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John Martellaro

John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. With degrees in astrophysics (B.S.) and physics (M.S.), he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include chess, science fiction and astronomy. John is the host of the TMO podcast Background Mode.

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Big Media Risks Hardball with Apple

Big media wants to avoid, in their view, the mistakes of the music industry made with Apple, and may be considering joining Universal/NBC in hardball tactics. However, the business opportunity with Apple is compelling, and media executives are carefully weighing their options, according to Reuters on Wednesday. The stakes are high on both sides. The…

Microsoft Loses ISO Vote on OOXML Format

Microsoft has been promoting their OOXML document format as an ISO standard, however in a recent ISO/IEC technical committee vote, the format was denied acceptance as an ISO standard, according to Redmondmag on Tuesday. Microsoftis OOXML document format, to be used in Office 2008 for Macs and Office 2007 for PCs is similar to the…

OnScreen Science Reduces Prices for DNA Visualization Software

OnScreen Science announced on Friday the immediate and permanent price reduction of its DNA visualization software. The new prices for the Lite, Standard, and Pro editions of OnScreen DNA are US$29, $99, and $134, respectively. OnScreen DNA, which runs under Macintosh OS X and Windows XP, is designed to make the detailed structure and workings…

Akamai Bringing True HD Capability to Internet

Akamai Technologies, Inc. has announced that they have developed the technologies for a consistent, high-definition TV delivery over the Internet. Their system will deliver 1080i and 1080p using VC-1 and MPEG-4 video standards. “As broadband connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, users are demanding ? and frankly should expect ? a high-quality, high-definition video experience on the…

Tips for Securing Apple's Open Directory

Appleis Open Directory for Mac OS X Server is a powerful, capable directory services system that uses open standards like Open LDAP and Kerberos. Despite its capabilities, there are still some methods to secure it over and above the default settings, according to Ryan Faas at Computerworld on Friday. Mr. Fass, who has written an…

Editorial - Technical Betrayal Creates Desperadoes

Modern technology companies are often faced with the prospect of making a lot of money, but at the cost of a technical betrayal of their customers. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is that they become oblivious to the consequences as they create a culture of technical desperadoes. Two articles on Monday caught my attention…

Mossberg: Dell Vostro Business System Misses Mark

The new Dell Vostro business focused notebook from Dell misses the mark and is just an OK notebook, not really different enough from consumer models to earn the small-business designation is claims, according to Walt Mossberg, the Personal Technology editor with the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Mossberg is noted for his thorough and balanced review…

A Longtime Mac User Reviews Vista

Vista, while still Windows through and through, improves on XP and makes PCs more fun and productive, according to Andrew Fishkin at Low End Mac on Friday. Mr. Fishkin is a longtime Mac user whois been using Vista for eight months. Mr. Fishkin has been evaluating Vista Business on an experimental basis on his IBM…

Apple, Microsoft, Dell Caught Revising Wikipedia

Apple, Microsoft, and Dell amongst many others have been identified by a new program, Wikipedia Scanner, as having edited or revised sections of Wikipedia to their own advantage, according to Wired Magazine. Wikipedia Scanner was devised by a California Institute of Technology graduate student, Virgil Griffith, to track Wikipedia changes back to the originating IP…

Former PC Magazine Editor-in-Chief Sours on Vista

Jim Louderback, the former editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, after using Vista for nine months, has soured on the OS. Mr. Louderback is moving on to a new venture, and his departing comments about Vista have nothing to do with his leaving. However, in the process of writing his last column as editor-in-chief, he expressed serious…

New iMac Tempts Windows User - Almost

A Windows user, tested a new iMac, recalled fond memories of the original Bondi Blue iMac, was impressed with how the iMac has grown up, and was almost ready to make the leap, according to a story published by the Associated Press on Wednesday. However, there were some flies in the ointment. Rather, “maggots in…

BW: Apple Masters Teen Marketing

Apple has mastered the art of reaching teenagers, and other companies could learn some lessons on how Apple does it, according to Business Week on Thursday. Appleis success didnit happen overnight. It was a long process whereby early adopters spread the news of the iPod by word of mouth until it became a cultural phenomenon.…

VersionTracker Launches August Promotion

VersionTracker is offering a special promotion starting Wednesday. The bundle includes a free copy of the Griffin RoadTrip for iPod. The complete bundle includes the following: A two year subscription to VersionTracker. Access to MacFixIt Pro which has ten years of archives. Griffin RoadTrip for iPod. Mac Pilot which unlocks over 300 hidden Mac OS…

The Mind of Jonathan Ive and Classic Designs

Growing up in the UK in the 1970s, Jonathan Ive must have been exposed to a lot of eclectic design influences, according to Gizmodo on Wednesday. Some speculation on things that influenced the design of the new iMac were showcased. The influence of Telefunken and their classic designs in the 1970s was pointed out by…

WSJ: iLife '08 Apps a Pleasure to Use

The Wall Street Journalis Katherine Boehret reviewed iLife i08 on a new iMac Wednesday and found the iPhoto and iMovie applications a pleasure to use. [Subscription Required.] Ms. Boehret noted that while the new iMacs are powerful, elegant consumer PCs, the big change was the iLife i08 suite. Also, some minor changes to the iMac…

A Prep List for New Vista Computer

Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle has provided a sobering list of things to attend to when first taking a Vista PC out of the box. Itis a long list. Every new computer requires some intial setup and customization. Some of it can be pleasureable, some of it is necessary and tedious bookkeeping and some…

Customer Satisfaction with PCs Down, Apple Still Leads

The American Customer Satisfaction Index recently found that customer satisfaction with their PCs is declining, in general. Apple still leads everyone, but Appleis score has also declined. The annual survey was conducted by the University of Michigan by asking 80,000 customers how they viewed quality, price, problems and future purchasing plans. C|Net covered the results…

Columnist: The Digital Media Shortcomings of the New iMac

The old iMac was chintzy plastic, but the new iMacs are once again physically desirable, according to a columnist at Tech.co.uk on Monday. Even so, he said the digital media features customers have come to expect from Apple are missing in the new iMac. “Now that weive all recovered from the effects of Steve Jobsi…

New Apple iMac Earns C|Net Editors' Choice Award

C|Net gave the new Apple iMac itis Editorsi Choice Award on Wednesday. The iMac was cited for its best-in-class design, solid feeling, thin but solid keyboard, iLife i08, and performance in multimedia benchmarks. C|Net noted that, regarding the internal hardware, the changes have been simply generational, with new CPU speeds and graphics card updates. Except…

iWork by the Numbers: No Threat to Microsoft. Maybe. [UPDATED]

Microsoft earns nearly a billion dollars each year on MS Office sales to Macintosh customers. It commands 91 percent of the Mac market for that product category. iWork, on the other hand, has about 9 percent of that market. As a result, even the addition of Numbers is unlikely to affect Microsoft, yet the cold-war-like…

Your Mac Life Features The Fake Steve Jobs

Your Mac Life (YML) with Shawn King, which airs every Wednesday night, will feature a chat with the recently unmasked Fake Steve Jobs. “While Your Mac Life is decidedly unhappy the “mystery” of Fake Steve Jobs has been revealed, we are very happy to be able to bring you his very first live interview!” Shawn…

Dell, Inspired by Apple, Warming to Virtualization

Dell, taking a page from Appleis playbook, is turning to virtualization to provide customers what they want and promote the use of Linux on business and consumer desktops, according to Information Week on Wednesday. Dellis CTO, Kevin Kettler, gave a keynote presentation on Tuesday at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. In it, he provided a vision…

Analysis of AAPL Suggests Consolidation and Optimism

Investors seem a bit disappointed by the current lack of iPhone sales news and data. Despite the iMac announcement Tuesday and the reaffirmation of Apple as a premiere computer company and electronics firm, a period of consolidation, similar to June 2007, is in effect according to Joseph Hargett with Shaeffers Research. “Despite the shiny new…

InfoExpress Annouces Mac OS X Support for Dynamic NAC

InfoExpress announced additional support for Mac OS X client systems on Tuesday for its Network Access Control (NAC) system, Dynamic NAC. In addition, Linux and Vista support was added. TMO interviewed Stacey Lum, CEO of InfoExpress recently. He provided some background on NAC. Basically, businesses need to be able to control client computer access to…