by Jason Wilk on July 21, 2009
- Apple confirmed reports coming out of China regarding the recent apparent suicide of a Foxconn employee after he lost track of an iPhone prototype in his possession. The suicide of 25 year-old Sun Danyong, who was responsible for shipping prototypes to Apple, reportedly occurred in the wake of a potentially illegal search of the his home and possible physical intimidation against him by members of Foxconn’s security department investigating the prototype’s disappearance.
On Thursday, July 9th, Sun got 16 prototype phones from the assembly line at a local Foxconn factory. At some point in the next few days, he discovered that one of the phones was missing. He suspected that it had been left at the factory, but couldn’t find it. On Monday, July 13, he reported the missing phone to his boss. Then, that Wednesday, three Foxconn employees searched his apartment — illegally, according to Chinese law. Accusations are flying that Sun was detained and physically abused during the investigation, although this has not been substantiated (possible evidence: there’s this somewhat garbled and potentially faked instant message exchange from Sun shortly before his death). What is known: On Thursday — a little after 3 a.m. according to surveillance videos in the apartment building — he jumped out of a window in his apartment building to his death.
- Apple in a statement a little over an hour ago said “We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death,” Kristin Huguet (Apple Spokesperson)
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by David Heyerman on July 1, 2009
- David here, live….reporting from my NY – LA American Airlines flight.
- Seems like just yesterday when I wrote about the the launch of their inflight Gogo WiFi service. Fast forward four months and I’m video chatting with Glu while he works on our new site design. Nice.
- Overall, I’m quite impressed with the service. Video-chatting was near flawless, only getting slightly laggy when Glu took a hand-roll break outside.
- Speakeasy’s speed check returned the following download/upload speeds: 1932kbps/266 on an LA server and 1288/307 on a NY server. Not too bad at all.
- Make the internet free when you check a bag ($15 for one, $25 for an additional) and AA, you’ll have one very happy customer.
- ….and below my friends, might just be the first “I’m on a boat/I’m on a plane” wireless interaction….tinyComb wins.
by David Heyerman on June 25, 2009
- A study just dropped from the Shelton Group proving that people would far rather immerse themselves in a technologically-charged ignorance bliss than save the environment.
- The survey asked 1,006 people how likely it’d be for them to give up their favorite gadgets if they found out it was harming the environment. Not surprisingly, the results were appalling:
- iPod – 38 percent
- Dishwasher – 35 percent
- Microwave – 25 percent
- Cellular phone – 21 percent
- Air conditioning – 14 percent
- TV – 13 percent
- Computer – 7 percent
- Car – 6 percent
- None of the above – 21 percent
- All of the above – 6 percent
- Here at tinyComb, we’re no strangers to the technology/environment conundrum. The real truth we should find from studies like these are that there’s no stopping the progressive nature of technology, we just have to find a way to use it to our advantage when attempting to solve problems with the environment. Got it? Good.
by Jason Wilk on April 9, 2009
- According to PhoneScoop, The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is set to announce the Bluetooth 3.0 specification later this month. Bluetooth 3.0 will “feature dramatically increased speeds, allowing for the transfer of large video files, music collections and photo libraries wirelessly ‘within seconds’. The spec also includes a new ability called Enhanced Power Control. EPC will reduce the occurrence of disconnects that can be caused by actions such as putting a phone in a pocket, backpack, briefcase or purse”.
by Jason Wilk on February 17, 2009
- Last week I had a chance to catch up with Pandora CTO, Tom Conrad at ContentNext’s EconMusic conference in Los Angeles. Tom was in high hopes about the success of Pandora lately, quoting that with their iPhone app alone, they had reached 3.5 million downloads and are seeing some of the highest CPM rates in the industry for internet radio advertising. Their traffic is at an all time high, above 3 million unique visitors a month according to Compete. Like many internet companies at the moment, relying on ad dollars to survive in a down economy is difficult (see: TinyComb). But Pandora is faced with an even more difficult scenario; The Webcaster Settlement Act, which has the potential to put Pandora out of business by raising the per song stream price to $0.19 a song. Please sign the petition at the bottom of the page to help save them from going out of business by lowering online steaming prices.
- Web sites that stream music have been fighting with the recording industry for two years over the royalties that the sites must pay for each song they play. The record companies and internet radio stations had until this past Sunday to reach an agreement. FM/AM radio stations that simultaneously stream their broadcast over the internet came to an agreement, but standalone services like Pandora and Yahoo Music were left twiddling their thumbs without a deal. According to several people close to the negotiations, the two sides were close to striking a deal, but at the end of the day were unable to agree on some fine points.
- According to the NYT, “a copy of the proposed term sheet, big Web sites with significant advertising revenue would have paid the greater of 25 percent of their revenue or a per-song fee of 0.088 cents, increasing to 0.14 cents in 2015. Small Web sites with less than $1.25 million in revenue would have paid the greater of 7 percent of expenses or 10 percent of their first $250,000 in revenue and 12 percent of additional revenue up to $1.25 million. If a small Webcaster grows and brings in more than $1.25 million in revenue, the rates for big Webcasters would start to apply. That has rankled some small sites, which say it discourages them from growing”.
- No one knows what will happen next, but one of the options on the table is to take the case to Congress to ask for an extension on the current deal. If both sides can’t reach a deal, it would give MySpcae Music a significant jump in market share for internet radio. MM is in a unique situation since they launched as a joint venture with all 4 major labels on board, where advertisers are paying per stream. As long as their advertisers stick around, they are laughing all the way to the bank while the rest of the Webcasters struggle for air. Let’s hope for the best for Pandora, the greatest radio station ever.
Cool fact: Pandora’s music genome members still listen to every album before it is processed into the recommendation system. There are still no auto-algorithms trying to tell you what you like. Let’s save this company.
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