Archive for November 3rd, 2010

Gizmodo posted shots of dorm blocks, in which Foxconn’s factory workers spend their off-duty lives. Men and women have separate facilities. Eight workers sleep in four bunk beds in a room about the size of a two-car garage. Long shifts, under-exploited exercise equipment, sinks on the balconies, where workers have to wash their clothing and themselves, and tiny televisions (one per a floor) in depersonalized common rooms, this is life at Foxconn’s iPhone factories. Since a spate of eleven suicides earlier this year, every building on the Foxconn campus is draped in netting. It is morbid but seemingly effective; there have been no suicides since the nets were installed in May.

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Recently Voalte has added an additional hospital to their client list. Parkview General Hospital will now be utilizing the iPhone as a primary communications tool throughout their entire building. Parkview General in Fort Wayne is the fifth hospital client for Voalte, which uses the iPhone’s Wi-Fi platform to pull together medical alarms, text and voice messages into one device a nurse can use from anywhere in the building.

Some days ago Apple released a brand new iPad commercial entitled "iPad is Electric" and posted it to the company's iPad site and YouTube page. The new advertisement offers the same music, format as the other iPad’s commercials and follows the same of theme of displaying a series of quick shots of the iPad's capabilities interspersed with corresponding single-word descriptions relevant to the "iPad is..." theme.

Apple sent e-mails to music label representatives to inform them that it that it is preparing to extend the length of iTunes Store song previews in the United States. The new 90 second samples only affect songs that are longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds, with shorter songs keeping the original 30 second preview length. The company believes that longer songs samples will lead to more purchases. Apple's email notes that by continuing to offer their music on the iTunes Store, labels are indicating their acceptance of the new terms. But it didn’t say any time frames when the extended previews will be available to U.S. customers.