Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Mobile computing and wireless networking received a boost this week as Microsoft and HP announced new products at ITU Telcom World in Geneva, Switzerland While HP unleashed a tsunami of product announcements on Sunday, it was Microsoft that had analysts buzzing on Monday with the unveiling of its Wireless Provisioning Services (WPS), a new technolo...

Infrastructure bad boy VeriSign defended itself today, asserting it could find no evidence that its controversial SiteFinder redirector service had compromised the stability, security or performance of the Internet "VeriSign conducted extensive evaluation and testing of the service both internally and externally and with the assistance of third-par...

A brand synonomous with music piracy is about to reemerge from the scaly bosom of bankruptcy. A beta version of Napster, brought to its knees by music industry litigation over copyright violations, will be launched next Thursday by its white knight, Santa Clara, California-based Roxio Roxio, well known for its CD-burning software for both PC and Ma...

In an attempt to gain some legitimacy for its industry, a group of peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet companies has announced a "code of conduct." The companies -- collectively called P2P United -- offer services that, among other things, allow people to exchange music files over the Web, a practice that has ignited a massive litigation campaign by the Re...

Apple did it. Gateway did it. Even HP did it. Now Dell is finally doing it What's the company doing? Getting into consumer electronics, of course. Long viewed with skepticism by PC makers that wanted to cater to the business crowd, consumer electronics is poised to become a life buoy for companies with sagging computer sales....

Microsoft has announced it is releasing a beta version of Windows XP for AMD's new 64-bit processor. That's both good news and bad news for AMD The good news is that Microsoft is showing significant support for the new processor by making a version of XP for it....

At a hearing of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday, Big Music squared off with ISPs on a bill that would modify how copyright owners can pursue digital pirates through the courts The bill, filed by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), would require copyright holders to file a civil lawsuit before obtaining a subpoena to gather personal informat...

A significant step to broaden the use of PC Cards in desktop computers was taken today by the PCMCIA industry standards group The PCMCIA group -- a nonprofit trade association founded in 1989 to establish technical standards for PC Card technology and to promote interchangeability among computer systems -- announced the first version of its standar...

If you're one of the remaining 260 defendants targeted in lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for music piracy on the Internet, don't count on being bailed out of your jam by P2P United The group, which represents major file-sharing sites on the Net, has pledged to pay the US$2,000 settlement in the case of a 12-year-ol...

What's so great about the Office 2003 software system that Microsoft announced yesterday was ready to roll off the assembly line? While the Redmond, Washington-based software company has indeed spruced up the core applications in the package -- including Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Visio, FrontPage and Publisher -- that's not the big news...

Electronic Data Systems (EDS), blasted last fall when its stock entered a free-fall from US$40 to $10 per share, continued to show signs of recovery Monday with the announcement that it has been awarded a multiyear contract by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) "This is one of our largest U.S. government contracts to date," ...

A Verizon customer in the United States has decided to singlehandedlyfight the recording industry's crusade to pry from Internet serviceproviders (ISPs) the names of Web surfers who share music and video files online. Meanwhile, north of the border, a more benign campaign against piracy was announced bythe music industry's Canadian counterpart The ...

Undeterred by the hard line laid down by the European Commission in its antitrust case against Microsoft, the software company on Wednesday announced its hardware partners will be expanding the distribution of Media Center PCs in Europe and Asia The company's Media Center PC, a hardware-software combination introduced in North America last year, us...