As the race to be be ebook format of choice hots up, Penguin is making some bold, experimental bets. These first-look demos of forthcoming books from iPad’s iBook Store, presented by Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson in London on Tuesday, give an idea how publishers might approach Apple’s tablet…
via paidcontent
At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple.The company did not name the offending factories, or say where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China.
Apple also has factories working for it in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the United States.Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer underage. “In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment,” Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers.
Apple has been repeatedly criticised for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Last week, it emerged that 62 workers at a factory that manufactures products for Apple and Nokia had been poisoned by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause muscular degeneration and blur eyesight. Apple has not commented on the problems at the plant, which is run by Wintek, in the Chinese city of Suzhou.A spokesman for Wintek said that “almost all” of the affected workers were back at work, but that some remained in hospital.
Wintek said n-hexane was commonly used in the technology industry, and that problems had arisen because some areas of the factory were not ventilated properly.Last year, an employee at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that is one of Apples biggest suppliers, committed suicide after being accused of stealing a prototype for the iPhone.Sun Danyong, 25, was a university graduate working in the logistics department when the prototype went missing. An investigation revealed that the factorys security staff had beaten him, and he subsequently jumped to his death from the 12th floor of his apartment building.
Foxconn runs a number of super-factories in the south of China, some of which employ as many as 300,000 workers and form self-contained cities, complete with banks, post offices and basketball courts.It has been accused, however, of treating its employees extremely harshly. China Labor Watch, a New York-based NGO, accused Foxconn of having an “inhumane and militant” management, which neglects basic human rights. Foxconns management were not available for comment.In its report,
Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. Apple admitted that at least 55 of the 102 factories that produce its goods were ignoring Apples rule that staff cannot work more than 60 hours a week.The technology companys own guidelines are already in breach of Chinas widely-ignored labour law, which sets out a maximum 49-hour week for workers.
Sales of electronic products in countries like China and India and across continents such as Africa and Latin America are set to rise sharply in the next 10 years.
And, unless action is stepped up to properly collect and recycle materials, many developing countries face the spectre of hazardous e-waste mountains with serious consequences for the environment and public health, according to UN experts in a landmark report released today by UNEP.
Issued at a meeting of Basel Convention and other world chemical authorities prior to UN’s Governing Council meeting in Bali, Indonesia, the report, “Recycling – from E-Waste to Resources,” used data from 11 representative developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste generation – which includes old and dilapidated desk and laptop computers, printers, mobile phones, pagers, digital photo and music devices, refrigerators, toys and televisions.
In South Africa and China for example, the report predicts that by 2020 e-waste from old computers will have jumped by 200 to 400 percent from 2007 levels, and by 500% in India
By that same year in China, e-waste from discarded mobile phones will be about 7 times higher than 2007 levels and, in India, 18 times higher.
By 2020, e-waste from televisions will be 1.5 to 2 times higher in China and India while in India e-waste from discarded refrigerators will double or triple.
China already produces about 2.3 million tonnes (2010 estimate) domestically, second only to the United States with about 3 million tonnes. And, despite having banned e-waste imports, China remains a major e-waste dumping ground for developed countries.
Moreover, most e-waste in China is improperly handled, much of it incinerated by backyard recyclers to recover valuable metals like gold — practices that release steady plumes of far-reaching toxic pollution and yield very low metal recovery rates compared to state-of-the-art industrial facilities.
“This report gives new urgency to establishing ambitious, formal and regulated processes for collecting and managing e-waste via the setting up of large, efficient facilities in China,” says UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP. “China is not alone in facing a serious challenge. India, Brazil, Mexico and others may also face rising environmental damage and health problems if e-waste recycling is left to the vagaries of the informal sector.
via Urgent need to prepare developing countries for surge in e-wastes: UN.
In an apparent trend set by some of their latest work for the US online media, like the MTV Award Twitter Tracker, data visualization firm Stamen Design recently released an interactive treemap [nbcolympics.com] showing the tweets that deal with the current Winter Olympics in real-time.
A subtle (almost invisible?) sparkline on the top shows some stats and the relative amount of tweets over time. The larger the rectangle, the more tweets have appeared about that topic. Individual rectangles can be selected for more detailed tweets about that specific topic. More information is available on the Stamen blog.
via Treemap of Live Twitter Messages Dealing with the Winter Olympics – information aesthetics.
Take the Disaster Out of Disaster Recovery
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VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager also makes it easy to execute non-disruptive tests of recovery plans within an isolated testing environment so that you can ensure that they are up to date and will execute successfully. Simplify Disaster RecoverySimplify and centralize the process of creating, updating and managing recovery plans.
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager guides users through the process of building, managing and executing disaster recovery plans. It integrates seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure and VMware vCenter Server to make recovery plans significantly easier to manage and update. It also integrates easily with storage replication software from leading storage vendors to simplify the use of advanced replication software with VMware vSphere.
via VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager -- Data Disaster Recovery for Servers.
Wholesale ApplicationsCommunity
Will establish a simple route to market for developers and provide them with access to a customer base of over 3 billion customers.
The alliance aims to unite a fragmented marketplace by involving players from all related industries to create a community based on openness and transparency to the benefit of all.
We believe our model presents the most compelling format on the market where developers will thrive and customers will reap the benefits of greater choice.
Who’s involved?
A number of the world’s leading telecommunications operators and device manufacturers are launching an open global alliance, that will establish a simple route to market for developers and provide access to the latest and widest range of innovative applications and services to as many customers as possible worldwide.
Together, we have signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim of building an environment or ’wholesale applications community’ where innovative applications can be developed irrespective of device or technology.
The new alliance, which represents more than three billion customers worldwide is inviting players from across the ICT industry, not only operators and developers, but also handset manufacturers and internet players to join forces to create an initiative based on openness and transparency. We believe this model presents the most compelling format on the market where developers will thrive and customers will reap the benefits of greater choice. Furthermore, the GSMA is supporting this initiative.
Membership
The members currently include América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Mobilkom Austria Group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Telia Sonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind, as well as Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson device manufacturers.
We expect this list to grow and we are inviting players from across the ICT industry, not only operators and developers, but also handset manufacturers and internet players to join forces.
Role and purpose of the alliance
The primary role and objective of the alliance is to create a ’wholesale applications community’ that will establish a simple route to market for developers, in turn, providing access to the latest and widest range of innovative applications and services to as many customers as possible worldwide. This alliance will deliver scale unparalleled by any application distribution ecosystem in existence today.
What this means for customers
For customers this means a broader choice of innovative applications and services available on a wider choice of devices than ever before.
What this means for developers
For the developer, particularly small developers, the alliance will create an environment in which they can flourish and create applications in a straight-forward and effective manner. Today, the route to market for developers is challenging requiring them to approach multiple operators. The alliance will provide a single gateway for developers to access a vast potential customer base (over two billion with limited cost to the developer and this in turn will provide the maximum possible return on investment for them.
In addition, the alliance will utilise existing technical standards, rather than creating new ones to allow developers to access operators’ assets, for example network capabilities or API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) more easily. In practice this means that developers will only have to create one version of their application and this can be used on multiple types of devices and operating systems (such as Symbian, Android, Windows etc) which is not the case today.
Windows Phone 7 Series.
Get used to the name, because its now a part of the smartphone vernacular… however verbose it may seem. Today Microsoft launches one of its most ambitious if not most ambitious projects: the rebranding of Windows Mobile.
The company is introducing the new mobile OS at Mobile World Congress 2010, in Barcelona, and if the press is anything to be believed, this is just the beginning. The phone operating system does away with pretty much every scrap of previous mobile efforts from Microsoft, from the look and feel down to the underlying code — everything is brand new.
7 Series has rebuilt Windows Mobile from the ground up, featuring a completely altered home screen and user interface experience, robust Xbox LIVE and Zune integration, and vastly new and improved social networking tools. Gone is the familiar Start screen, now replaced with “tiles” which scroll vertically and can be customized as quick launches, links to contacts, or self contained widgets.
The look of the OS has also been radically upended, mirroring the Zune HD experience closely, replete with that large, iconic text for menus, and content transitions which elegantly and dimensionally slide a user into and out of different views. The OS is also heavily focused on social networking, providing integrated contact pages which show status updates from multiple services and allow fast jumps to richer cloud content such as photo galleries.
The Xbox integration will include LIVE games, avatars, and profiles, while the Zune end of things appears to be a carbon copy of the standalone devices features including FM radio.Besides just flipping the script on the brand, the company seems to be taking a much more vertical approach with hardware and user experience, dictating rigid specs for 7 Series devices a specific CPU and speed, screen aspect ratio and resolution, memory, and even button configuration, and doing away with carrier or partner UI customizations such as Sense or TouchWiz. Thats right — there will be a single Windows Phone identity regardless of carrier or device brand. Those new phones will likely look similar at first, featuring a high res touchscreen, three front-facing buttons back, start, and perhaps not shockingly, a Bing key, and little else.
Carrier partnerships are far and wide, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, while hardware partners include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm.
Were told that we likely wont get to see any third-party devices at MWC, though Microsoft is showing off dev units of unknown origin, and the first handsets are supposed to hit the market by the holidays of this year.We had chance to go hands-on with a device before the announcement, and weve got some detail to share on just what the experience is like, so click here to read our hands-on impressions with lots of pics and video on the way!.
via Engadget.
Along with the figure skating, ice hockey and snowboarding, another event will compete for attention at the Winter Olympics in Canada this month.
A Canadian company has created what it calls the world's “largest thought-controlled computing installation”. It's an experiment that lets visitors to the Olympics use their brainwaves to control the lights at three major landmarks in Canada, including Niagara Falls.
“When people put on the headsets and find themselves increasing the brightness of the lights by just thinking about it, you can almost see their brains explode,” says Trevor Coleman, chief operating officer for InteraXon, the company that has created this installation.
Continue reading “Winter Olympics to host thought-controlled lighting”
Google Buzz’s open approach leads to stalking threat.
A female blogger is angry – very angry – at the way that Google Buzz assumes she wants to show everyone who she’s been emailing Google Buzz has demonstrated precisely why – and how – engineers really shouldn’t be let loose with human relationships.In an angry and swear-ful, if you’re sensitive posting, “Harriet Jacobs” takes the search engine giant to task for revealing, through Buzz, her present relationships to “my abusive ex-husband”.
via Google Buzz’s open approach leads to stalking threat | Technology | guardian.co.uk.
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