Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Attempts to protect children's safety in the two-dimensional realm of online social media could adversely impact the 3D world of augmented and virtual reality, according to a report released Tuesday by a Washington, D.C., technology think tank Legislative efforts, like the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOPSA), which has passed the U.S. Senate...

Global e-commerce transactions will skyrocket to US$11.4 trillion by 2029, a 63% increase from an estimated $7 trillion in 2024, according to a report released Tuesday by Juniper Research, a U.K.-based company A critical driver of that growth will be alternative payment methods (APMs), such as digital wallets, account-to-account payments, and buy-n...

The 2014 Google Glass debacle stigmatized smart glasses, but the devices may be poised for a comeback Despite the flaming failure of Google Glass, Meta and Google appear to be all in on the next generation of smart glasses that combine fashion, functionality, and generative AI into a compelling form factor, maintained Gene Munster, managing partner...

Some residents of College Station, Texas, are finding noise pollution from Amazon delivery drones disturbing, a problem the giant retailer is seeking to remedy as it plans to expand its Prime Air program Amazon has petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration to boost drone delivery flights from 200 to 469 per day, which isn't welcome news for de...

Although AI-capable PCs were introduced in the middle of the second quarter, they still captured 14% of global shipments, according to a report released Tuesday by research firm Canalys Canalys reported that 8.8 million AI-capable PCs were shipped during the period, 40% running Microsoft Windows and 60% running macOS....

When ChatGPT exploded on the tech scene in November 2022, one of the burning questions in the minds of many technologists was how Google -- which, up to that point, was known for its prowess in artificial intelligence -- could be caught flat-footed when the starter's gun sounded in the race to bring generative AI to the masses? Paul Buchheit, creat...

Roku has taken a bold step toward what could be the future of online advertising by announcing it will adopt a technology called Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) across its premium streaming inventory The streaming platform, which serves some 83.6 million households, boasted that the technology, developed by The Trade Desk, will offer advertisers more precise...

Malicious actors on the internet know the meaning of service. In a report released Tuesday on digital threats for the first half of 2024, a global AI cybersecurity company found that many of the prevalent threats deployed during the period heavily used malware-as-a-service (MaaS) tools The report by Darktrace, based on analysis of data across the c...

Qualcomm unveiled a new Snapdragon chip on Tuesday, designed to give entry-level mobile phones more muscle and 5G connectivity The Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 platform promises all-day battery life, improved camera capabilities, and 1 Gbps peak 5G speeds -- seven times faster than LTE platforms in the same price tier....

One of the largest ransomware payouts that's become public was reported Tuesday by cloud security firm Zscaler The US$75 million payment made to the Dark Angels ransomware group was discovered by Zscaler's security research arm ThreatLabz earlier this year, according to the company's annual ransomware report, which covers a period from April 2023 t...

With the announcement on Tuesday of its low-cost, on-road delivery robot, a San Francisco Bay Area startup believes it has the solution to the high cost of delivering products ordered online The four-wheel robot made by Vayu Robotics eschews expensive LiDAR technology typically used by on-road driverless vehicles in favor of a transformer-based mob...

Since Friday, organizations have been struggling to get their operations up and running after a software update by security vendor CrowdStrike set off an epidemic of "blue screens of death" globally, commonly known as the screen of death for Windows users On Monday, global technology advisory firm Gartner released a research note outlining short-te...

A substantial number of workers are using ChatGPT to get pay raises and promotions, according to survey results recently released by a resume resource website Some 38% of workers say ChatGPT helped them land a pay raise, and 29% say it helped them secure a promotion, according to a survey of 1,666 U.S. employees who spend most or all of their workd...

While large language AI models continue to make headlines, small language models are where the action is. At least, that's what Meta appears to be betting on, according to a paper recently released by a team of its research scientists Large language models, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Llama, can use billions, even trillions, of parameters to obtain t...

If electric vehicles are going to start crowding gasoline burners off America's roads, not only will its charging infrastructure need a big boost, but so will the software at its charging stations "Software has a very important role to play in improving the ownership and charging experience for EVs," said Edward Sanchez, a senior analyst in the aut...

Ten technologies that need to be on every company's radar were identified Tuesday in a trends report released by global technology research company Forrester The 30-page report identified four technologies expected to deliver benefits in the short term to companies, four predicted to deliver benefits in the medium term, and two that will deliver be...

If a company wants to send customers to a competitor, serving up a negative online experience is a good way to do it, according to survey results released Monday by a quality testing company In a study of 500 U.S. consumers, Sauce Labs discovered more than 50% of them say they'll bolt to the competition if they have from three to four negative onli...

Microsoft aims to boost the PC market with artificial intelligence and Windows 11, but a collateral consequence of those moves could be an early trip to a landfill for many computers "Windows 11 itself does not directly contribute to e-waste," said Kieren Jessop, an analyst with Canalys, a global market research company. "However, due to its hardwa...

Websites posing as local news outlets funded by partisan groups have surged past the number of sites of independent daily newspapers on the internet, according to a report released Tuesday by a disinformation watchdog According to NewsGuard Technologies, a company that evaluates and rates the trustworthiness of news and information websites, the nu...

"Apple Intelligence," the company's answer to the likes of Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, didn't exhibit many tricks not already seen on those other platforms, but it did excel in two areas: integration and privacy The technology, announced in a prerecorded presentation Monday at Apple's annual World Wide Developers Conference, largely taps i...