In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history. However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems. Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
Full Story on the New York Times -»
So it looks like I’ll be on the trail for five weeks solid, give or take. Details on this TK next week, but the purpose is to integrate your ideas and questions about policy and candidates in to the reporting process. I’d love your thoughts.
Details -»
abcnewsradio:
(WASHINGTON) — WikiLeaks’ latest fundraising video takes a jab at Mastercard, one of the major credit card companies that is blocking over $15 million in donations to the anti-secrecy group. It also suggests the group’s work in exposing thousands of secret American diplomatic cables and military documents was the catalyst for the Arab Spring uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
(Source: abcnewsradioarchive)
abcnewsradio:
(TOKYO) — Whoever the hackers at LulzSec are, they talk big. They claim to have gotten into the files of Sony Pictures Entertainment and stolen information on more than 1 million consumers. They claim they defaced the website of the PBS NewsHour as a protest against a Frontline documentary on WikiLeaks. And they say they’re not done yet.
“We accessed EVERYTHING,” said the group on a website it advertised on Twitter. It claimed it compromised “passwords, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts. Among other things, we also compromised all admin details of Sony Pictures (including passwords) along with 75,000 ‘music codes’ and 3.5 million ‘music coupons.’”
“Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?” said the message on the site. The website was registered only on Wednesday with an address in the Bahamas, according to an ABC News search of Internet registries. Security consultants said LulzSec’s claims seemed genuine, and phone numbers posted on the site turned out to be authentic.
Sony issued a statement on Friday saying: “We have confirmed that a breach has occurred and have taken action to protect against further intrusion,” it said. “We also retained a respected team of experts to conduct the forensic analysis of the attack, which is ongoing.”
Security consultants said the attack probably wasn’t really aimed at those million Sony customers.
“If they’re stealing passwords to do something bad, they’re not going to announce it,” said Kevin Haley, director of security response at Symantec, the computer-security firm. “But it’s definitely a good idea to change your passwords.”
For Sony, though — and other companies hit by so-called “hactivists” — the consequences could be much more serious. “Sony desperately needs to get their security act together,” said Rob Enderle, an information-technology consultant, in an email to ABC News. “This could (with connected litigation and government response) effectively put them out of business.”
The company is still trying to recover from an attack in April on its PlayStation video game network — which had 77 million online accounts worldwide. Sony was forced to shut the network down and rebuild it, a process that took weeks.
More Business News From ABC News Radio -»
(Source: abcnewsradioarchive)
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Track: Interview on Digital Publishing
Artist: Max Brallier and Dan Patterson
Album: ABC News Radio
Plays: 22
SXSW Interactive 2011 Takeaway
This is a quick and dirty bullet list of #SXSWi 2011 trends, observations, and accomplishments. While this list is limited to bullets, I’m happy to answer questions or have a discussion on any specific point.
This year’s trends
- Hyped trends: Geolocation, Group Messaging, iPad 2 most buzzed about by agencies and in the tech blogs (TechCrunch post).
- Great sights and sounds of SXSW – TechCrunch, Buzz Out Loud (last few mins of episode), TWiT.
- Observed trends:
- Group messaging would be cool …if you could get a data signal.
- Go bar is as useful as the Hilton lobby.
- Sex sells! Never have I seen so many ‘booth babes’ wandering the streets – this indicates that the event is much more mainstream than it’s previous, more geeky years.
- Agency and PR attendees seem to be the single largest group, and most appear to be n00bs (Mashable post on brands at SXSW).
- The techies are hanging out in very small and private groups.
- Everyone is using: Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, Path, and Pandora. Everyone else is a startup or less relevant.
- Startups don’t have a chance.
- Ignore the sessions unless a) you know a panelist, or b) the panelist/speaker is huge, a la M00t.
- Marissa Mayer biffed it big time.
- Google insulted everyone by failing to engage with people and opting to pitch products hard and fast. The company remains essential, but the love-blush is long-over.
- Twitter is pissing off everyone – especially developers, but everyone still loves Twitter.
- Everyone is still on Facebook, but only because your mom is on Facebook. The kids are on Tumblr.
- Over-sharing/networking is over. Facebook and Twitter are the established broadcast platforms, and Tumblr is quickly on the rise. However, everything else is focused on quality over quantity and exemplified best by the success of Path. All of the old skool kids are going for quality over quantity.
- Growth: estimated 24-30k attendees for Interactive; projected 20% over 2010 (check with SXSW – these are only man-on-the-street numbers for staffers).
- Rumor: 2012 capped registration and panels (see above).
- Networking value is tremendous…
- …but one must be VIP. And even then, VIP is still massive. Eg, appx 5k people responded to the Media Temple (mid-size) party, 500 were VIP. The best networking events were not advertised and very small. Rule of thumb, don’t RSVP – simply attend and use SMS to talk with old contacts to find the best, small events. Stay sober!
- Unless it’s Scott Beale’s event or the Gizmodo ‘party’ (really, just a small meetup), don’t bother with the lines.
- Hang with Protocols and you’ll be in good shape. But don’t talk about Protocols.
Emerging trends
- SXSW has ‘jumped the shark’ for old skool techies.
- …but everyone will continue to come to SXSW – it’s the central gathering point ofThe Tribe (used loosely to describe the social media vets).
- We all are really, really sick of agency and PR people but a lot of them were nice, have lots of money to spend, and are genuinely curious about The Tribe.
- The highest-quality ‘meetups’ (ready, drinks with cool people you care about) are usually at one small, quiet venue and you’ll probably never know about these meetings.
- Useful people will come to you – SMS is still dominant and used for small group organization. The best meetings are in private and will never be tagged on #Hashable.
- SXSW is the single best/most useful annual conference for media and advertising people.
- The tech industry is now the media industry and influencers matter (see previous RWW link).
- Geolocation is established and is becoming another crucial ‘layer’ (a la, the social ‘layer’) on sites and apps. This is all about using geolocal data for interesting ideas and moving past the simple check-in.
- Curation is the new creation.
- Active discussion: is curation just as important as creation (Mashable article)?
- Curation can assist with info-overload.
- Curation leads to higher quality community; eg, good karma kills trools.
- Gaming, gaming, gaming!
- Content companies are adding ‘gameification’ to sites by integrating leader-boards, awards, badges.
Accomplishments
- I interviewed three very cool subjects: Ze Frank, Jay Adelson, Tim Kring.
- I moderated philanthropy and social media panel which recieved very high marks, accordind to SXSW organizers.
- I reinforced old and created new connections.
Summary
SXSW remains an essential event. Though the influx of marketers is annoying and the influencers are burning out, no event in media or technology brings together more high-quality old skool and n00bies than SXSW. While it’s easy to be cynical, SXSW Interactive is where trends are set, money is spent, life-long connections are made. If you work on the web or in media, you should have a presence at SXSW.
@JakeTapper reports for @ABC News
/via @abcnewsradio:
Reblogged /via @abcworldnews:
ABC’s Jake Tapper reports:
The website and personal credit card information of former Gov. Sarah Palin were cyber-attacked today by Wikileaks supporters, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate tells ABC News in an email.
Hackers in London apparently affiliated with “Operation Payback” –…
(via talkradionewsservice)
/via @politicalbrief:
/via @jtamboli
Senator Who lets you quickly identify Senators using what you know. Give it the Senator’s hair color, gender, or even party and committee membership if you know it, and Senator Who will show you pictures of everyone who matches that description. If you need to know more, Senator Who can tell you basic information about the Senator or link you immediately to the Senator’s official web page or Wikipedia entry.
Keep Reading on Spicy Tomato Apps
(Source: talkradionewsservice)
Tomorrow I’m giving a short speech at The Audience Conference at Carolines in Manhattan. While this is loosely a technology conference I am going to focus on the correlations and differences between broadcast radio and the web. In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s my mentor, Dave Diamond, was a rock ‘n’ roll DJ in LA and San Francisco. Diamond booked early Doors shows, wrote songs with Janis Joplin, and was on the first Beatles tour.
Equally auspicious was Diamond’s tenure as one of the nine original ‘Boss Jocks’ with Bill Drake at KHJ in Los Angeles. Radio in 2010 has moved far from it’s rocknroll roots. The once-electrifying medium has become a tepid and stale homogenized wasteland of predictability. But in 1965 rock radio was at it’s pinnace and epitomized the maturity of the medium. The technological innovation had reached it’s apex and united people through communities of common interest. And to be a ‘Boss Jock’ was to be at the electric center of a technological storm.
Along with my knowledge of The Diamond, the more I learn about Boss Radio and the innovations of Bill Drake the more correlations I see between early rocknroll pioneers and contemporary web innovators. I’ll rap a little bit about this tomorrow. For the time being, follow the link for some choice cuts from The Diamond.
- Dan
Dave Diamond is a radio broadcaster and a professor at Black Hills State University. Diamond was one of the nine original “Boss Jocks” who helped legendary program director Bill Drake build KHJ 93 AM in Los Angeles in to a new format concept called Boss Radio. KHJ hit the air running in the spring of 1965, and changed both rock radio and Dave Diamond forever…
