Articles by John P. Mello Jr

IT guru Robin Bloor has thrown down the gauntlet to the antivirus software industry, but the only response he's received has been the equivalent of one hand clapping For months now, Bloor, a partner with Hurwitz & Associates, a consulting and research firm in Waltham, Mass., has been preaching about the demise of antivirus software. He's even cooke...

What do you think causes almost two-thirds of all problems encountered by Windows-based PCs? Hardware difficulties?...

When Hollywood studios found floating on the Internet copies of "screeners" sent to Oscar voters, they turned to Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands for a solution. Philips' answer: digital watermarking Digital watermarking has been around for some time, but with the spread of video distribution through online services, such as YouTube a...

Online merchants may want to rethink their advertising strategies next year for the weekend following Thanksgiving in light of a report released this week by BlueLithium Labs The San Jose, Calif. maker of online advertising solutions reported that "click-through" rates -- the rate at which consumers click on Net advertising -- on the Friday and Mon...

Back in July, Microsoft released a dynamite Webcam, the LifeCam 6000, for desktop users. Now it's following suit with an equally impressive version of the unit for notebook users ...

How safe is stored e-mail from the prying eyes of government authorities? Not very. It would be a whole lot safer if a decision by a federal judge in Ohio were left standing, according to a trio of civil rights groups The decision by District Court Judge Susan J. Dlott declared unconstitutional provisions in a statute that allow law enforcement aut...

There are programs for creating to-do lists. There are programs for managing projects. Rarely, however, do the twain meet as they do in Priorganizer The program, by John Wood atRiaform, is priced at US$29.95 like a simple to-do list application -- which is certainly how it can be used -- but it contains features found in pricier project management ...

Spending on online video advertising will soar throughout this decade with sales predicted to break the billion dollar barrier in 2008, according to a report released this month by research aggregator ...

There are lots of software programs, as well as e-mail add-ons, to fight spam, but none are as clever or will give you the visceral satisfaction of Nyms Nyms, which is sold on an annual subscription basis of US$19.95, is the cerebral spawn of the folks atAnonymizer, an Internet privacy andsecurity outfit out of San Diego, Calif....

Opening up an online high-yield savings account for Jeff Dennis, 57, of Brighton, Mass., was a no brainer. "I deposited (US)$200 into an account and got a $25 bonus at a time when interest rates were in the basement," he told the E-Commerce Times That was three years ago. Interest rates on savings are still in the basement. The popularity of onlin...

Some 80 percent of American Internet users say they'll be buying gifts online this holiday season, according to an AOL Shopping/Zogby poll released Tuesday The same percentage of Web users, the surveyors found, say they will spend the same amount or more than last year on online gifts....

Virtual reality has been a rich vein of computer science for fiction writers and movie makers, but its less heralded cousin, augmented reality (AR), may have a greater influence over how we lead our daily lives in the future AR overlays the virtual world on the real world in real time. While virtual reality attempts to insulate itself from the real...

Thin is all the rage these days in digital cameras. If a shutterbox can't fit in the pocket of a pair of designer jeans, some consumers will just turn their nose up at it. I'm not one of them Thin has its merits, but so does substantial. Among these merits are more muscular zoom lenses -- 10x or more....

When it comes to gadgets, thin is in. From the latest nano from Apple to the recent crop of slim bar-phones, chunky is strictly L7 for the electronic hipster Among the trimmest of the new cell phones is the Samsung Trace (SGH-t519), distributed exclusively through T-Mobile....

Measuring a Web site's performance isn't what it used to be. Site operators are increasingly turning to outside sources for the components of their Web pages. That can muddy the metrics for companies trying to get a handle on how their sites are really performing Gomez Inc., though, believes it has a solution to that dilemma. The Lexington, Mass., ...

Marketers call them "the influentials," and in a world where word-of-mouth marketing is king, they're royalty. However, they may not be as monolithic a class as hucksters believe them to be, according to a report from JupiterResearch The "classic" influential is an early adopter with a drive to get the newest products first. Their expertise is well...

GarageBand is an outstanding addition to Apple Computer's original iLife software suite What the program does is give musicians and non-musicians alike a tool to create music on a computer....

The scourge of the wired world -- spam -- is making its presence felt in the wireless realm, but carriers hope they can stunt the problem in its formative stage "Spam isn't a problem; however, it's an evolving threat that carriers are constantly working to combat," Joe Farren, a spokesperson for CTIA-The Wireless Association, told TechNewsWorld....

As much as I am enamored with USB "thumb" drives, some storage problems -- such as system backups -- need a more robust solution Robust need not mean bulky. There are USB portable hard drives on the market that fit in the palm of your hand and are big enough to support substantial data demands....

For decades, Apple Computer has counted on the loyalty of its customers to fuel the company's success, but in one of its most important markets there may be signs that that loyalty is flagging According to a survey released Wednesday by ABI Research, 58 percent of iPod owners who plan to buy a new digital music player in the next 12 months said the...