Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Falling prices, the limping economy, natural disasters -- nothing has been able to put a crimp in the double-digit growth of the personal computer market over the last three years. Analysts expect a significant slowdown in 2006, but that is not to say that the worldwide growth rate for the market won't be one that many industries would kill to have...

Although blogging has gained a certain amount of notoriety in the media, its tool base remains relatively immature. There are some viable tools available to bloggers offered by hosting services like Blogger and Typepad, but a truly integrated approach has been lacking But, as any savvy technologist knows, such gaps in the fabric of things tech don'...

For the last several days, Google has set the online and financial worlds buzzing with an expected deal with America Online that could be cut as early as today. Although opinion varies on the wisdom and impact of the move, there's one point on which everyone agrees: The maneuver will add fuel to the simmering feud between Microsoft and the Net's favorite search engine...

As the holiday shopping season starts its last leg today, online merchants are smiling and offline retailers are preparing for the annual Saturday surge Shopping on the Net has been brisk since Thanksgiving....

If handheld computers survive the onslaught on their market by mobile phones with their panoply of features that seem to multiply on a daily basis, it will be in large part, ironically, to their wireless capabilities That fact hasn't been lost on Palm, which can trace its lineage to the innovators who single handedly created the space from scratch....

Online holiday sales are on a pace to crack US$26 billion this year -- an 18 percent leap over last year, according to JupiterResearch in New York City "Reports we've seen from Mastercard and Visa indicate that online transactions are up sharply during this period relative to last year," Jupiter Senior Vice President, Research David Schatsky told t...

Listen. Do you hear that yowling?No. That's not your neighbor's cat in heat. It's mainstream computer makers taking a gander at the latest margin figures on PCs With the average price of a computer hovering around US$675 and the probability that $250 "system specials" will be needed to boost holiday sales, manufacturers are wringing their hands and...

Threats from malware -- viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and such -- climbed 48 percent in 2005, compared to the previous year, according to the annual Sophos Security Threat Management Report The report, expected to be released today and a copy of which was obtained by TechNewsWorld, noted that there were 15,907 new malware threats this year compa...

In recent days Massachusetts has softened its tough stance on what file formats it will store its documents in -- a stance that placed it squarely at loggerheads with Microsoft -- but, according to one state legislator, the software giant should not start breathing easy yet The policy adopted by the state contains a standard within a standard, asse...

High oil prices. Natural disasters. Slumping economy. Pink slip epidemics. None of that appeared to bother shoppers as they stormed Web outlets on the day after Thanksgiving, the day that's become known as Black Friday According to Patty Freeman Evans, a retail analyst with Jupiter Research in New York City, Black Friday was a day of historic propo...

Electronic information has its advantages over paper, but it has its share of snags, too. One of them is finding saved items In the analog world, some folks keep tabs on their important data bits by scribbling them on post-it notes and sticking them to any available surface in sight, creating a festive jungle sure to obscure future attempts at info...

Sloth can be a deadly sin, or at least a potentially litigious one, and the rise of blogging on the Internet has peaked concern about this pitfall The issue arises because bloggers, many or most of them amateurs, often overdose on cut-and-paste editing, which can result in copyright violations, Paul Llewellyn, an attorney with Kaye Scholer in New Y...

Some 72 percent of the businesses evaluated by a Boston-based research firm scored poorly on their policies for re-using their customers' personal data for marketing purposes, but the researchers maintain that more companies are sensitive to privacy issues than ever before and are acting on that awareness Other findings in the report prepared by Th...

One in every 74 e-mail messages on the Internet yesterday carried a new strain of the Sober virus, estimates one security analyst "At the moment, this virus is accounting for 65 percent of all virus reports to us," Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant for anti-virus software maker Sophos told TechNewsWorld. "That means, including legitimat...

The software universe is teeming with programs for creating slideshows from digital images. Many of these applications fulfill their appointed task very well. But one snag for me when creating slideshows has been their file size Although some programs claim they'll create slideshows suitable for posting on the Web or sending through e-mail, I've fo...

What began as a promising way to protect CDs from piracy has become a public relations nightmare for Sony BMG Entertainment and its digital rights management (DRM) partners, First 4 Internet (F4I) and SunnComm The new lawsuits leveled at Sony BMG stem from its sale of audio CDs protected with a scheme developed by F4I called XCP. Meanwhile, the blo...

Use of Web-based e-mail is on the rise and online marketers should be wary about it That's the thinking of Lyris Technologies, a subsidiary of J.D. Halsey that released a survey yesterday revealing 64 percent of consumers used Web-based services like Hotmail and Yahoo to check their e-mail compared to 37 percent who say they use a desktop client li...

Podcasting changed the face of audio on the Web and now it's altering the face of hosting, too The technology that moved blogging from eye to ear has hosting services revising their pricing to attract the growing ranks of podcasters to their servers and has increased pressure on niche players to rethink their offerings....

Less than half the consumers using the Internet feel safe shopping online, according to a survey expected to be released today by Symantec, a maker of anti-virus and security software The survey, based on a sample of 2,400 consumers, revealed that some 60 percent of those respondents felt less than safe shopping online....

The United States Supreme Court dealt online file sharing a body blow in June when it ruled that makers of peer-to-peer (P2P) software could be held liable for illegitimate uses of their applications. Since that decision was handed down in MGM v. Grokster, the P2P world has been floundering, bobbing in a sea of uncertainty over its future prospects...