Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Facebook's entry into the smartphone handset business is being reported like it's a done deal. It's a deal, however, in which critics say Facebook has more to lose than gain The Facebook phone project already has a code name, "Buffy," a reference to the famed vampire slayer of film and television, according to The Wall Street Journal. Given the rel...

Although computers have been called "thinking machines," their internal operations have very little to do with how the original thinking machine -- the human brain -- actually works. That's changing, however, as some researchers at MIT and the University of Texas Medical School have demonstrated in a new computer chip that mimics how the brain learns as it receives new information...

While the image that the high-tech industry has adopted for the source of services delivered over a remote network -- the cloud -- conjures thoughts of airy skies where quasi-magical things happen, the actual cloud is firmly anchored to the ground in data centers bristling with computer servers. As the cloud continues to expand, so does the demand for servers -- servers that consume more and more resources like electricity, space and capital...

Government authorities in the United States showed an increased interest in Google account holders in the first half of 2011, according to a report released Tuesday by the search giant The report showed that 5,950 requests for information were made by U.S. government authorities during the first six months of this year, compared with 4,601 requests...

Can a new mobile operating system pull Research In Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry devices, out of its current funk? Not only has the company been steadily losing market share to competitors with flashier phones -- namely Apple and makers of Google Android handsets -- but its worldwide network recently experienced technical difficulties that left...

The proliferation of smartphones has created headaches for security-minded IT departments everywhere, but a Motorola subsidiary aims to give system administrators more peace of mind with a solution for managing Android phones in business environments Three Laws Mobility (3LM), purchased by Motorola eight months ago, announced Tuesday that its manag...

Microsoft on Tuesday released the latest version of its smartphone operating system, a version that could make handsets using the OS more competitive with market leaders Android and iOS The new release -- Windows Phone 7.5, aka "Mango" -- has more than 500 new features, according to Microsoft, most of which are aimed at improving the productivity o...

The break-in and theft of security certificates from a Dutch authority brought home, once again, how vulnerable Web browsers can be to hackers pretending to be who they're not The authority, DigiNotar, is one of many that issue security certificates for websites. The digital certificates tell a browser to "trust" content coming from a certain site....

The next time you make a shopping trip to Amazon.com, you may be in for a surprise. The Net's largest retailer will be rolling out significant design changes to its online store -- changes that some say make the site more tablet friendly The new design is airier than the old one. There's more white space on the home page. The navigation bar on the ...

Sprint Nextel filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block the proposed US$39 billion merger of rival wireless carriers AT&T and T-Mobile. The move by Sprint appears to be a tactical one aimed at protecting the company's options should the deal be approved by the federal government Sprint's lawsuit was filed less than a week after the U.S. Department of Justic...

Nokia revealed a bold move Wednesday as it announced its North American operations will stop selling cellphones based on its Symbian operating system and introduce from now on only smartphones based on Microsoft Windows Phone 7 The head of Nokia's U.S. subsidiary, Chris Weber, broke the news in an interview with the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD...

Almost lost in the hoopla over the announcement of Google's Android Honeycomb operating system for tablets was the search giant's unveiling of a new online store for apps for its mobile operating system The outlet allows consumers to hunt for Android apps through any Web browser running on any device. Previously, that could only be done through a d...

Facebook announced new measures Wednesday aimed at improving users' security when visiting the site. The news came with an intriguing twist: Mere hours prior to the announcement, it was revealed that the Facebook fan page of the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was compromised by a hacker While some online skeptics linked Facebook's new security fea...

The Computer History Museum has come a long way since its start in a closet at the Digital Equipment Corporation in 1975, as is evidenced by the institution's US$19 million renovated facility opening its doors to the public Thursday ...

Amazon came a step closer to opening its Android Appstore Wednesday by opening a portal for developers. The portal allows app makers to submit their wares to the Internet's largest online retailer so they can be part of the outlet's offerings when its virtual doors open later this year Amazon is launching the Android Appstore as a service to its cu...

Critics of Fox News' coverage of climate change issues were given a rich vein to mine in an email from a top editor to his staffers, which was made public recently In the email dated Dec. 8 and made public Wednesday by Media Matters for America, Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon instructed staffers to "refrain from asserting that the...

Cyberattacks this week by supporters of Wikileaks on the home sites of Visa and MasterCard may have been designed to grab headlines rather than actually disrupt the companies' financial operations The wave of electronic assaults, referred to as "Operation Payback" by the activists mounting the attacks, were aimed at the home sites of the credit car...

The bones of a plan to balance consumer privacy and businesses' need to gather data online was aired yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission and was greeted with both praise and criticism In a 122-page preliminary report, the agency called for any company collecting or using consumer data that can be linked to a specific consumer, computer or dev...

Apple's iPad has had the tablet market to itself for eight months now, but that's about to change. Leading the charge on the electronic slate's logy perch is the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a seven-inch tablet running Google's Android operating system Rather than take on the iPad head-to-head, Samsung decided to set its tablet apart from Apple's by making ...

Social networking began as a fascination of the young on college campuses, but it has grown to embrace all age groups all over the world. It's a phenomenon with a potential that's barely been scratched, especially in business. Barry Libert, though, would like to see that change, and he's ready to show companies how to do it ...