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- Foxconn Increases Wages, Raises Pay By 16-25% For Chinese Workers
- More Backpedaling: Netflix Brings Back the $7.99 DVD-Only Plan
- Daily Crunch: Fire
- Nevada Establishes Regulations For Self-Driving Cars
- Lytro Video? Maybe Later – For Now, Lytro Focuses On Photos
- Amazon Steals 14% Tablet Market Share In Q4, Apple Share Drops To 57%
- Better Late Than Never: Hulu Plus Finally Arrives On The Wii
- Samsung Galaxy Note Review: Head-To-Head With The Galaxy Nexus And Streak 5
- OS X Mountain Lion Brings The Mac Into The Game
- Auraslate Is An Open Source Android Tablet For Hackers
- Daily Crunch: Trike
| Foxconn Increases Wages, Raises Pay By 16-25% For Chinese Workers Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:07 AM PST  Foxconn is under increased scrutiny as of late. The nearly 40-year old company assembles a big portion of the world’s electronic goods but many are questioning its treatment of workers. But nothing calms a troubled soul like cash. The company just released a statement indicating pay raises for Chinese workers just before the Fair Trade Association is set to interview employees about life at Foxconn. The base pay of junior level worker in Shenzhen is now at 1,800 yuan ($290) per month and, if the worker passes a technical examination, it will be raised to 2,200 yuan. Three years ago the base pay was just 900 yuan per month. “As a top manufacturing company in China, the basic salary of junior workers in all of Foxconn’s China factories is already far higher than the minimum wage set by all local governments,” the statement said.”We will provide more training opportunities and learning time, and will continuously enhance technology, efficiency and salary, so as to set a good example for the Chinese manufacturing industry.” Foxconn is often viewed as a good entry-level job in China. The work is hard, no doubt, but the pay is fair for the region and job seekers often line up by the thousands for a chance to work at Foxconn. Not only is the pay a good deal higher than the required minimum but the company also provides dorms, meals, and recreational facilities for its workers. Foxconn is viewed as a way to move from the fields to the city. But the company is facing some serious acquisitions. Apple recently announced that the Fair Labor Association will conduct special voluntary audits of several Apple assemblers including Foxconn where they will interview thousands of employees about their living conditions, pay compensation and corporate communication. It’s hard to say whether this pay increase was already on the books or a sort of short-term ploy to garner better marks on these employee interviews.
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| More Backpedaling: Netflix Brings Back the $7.99 DVD-Only Plan Posted: 17 Feb 2012 04:39 AM PST  Netflix is looking to make things right again. The company just reintroduced its DVD-only subscription plan. Consumers are finally able to sign up for this plan without also paying for (or trying) Netflix streaming. As Softpedia points out, this option briefly disappeared last fall as the company was trying to realign after the Qwikster disaster. Netflix experienced a fall from grace in 2011. The once star of Wall Street, the company could seemingly do no wrong. But then they did wrong: prices increased by up to 60%. Next, the company spun off its legacy DVD business in an effort to focus greater on streaming media. Netflix’s stock plummeted and quickly lost more than one fifth of its value. But don’t count Netflix out. The company’s stock price has doubled since its 52-week low of 62. This latest move, while seemingly pro-consumer, will also allow Netflix to leverage DVDs again. Streaming is still Netflix’s future, but DVDs are still big business — even if the company’s CEO sees DVD subscribers decreasing until they’re all gone. Until that happens, though, Netflix is back in the business of delivering movies and TV shows to consumers no matter how they want it.
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| Posted: 17 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST  Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Lytro Video? Maybe Later – For Now, Lytro Focuses On Photos Amazon Steals 14% Tablet Market Share In Q4, Apple Share Drops To 57% Samsung Galaxy Note Review: Head-To-Head With The Galaxy Nexus And Streak 5
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| Nevada Establishes Regulations For Self-Driving Cars Posted: 16 Feb 2012 07:05 PM PST  California may be the 800-pound gorilla in the automotive legislation world, but their neighbor Nevada seems to be taking the initiative when it comes to self-driving cars. They’ve adopted a number of regulations into law, and are pushing the state as a legal testing-ground for companies preparing such vehicles. These changes were telegraphed last summer, when the state legalized driverless cars to begin with. Now they’re hammering out the details. There’s money involved, of course: a $1m to $3m bond must be purchased if you want to test your robocar in the state, depending on the nature of the project. And the laws will have to change, naturally, once the vehicles go from science project to highway reality. But these early calls seem reasonable. The new regulations are partly aimed at making testing safe and legitimate, and partly at actually accommodating driverless vehicles on the road. For instance, information from testing must be shared with the state, along with the purpose of the experimentation and information about the cars. This information will be useful to urban planners and the like, who may want to immunize their cities against future robocar problems. Two people must be in the cars at all times for now, and there must be a sort of “black box” device that records data in case of a crash. Robocars will have red license plates, and later, when certified, green. There will likely have to be some kind of national standard for identifying an autonomous vehicle. And there are also allowances for the human element: a person will be considered the “operator” of a vehicle whether they are physically present or not. How this will work when the cars are completely autonomous and cause a wreck anyway isn’t clear. But it does also inform an interesting (and probably correct) decision also included in the regulations: for now, you can’t use an autonomous vehicle as a designated driver. Just because you aren’t turning the steering wheel doesn’t mean you’re not “operating” the vehicle. Drinkers be warned. You will, however, be able to call or text on your mobile while in a robocar. That particular decision was carved out of the earlier law banning texting while driving. So text away or watch a movie, but remember that you’re still in charge of the vehicle.
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| Lytro Video? Maybe Later – For Now, Lytro Focuses On Photos Posted: 16 Feb 2012 05:10 PM PST  We were recently able to pose a few questions to Ren Ng, founder and CEO of Lytro, and the person upon whose research the whole product is based. Their camera, which allows the shooter to set the focus after taking the shot, among other things, is launching soon. But there is still much to learn about it, as the company has been fairly close-mouthed about the its specs and capabilities. First, Ng declined to name the supplier for the lens, an 8x zoom with a fixed F/2 aperture — that’s serious glass, and they’re keeping their source secret. The striking design is actually necessitated by the lens; most zooms that size will protrude from the body of a camera owing to certain optical necessities, but Lytro’s is all-internal, and to keep the whole thing compact the rest of the camera was built around the lens. The “light ray” technology behind the camera is also potentially usable for video. The trouble is that processing that much image data might not be possible at the moment, given how differently the Lytro handles data. But if you take away that processing roadblock, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why video should be taken off the table. But for the debut, still photography is the only worthwhile thing to target, since the market is so much bigger and the tech supports it right now. We also asked about wireless capability. The chipset used on the Lytro is listed as being both wifi and Bluetooth capable, but no wireless syncing or direct-to-Facebook type functions have been mentioned at all. The only thing Ng would say was that they were hard at work on the wireless piece. It doesn’t seem too far out there to expect an update to the Lytro that will add some basic wireless functionality, but for now all we know is it’s being considered. They seem to be open to licensing the technology or partnering with other services, possibly for co-branding purposes. But at the moment the focus is on just getting the product out there. Other means of monetizing or spreading the technology may be resorted to later, especially if (perish the thought) the camera sells less than expected.
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| Amazon Steals 14% Tablet Market Share In Q4, Apple Share Drops To 57% Posted: 16 Feb 2012 09:43 AM PST  We’ve known since the Fire first debuted that it would create some competition for Apple’s iPad, which has dominated the market since it arrived. But today iSuppli has offered up a little insight into just how fierce the competition really is. According to the research firm, Apple’s market share in the tablet arena dropped from 64 percent in Q3 to 57 percent in Q4, with Amazon nabbing a 14 percent share. It would seem as though that $200 price tag on the Kindle Fire was temptation enough for tablet buyers, but according to IHS research Apple customers were more swayed away from the iPad by the iPhone 4S than they were the Fire. Including Christmas sales, Apple shipped at least 15.4 million iPads while Amazon had shipped 3.9 million Fires. It’s important to note that shipments are a very different number than sales, but with both of these products selling well we wouldn’t consider these numbers misleading by any means. iSuppli projects that the iPad 3, which will most certainly be the superior device, will help Apple recapture any market share it lost over the past few months, but with such a gap between price points, anything can happen. Meanwhile, Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet took the third and fourth spots, with 8 percent and 7 percent shares respectively.
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| Better Late Than Never: Hulu Plus Finally Arrives On The Wii Posted: 16 Feb 2012 08:22 AM PST  The folks over at Hulu originally promised Wii users would have access to their Hulu Plus streaming service by the end of 2011, but things didn’t exactly pan out the way they had hoped. Well, after a few extra months of waiting, the Nintendo-faithful are finally being rewarded for their patience: the Hulu Plus app can be downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel. The app itself is free, but actually using it will cost users the standard $7.99/month. While I’m glad Hulu finally managed to make good on their word, their work isn’t over yet. 3DS owners are still patiently waiting for their chance to stream back episodes of The New Girl, and let’s not forget that Nintendo has been hard at work on the forthcoming Wii U console for months now. With any luck streaming content providers like Netflix and Hulu can quickly adapt to that new multi-screen paradigm. After all, what better way is there to revel in togetherness than for two people to watch two completely separate video streams at the same time? Joking aside, it’s heartening to see Nintendo get serious about streaming content so late into the Wii’s lifespan. As their hardware prices drop (and you can bet that the Wii will sink below $150 at some point), the Wii could eventually find itself competing with other low-cost streaming devices like the Roku 2 series. While the Wii would come up short up in terms of PC connectivity, its decent web browser and support for services like Hulu and Netflix could bolster its adoption into even more non-gamer households.
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| Samsung Galaxy Note Review: Head-To-Head With The Galaxy Nexus And Streak 5 Posted: 16 Feb 2012 06:42 AM PST  If last week’s showdown between the Droid 4, Droid 3, and iPhone 4S didn’t get your blood pumping, prepare yourself for the heavyweight round. We’ve got the hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy Note going up against the Dell Streak and the beastly Galaxy Nexus. Obviously the Streak is a somewhat older device, but it’s very similar in size to the Note which should give former Streak owners a good idea of what to expect out of the Note. Meanwhile, the GalNex is yet another huge screen that Note enthusiasts are probably considering, as well. Onward! The Streak is just a hair thicker than the Note, at 10mm compared to the Note’s 9.7mm waist line, and sports a smaller 5-inch screen. The Streak can also be used with a capacitive stylus, though it really can’t compete with the pressure-sensitive Wacom-style S Pen. And to be quite honest, the Streak can’t compare with the Note in terms of performance either. That’s not to say the Streak is a bad phone, but it’s simply too outdated to show any real competition in the spec department. For example, the 5-inch Streak display only has a resolution of 480×800 while the Note boasts a 1280×800 resolution on a 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED screen. The Note is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor whereas the Streak runs on a 1GHz single-core processor. So again, the Streak is duking it out based on size similarities rather than performance, but the Galaxy Nexus is a different story. Anyone who’s interested in the Galaxy Note is down for a giant screen, which means the Ice Cream Sandwich-flavored Galaxy Nexus is probably in the running too. Obviously the G-Nex doesn’t have a special stylus like the Note, but it does have Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich which could be way more valuable than an S Pen, especially for you die-hard phandroids. (Who knows when ICS will come to the Note?) The Nexus is a bit smaller than the Note (but what isn’t?), measuring 8.9mm thick and boasting a 4.65-inch 720p display. That means pixel density on the GalNex is far greater than that of the Note — a difference of 316ppi vs. 285ppi. The Note has a better spec’d camera at 8-megapixels vs. 5-megapixels but that’s not the best determiner of quality. To be honest, neither camera is all that inspiring but the fact that the GalNex camera allows for so many extra cool features (like facial unlock and Google Hangouts) perhaps gives it a leg up. At the same price, I’d have to say the value return is likely better on the Nexus unless your profession really calls for that S Pen functionality. As I mentioned in our initial impressions video, the Note’s S Pen only seems worthwhile in a few very specific circumstances. It’s fun and all that jazz, but doesn’t bring with it the same varied functionality as ICS.
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| OS X Mountain Lion Brings The Mac Into The Game Posted: 16 Feb 2012 06:20 AM PST  Gamers, start your engines, lift your fruit-slicing swords, and lace up your Temple-running shoes. Game Center, Apple’s gaming/social hub for iOS, has finally made it’s way over to the more mature Apple OS, OS X Mountain Lion. This is huge. Not because you’ll be able to enjoy the features of Game Center while playing around on your Mac (which will likely be great fun, too, I’m sure), but because gaming will now bust through the platform barrier allowing you to duke it out with anyone on just about any Apple device. That’s right. We’re no longer in the era of PC-to-PC/phone-to-phone gaming as OS X Mountain Lion will enable Mac-to-iPhone, Mac-to-iPad, and Mac-to-iPod touch gaming. Like I said, that’s huge. Apple claims to have over 100 million registered users and 20,000+ Game Center-enabled games on iOS, which is a solid starting point. Of course, developers will have to go in and tweak their apps to provide a beautiful gaming experience across all of these devices, but according to MG’s account of the cross-platform gaming in action, “it works very well.”
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| Auraslate Is An Open Source Android Tablet For Hackers Posted: 16 Feb 2012 06:02 AM PST  If you’re sick of firmware lockdowns and failed reflashings on your other Android tablets, the Auraslate may be for you. It’s basically an Ice Cream Sandwich-compatible tablet built from the ground up for hax0rz and programmers alike. There are two models – the 7-inch 726B and the 10-inch 1026 – and the 1026 can run the latest version of Android. You can upload any version you want, however, and even the hardware is open source in that you receive a hardware source disk for about $20 extra. To be clear, you won’t be blazing through web pages on this thing or playing high-end video games. For about $130, you get a standard Android CORTEX A9 tablet from a Chinese OEM that you could get for about $95 if you really dug around. However, Auraslate is promising open source software updates for their hardware and you also get a support community and the source code. This sort of package is ideal if you’re working on an Android hardware project, for example, as you will be able to talk with a community of hackers dealing with the same hardware and software rather than picking up a fly-by-night tablet from China and hoping it works. Auraslate just launched (thanks tipster!) so we’ll have to wait and see how popular and useful the product becomes. However, as a tool for developers it seems that the founders’ hearts are in the right place.
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| Posted: 16 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST |
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