that growth -- 62 percent -- will be driven by Gen Z and millennial sho...

The holiday shopping season was very good for Apple's wearables business, according to a leading analyst of the company's operations Ming-Chi Kuo of TFI Asset Management reported over the weekend that Apple sold 90 million AirPods during the final quarter of 2021, including 27 million of the latest version of the earbuds released in September....

As 2021 winds down, it's time for cybersecurity experts to toss their runes and forecast what's in store for consumers and practitioners in the coming year Cybercriminals will move from identity theft to identity fraud, predicted the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego....

With remote work here to stay, a conundrum for many firms is where to tap into the stay-at-home workforce. Karat, a maker of a talent platform for developers, has an answer to that riddle The company has identified what it considers the 10 best cities -- outside major tech hubs like the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle, and New York -- for hiring r...

Growing use of unified communication and collaboration tools in organizations could hurt productivity in the short term, according to a study released last week by a service assurance and cybersecurity company In a survey commissioned by Netscout, of Westford, Mass., more than nine in 10 of the 300 IT leaders participating in the study (93 percent...

Four out of five cybersecurity pros are fretting over the potential for a sneak attack by an adversary with a quantum computer that will render the encryption of their data ineffective That was one of the findings in a global survey released Tuesday of more than 600 cybersecurity professionals conducted by Dimensional Research for Cambridge Quantum...

Bot activity at websites is skewing marketing analytics and costing businesses millions annually, according to a report released Tuesday by a bot detection and mitigation firm Netacea maintained in its report that the skewed analytics problem is as costly to businesses as click fraud....

Concerns over supply chain snags, delivery delays, and a yearning for a return to normal are influencing consumer shopping habits this holiday season "The biggest change this year is that shopping has started earlier than in the past," observed Dave Sekera, chief U.S. market strategist with Morningstar, an investment research company in Chicago....

Many Americans lack the digital skills needed to be productive members of the workforce in the 21st century, according to a report released Monday by a Washington, D.C., think tank One-third of U.S. workers lack digital skills, with 13 percent having no digital skills and 18 percent having, at best, limited digital skills, noted the report by the I...

'Tis the season to go phishing. Nothing brings out digital bandits like the holidays, and this year is no exception Proofpoint, an enterprise digital security company, reported Tuesday its researchers are seeing a massive global increase in holiday-themed mobile phishing attacks, a.k.a. smishing....

Few consumers take strong action to protect their privacy and identities after receiving a data breach notice, according to a report by the Identity Theft Resource Center and research firm DIG.Works The report, based on a survey of 1,050 U.S. adult consumers, found that 16 percent of the participants in the research took no action after receiving n...

Over the last year, ethical hackers have prevented more than US$27 billion in cybercrime, according to a report released Tuesday by a leading bug bounty platform In its annual Inside the Mind of a Hacker report, Bugcrowd maintained that ethical hackers working on its platform were able to prevent those cybercrime losses to organizations by exposing...

Industrial robots are hot, with North American orders for the first nine months of 2021 valued at US$1.48 billion, breaking a record set in 2017 The order numbers are 37 percent higher than in the same period in 2020, from 21,072 to 29,000 units, and a value jump of 35 percent, from $1.09 billion to $1.48 billion, according to figures released Frid...

Holiday shoppers can expect to see a lot of out-of-stock warnings online this year, but that won't discourage them for opening their wallets to buy gifts for loved ones, according to retail sales watchers In October alone, online shoppers saw more than two billion out-of-stock messages, Adobe reported Tuesday in its Digital Economy Index, which is ...

The global pandemic and the need to comply with laws governing consumer data are fueling increases in privacy budgets, according to a report by an association for privacy professionals and a multinational professional services firm The Privacy Governance Report for 2021 produced by the International Association of Privacy Professionals, EY and EY L...

Microsoft offered a glimpse of the metaverse in the enterprise Tuesday at its Virtual Ignite conference with the announcement of Mesh for Teams and Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces Mesh for Teams combines the mixed-reality capabilities of Microsoft Mesh, which allows people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic e...

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snap lost an estimated $9.85 billion in revenue during the first half of 2021 due to a new privacy tool launched by Apple that requires applications to ask for a user's permission before tracking their activity on the internet, the Financial Times reported Sunday The report, based on data from advertising research fir...

Amazon added two new solutions to its Alexa Smart Properties lineup Monday that will allow senior living and healthcare providers to integrate the company's voice agent Alexa into their properties and empower residents and patients to stay connected, informed and entertained Designed specifically for the needs of senior living communities and healt...

A proposed law barring high-tech companies from favoring their own products over those of their competitors would harm consumers, competition and innovation, according to a report released Monday by a science and technology think tank The bipartisan legislation filed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, prohibits "self-prefe...