Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Nikon on Monday announced its new KeyMission line of shooters, marking its entry into the 360-degree and action camera business The KeyMission 360 (US$499.95, pictured above) can corral 360-degree video in 4K UHD at 24p, as well as in the more traditional HD 1080p. It also shoots 30-megapixel stills....

Congress earlier this month lowered the hammer on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in a report on the massive data breach that resulted in the theft of 4.2 million former and current government employees' personnel files, as well as 21.5 million individuals' security clearance information, including fingerprints associated with 5.6 million of them...

Confidential information about international athletes surfaced on the Internet Wednesday -- the second such exposure this week Russian hackers allegedly stole the information from the World Anti-Doping Agency. It includes confidential data on medical drug exemptions given to 25 athletes from eight countries.

The iPhone 7 may be the best version of Apple's smartphone to date, but it's garnering lukewarm reactions from reviewers and pundits The practical improvements in the new iPhone are praiseworthy, wrote Andrew Cunningham in his review for Ars Technica, but he cautioned would-be buyers about the price they would have to pay for the upgrade....

At the request of the FBI, Israeli authorities last week arrested Itay Huri and Yarden Bidani, both 18 years old, for operating vDOS, a DDoS-for-hire service that raked in more than half a million dollars in two years DDoS attacks flood websites with garbage data in order to disrupt their operation and deny users access....

Apple raised the ante for cameras in flagship phones with the announcement of its iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus on Wednesday Others already have taken the dual-camera approach to smartphone photography -- notably HTC, LG and Huawei....

The death of the printed book appears to have been greatly exaggerated Nearly three quarters of participants (73 percent) in a recent Pew Research Center study said they had read a book in the last year, largely on paper....

Apple used to guard details about a new iPhone more closely than Fort Knox, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. The shift has been glaring with the iPhone 7, slated for introduction on Wednesday It's widely believed that the new iPhone has no headphone jack. Sound is piped to the user through a set of EarPods that connect to the phone th...

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak recently said removing the headphone jack in the next version of the iPhone is going to "tick off a lot of people." It's been rumored for months that Apple would be scrapping the 3.5 mm headphone jack in the iPhone 7 it's expected to unveil next week Such a move, Wozniak said in an interview, could upset users who have...

Snapchat and Instagram, look out. Apple has you in its sights. The company is working on a video-sharing app with features similar to those found in Snapchat and Instagram, Bloomberg reported last week The app, possibly slated for release in 2017, will allow users of Apple devices to record a video, apply filters and draw on it, then share it with ...

The European Union on Tuesday nailed Apple with a US$14.5 billion bill for back taxes "The European Commission has today has adopted a decision that Apple's tax benefits in Ireland are illegal," said EC Competition Chief Margrethe Vestager at a press conference in Brussels....

Fitbit on Monday announced two new fitness trackers with sleeker looks, more durable construction and greater data-gathering capabilities The Fitbit Charge 2, priced at US$149.95, features continuous heart-rate tracking. It uses the data to generate a cardio fitness score and provides guidance for improving it over time....

Instagram last week announced a new Explore video channel that gives users an easier way to find and watch events The channel aggregates videos from concerts, sporting events and more, and its personalization features flag events that might be a good match for users' individual interests....

Apple has purchased medical records startup Gliimpse, Fast Company reported Monday, in order to broaden its presence in the personal healthcare information management market Apple confirmed that the purchase took place earlier this year, according to the magazine....

Responsibility for securing enterprise applications has been moving down the development lifecycle, and for good reason. It not only makes the enterprise more secure, but also saves companies time and money For example, the average time to fix a vulnerability in IBM's application security solution has dropped from 20 hours to 30 minutes, according ...

Intel on Tuesday presented its virtual reality vision -- a vision that mixes virtual and real worlds into a kind of merged reality -- to developers attending a conference in San Francisco Mixing reality and unreality sometimes can be a recipe for disaster, but Intel thinks it will be a formula for success. At the center of Intel's vision is its Pro...

Tim Cook gave a wide-ranging interview to The Washington Post on Saturday, discussing his five years at the helm of Apple. However, Apple fans looking for juicy morsels about new products won't find them in the Q&A Among other things, Cook discounted the bleak claims of analysts who maintain the smartphone market is in decline -- and Apple's fortun...

A Russian regulatory authority earlier this week named Apple, along with more than a dozen Russian retailers, as a target for an investigation into price-fixing activities The Federal Antimonopoly Service, or FAS, has seen signs of price-setting coordination among iPhone resellers in Russia, according to a notice published on the agency's website....

The code warriors of the future literally might be computer code acting as warriors to defend against attackers on computer networks The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, gave us a glimpse into that future last Sunday, when it announced the winners of its Cyber Grand Challenge at DEF CON....

The smart home of the future could be a wee bit smarter with the addition of the Alexa-powered connected intercom system Nucleus announced last week. The Nucleus intercom, which last fall made its debut without Alexa, is a tablet that connects to a home network through WiFi or Ethernet to allow family members to communicate with each other both i...