Articles by John P. Mello Jr

In our age of instant gratification, no one likes waiting for anything. That's why the sluggish launch time of a typical personal computer can make a consumer irritable. It's also why instant-on computing has become a sort of Holy Grail for hardware and software makers in the industry. The pursuit of instant-on is a quest that's given Linux traction in an arena that for years it has found a tough nut to crack -- the PC...

There are an estimated 44 million Baby Boomers roaming the Net, and legions of marketers looking for ways to reach them. That's because, as a target market, Boomers have what it takes to make hucksters salivate: money "It's a generation with wealth -- (US)$2 trillion in disposable income -- and they have an incredible appetitive to keep connecting,...

We live in a Web 2.0 world, but when it comes to fighting Internet-borne security threats, many enterprises are armed with only Web 1.0 weapons, according to a study released this week by San Jose, Calif.-based Secure Computing Web 2.0 usage is prevalent in enterprises, the study found, and as a result "the traditional boundary of external versus i...

Video has been a perk packed with digital point-and-shoot still camerasfor some time, but judging by the quality present in many offerings, it's aperk that has been treated as an afterthought by many digicam makers.Not so by Kodak The chief of film stock -- now remaking itself as a dean of digital imaging --has steadily improved the video features ...

A report that an "electronic jihad" will be launched next week against 15 anti-Muslim Web sites by al Qaeda has stirred up the network security community While some have viewed the warning with skepticism, others are reluctant to put such an idea past the capabilities or desires of the terrorist organization....

Online retail sales in the United States jumped 23 percent, to US$28.4 billion, during the third quarter of this year compared with the same July-September period in 2006 The retail surge was led by sales of video games, consoles and accessories, which showed a year-to-year increase of 199 percent, according to the Internet analysis firm comScore o...

A Moscow-based software maker filed this week for a U.S. patent on a technology it claims will significantly reduce the time it takes to crack computer passwords The Russian company, Elcomsoft, said in a statement that it has discovered "a breakthrough technology that will decrease the time that it takes to perform password recovery by a factor of ...

Business users of mobile services create more revenue for the industry than personal users, according to a New York market research firm Based on a survey of more than 1,200 wireless subscribers, the average revenue per user (ARPU) for mobile business users is 24 percent higher than personal users, according to a report from ABI Research....

The music industry switched gears last week in its legal campaign to squash piracy of its intellectual property and filed a lawsuit against Usenet.com which it calls "a haven for those seeking pirated content." In recent months, the industry, through its trade organization -- the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) -- has attempted to ...

When it comes to slim and sleek in digital cameras, Casio is king. Oneof its latest offerings, the Casio Exilim EX-S880, illustrates why Not only does the new 8.1 megapixel bytecam sport the Twiggy proportionsthat Casio is known for -- it measures 3.72 by 2.38 by .68 inches andweighs a feathery 4.51 ounces -- but it's bristling with state-of-the-ar...

Linux and Apple OS X users are usually insulated from the security woes of their Microsoft Windows counterparts, but that doesn't seem to be the case with a recent vulnerability involving the handling of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) protocols Those protocols instruct a browser to perform certain tasks. The most common task would be "http" to r...

Many e-commerce sites are terrible, but they don't have to be that way, according to Jim Wehmann Wehmann is vice president for strategic marketing services for Minneapolis-based Digital River. The company, founded in 1994, is well-known around the world for building and managing online businesses for more than 40,000 software publishers, consumer t...

Online marketplace eBay paid too much for the Internet phone service Skype, but its head was in the right place when it made the buy, according to a report released Tuesday by a major technology research firm "eBay's September 2005 acquisition of telephony vendor Skype was overpriced by any direct measure: technology value, user base and revenue," ...

With all the social networking and photo-sharing Web sites out there, few teenagers are taken by surprise when they find that pictures they posed for have been posted online by their friends. However, few expect to see their likeness then featured, without their permission, on a billboard advertisement for a major telecommunications company Virgin ...

We live in a Web 2.0 world, but when it comes to fighting Internet-borne security threats, many enterprises are armed with only Web 1.0 weapons, according to a study released this week by San Jose, Calif.-based Secure Computing Web 2.0 usage is prevalent in enterprises, the study found, and as a result "the traditional boundary of external versus i...

Avid Technology has long had a sterling reputation among videoprofessionals for its editing systems. However, while widely respected withthe pro set, its consumer offerings have been at worst ornery and atbest, disappointing. Then the company acquired Pinnacle Pinnacle's heritage in consumer video on a PC stretched back to the daysof low-octane com...

Given the penchant of online scammers to exploit high-visibility events for their own malignant purposes, security experts were unsurprised this week to learn that Myanmar has became a vehicle for planting malware on unsuspecting users of personal computers The e-mail scam publicized by endpoint security and control firm Sophos uses a Microsoft Wor...

Only a few companies can afford to spend millions of dollars onresearching and developing new technologies for their product lines, butthat doesn't necessarily exclude smaller businesses from getting theirhands on cutting-edge innovation Each year, thousands of discoveries aremade at universities, and many of them are left on the shelf because they...

Only a few companies can afford to spend millions of dollars onresearching and developing new technologies for their product lines, butthat doesn't necessarily exclude smaller businesses from getting theirhands on cutting-edge innovation Each year, thousands of discoveries aremade at universities, and many of them are left on the shelf because they...

Only a few companies can afford to spend millions of dollars onresearching and developing new technologies for their product lines, butthat doesn't necessarily exclude smaller businesses from getting theirhands on cutting-edge innovation Each year, thousands of discoveries aremade at universities, and many of them are left on the shelf because they...