Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Somewhere between no-frills Craigslist and intricate eBay lies the new e-commerce offering introduced by Santa Monica, Calif.-based TagWorld last week TagWorld, a high-energy social networking space launched last November, is combining the new service of free online classifieds, which includes images and personalized storefronts, with auction featu...

Internet companies doing business in countries that suppress civil liberties need a code of conduct to soften the controversy they're fueling by doing business with authoritarian regimes In an open letter sent to Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-Ore.), whose Congressional subcommittee held hearings Wednesday on the conduct of Internet companies in China, th...

Nico Popp can see the day when proving who you are on the faceless Internet will be as easy as using a picture I.D. in the real world Popp is the point man for a new authentication program launched Monday by VeriSign, which runs the Net's largest domains, .com and .net, its biggest certificate validation service and the root product code database f...

If there's anything that can be called heresy in free-for-all cyberspace it's the notion that people should pay for e-mail, but that didn't stop a few heretics this week from announcing monetized e-mail initiatives Although Yahoo and AOL took the lion's share of the limelight with their "certified e-mail" proposal, a feisty start-up in the Netherla...

A maker of software to manage music CD copying has agreed to make its protection scheme less vulnerable to computer crackers. After the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released an open letter raising security concerns about the MediaMax application, its Phoenix, Ariz.-based developer, SunnComm Technologies, announced it would take several remedial steps:...

After a slight hiatus during the holidays, malware writers returned with vigor to their malicious ways in January, creating thousands of new software nasties According to Sophos, an international malware-fighting firm with offices in Lynnfield, Mass., 2,312 pernicious programs were introduced last month. Anti-virus software maker McAfee pegs Januar...

Here's the scenario. Something ugly has happened to your computer. Irreplaceable files have been clobbered. You seek assistance from a PC pundit, but you know your files are fly food as soon as you hear, "You're supposed to back up your files, you know." Let's face it. We all have good excuses for failing to sustain a rigid maintenance regimen for ...

They were a staple of cloak-and-dagger drama, both fictional and real, during the Cold War and now they're being offered to consumers as a passive means of protecting their personal property. They're microdots DataDot Technology USA, of Redmond, Wash., introduced Monday a US$19.95 kit that allows consumers to attach unique microscopic identifiers -...

The global market for high-definition televisions (HDTV) and their ancillary products -- personal video recorders, DVD players, game consoles and set-top boxes -- will eclipse US$25 billion this year, according to a report released Wednesday by ABI Research, of Oyster Bay, N.Y As the HDTV market grows, commoditization will threaten margins and attr...

Apple Computer's introduction of its video iPod set off a big bang that will fuel phenomenal market growth for years, according to a report released Monday byABI Research While the push to video online started well before the launch of the video iPod, ABI acknowledged, Apple's announcement triggered an online video explosion that echoed throughout ...

Social networking Web sites used to be just about connections. Now they're ballooning into ecosystems where individuals can aggregate their lives. More evidence of that appeared Wednesday as an up-and-coming networking site called TagWorld added video services to its online repertoire "There are a lot of video sites out there," Evan Rifkin, preside...

A bill to place copying controls on the conversion of analog signals into digital form is coming under fire from technologists and civil libertarians The measure, filed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and his colleague John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), is aimed at closing what's come to be known as the "analog hole...

The widespread adoption of open-source software by corporations and governments has raised some security concerns in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the agency is responding It has funded a three-year grant reportedly worth US$1.24 million to -- among other things -- set up a daily auditing program of major open-source applicati...

North American advertisers spent US$5.75 billion on search engine marketing in 2005, a 44 percent increase over the previous year, according to a report released Monday by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) The report, based on a survey of 553 respondents and conducted by Radar Research and Intellisurvey in November 2005,...

Peddling pornography has always been big business on theInternet, but apparently it isn't lucrative enough for some skin merchants Pornographers are turning to click fraud to supplement income generated by their Web sites, according to Kessler International, a cybercrime investigations firm based in New York City....

Cool electronic gadgets can be seductive not only to consumers, but to the makers of the gadgets themselves. And that is costing those makers money According to a report released by Forrester Research yesterday, consumer technology companies are leaving some US$3.8 billion on the table today because they're failing to leverage their knack for selli...

As revelers wish each other happy New Year this weekend, members of the open-source community will be reveling in events from the past year -- a year that saw their movement make significant strides in strengthening its position on the technology landscape "This year we saw a lot of CIOs and a lot of big businesses signing off on open-source projec...

Blackmail, the shakedown and the sting are age-old forms of thuggery in theanalog world, and now they're finding the digital world a fertile place fortheir poisoned fruits, according to security experts interviewed byTechNewsWorld The experts say that criminal elements -- including organized crime in Russia,Eastern Europe and Asia -- are increasing...

There are lots of software heavyweights in the digital imaging editing field -- sluggers such as Microsoft, Adobe and Ulead -- so it's a wonder that a fine program like Paint Shop Pro has continued to chug along over the years without being derailed as has been the case with so many worthwhile independents However, the maker of PSP, Jasc Software, ...

Web surfers are annoyed as hell and they're doing something about it That's the thrust of the findings in a survey to be released next week by Hostway, a Chicago-based Web site hosting service with more than 400,000 global clients....