Apple has been criticized for the labor conditions in the factories that make iPhones, iPads and Macs. When Apple joined the Fair Labor Association, the Association investigated the factories Apple uses, the most famous of which is Foxconn. The report found cases of excessive overtime, unsafe working conditions, and instances when workers weren’t paid the wages due to them. Apple has vowed to fix those problems.

After recent media reports about working conditions in Foxconn, people wonder how chinese workers assemble Apple products.

American Public Media’s Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Chief Rob Schmitz is only the second reporter ever to gain access to visit the factory floor at Apple’s Chinese producer Foxconn. You can see highlights from his tour of the assembly line, the Foxconn facilities and how an iPad is made in this video.

Thomas Suarez has two published apps, a startup company and a compelling TED talk under his belt; all at the tender age of 12.

Most 12-year-olds love playing videogames — Thomas Suarez taught himself how to create them. After developing iPhone apps like “Bustin Jeiber,” a whack-a-mole game, he is now using his skills to help other kids become developers.

Thomas Suarez’s interest in technology and programming led him to learn Python, Java, and C “just to get the basics down.” He built an app and then coaxed his parents into paying the $99 fee to get his app, “Earth Fortune,” in the app store. Thomas also started an app club at school to help other kids build and share their creations, and is now starting his own company, CarrotCorp.

You should watch his inspiring speech at TEDx conference in Manhattan Beach, LA in the video below.

We will always wait for the next one more thing!

Thank you for everything you created. R.I.P. Steve Jobs…

With a jet-powered wing attached to his body, Yves Rossy expands the possibilities of human flight. On May 7 of this year, Swiss pilot Yves Rossy stepped out of a helicopter 8,000 feet above the Grand Canyon and … took off. Wearing a rigid wing powered by four model jet turbine engines, Rossy flew for eight minutes over the mile-deep trench, soaring over the red rocks before parachuting down to the Colorado River far below. It’s the latest exploit in a life powered by one dream: to fly like a bird.

Wearing his single wing, Rossy really flies, steering with the movements of his body. In the last couple of years he has crossed the English Channel, flown over the Swiss Alps and performed aerobatic loops around a hot-air balloon; for his next quest, he is developing a new kind of parachute that will enable him to fly as low as 200 meters.

Yves Rossy shared his story with the crowd at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland.

What can happen in one day? If you are talking social media, the answer is a lot. DBA Worldwide has made a cool video for the impressive stats of social media. For example 700,000 new users register on FaceBook every day…

A Day in the Life of Social Media from DBA Worldwide on Vimeo.

Artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris makes online art that captures the world’s expression — and gives us a glimpse of the soul of the Internet. Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web. With deep compassion for the human condition, his projects troll the Internet to find out what we’re all feeling and looking for. In this Ted Video, Jonathan Harris tells The Web’s Secret stories.

This is an old but unmissable funny poem, “If i controlled the Internet” from storyteller, writer and slam poet Rives; which he read at Ted conference in 2006. In this poem, Rives told he wanted to see a more personal and more  Internet and 3 years later the Internet has become much more personal, much more about me.

What would you do, if you controlled the Internet?

* You can find the whole text of the poem below the video.

If I controlled the internet?

You could auction your broken heart on Ebay
Take the money, go to Amazon,
Buy a phonebook for a country you’ve never been to
Call folks at random until you find someone
who flirts really well in a foreign language

If I were in charge of the internet
You could Mapquest your lover’s moodswings
Hang left at cranky
Right at preoccupied
U turn on silent treatment
All the way back to tongue kissing and good lovin’
You could navigate and understand every emotional intersection
Some days I’m as shallow as a backing pan
But I still stretch miles in all directions

If I own the internet
Napster Monster and Friendster-dot-com would be one big website
That way you could listen to cool music while you pretend to look for a job
and you’re really just chatting with your palls,

Heck if I ran the web
You could email dead people
They would not email you back
But you’d get an automated reply
Their name in your inbox
It’s all you wanted anyway
And a message saying: ‘Hey, it’s me. I miss you.’
Listen you’ll see, being dead is dandy.

Now you go back to raising kids
And waging peace
And craving candy

If I designed the internet
Childhood-dot-com would be a loop
Of a boy
In an orchard
With a ski pole for a sword
Trashcan lid for a shield, shouting
‘I am the emperor of oranges’
‘I am the emperor of oranges’
‘I am the emperor of oranges’
Now follow me OK

Grandma-dot-com would be a recipe for biscuits and spit bath instructions 1-2-3
That links with hot-diggity-dog-dot-com, that is my grandfather
They take you to gruff-ex-cop-on-his-fourth-marriage-dot-dad
He forms an attachment to kind-a-ditsy-but-still-sends-ginger-snatch-for-Christmas-dot-mom who
Downloads the boy in the orchard, the emperor of oranges who grows up to be

Me,
The guy who usually goes too far, so

If I were the emperor of the internet
I guess I’d still be mortal, huh?
But at that point I would probably already have
The lowest possible mortgage and the most enlarged possible penis, so
I would outlaw spam on my first day in office
I wouldn’t need it.
I’d be like some kind of internet genius.
And me,
I’d like to upgrade to deity and maybe
Just like that

(p-o-p)

I’d go wireless.

Huh.

Maybe google would hire this
So I could zip through your servers and firewalls like a virus
Until the worldwideweb is as wise as wild and as organised
As I think a modern day miracle-slash-oracle can get, but
Oooooooooo, you wanna bet just how whack and un-p.c. your Mac or PC’s gonna be when I’m rockin’

hot-shit-hotshot-God-dot-net?

I guess it’s just like life

It’s not a question of if you can
Its, ‘Do ya?’
We can interfere with the interface
We can make you god hallelujah the national anthem of cyberspace every lucky time we logon
You don’t say a prayer
You don’t write a song
You don’t chant an ooooohm

You send one blessed email to
Whoever you’re thinking of
At
Dadeladatatatatatatadadeladedadeladedatatam-dot-com

Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled “a ragtag band of volunteers,” gave them tools for collaborating and created Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.

Thanks Ted.com for organizing these unmissable talks.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Web 2.0 started as a revolution that uses the web to link people together. Web 2.0 means communicating, sharing, discussing and trading online in very useful ways never possible before. Web 2.0 simplifies collaboration and information exchange. But words aren’t enough to describe Web 2.0 .These extremely enjoyable videos describe Web 2.0 in  the most creative ways.
Michael Wesch is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and leads the Digital Ethnography Working Group. On Nov. 20, 2008, CASE and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching honored Wesch as Professor of the Year. Proffessor Wesch was trying to find a way to describe Web 2.0 for a paper that he was writing and found that words were not quite enough – instead he created the videos; “Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us” and “Information R/evolution”

by Michael Wesch